Portfolio feedback and general advice

vavavoom

Hello polycounters~

I've been working on trying to build up a portfolio to present my work.

I've been trying to achieve a style that works for my skillset.
I am self taught in the free time I have to spare and have tinkered away as and when I can over the years to try and improve.

My main focus has mostly been to create my own sci-fi/fantasy world taking inspiration from all the things I like.
The goal was to use it as a vehicle to create my own characters and other things, to give me a kind of direction and motivation.

I'd like to think I have a solid grasp of building up from low to high poly with solid topology, but as far as texturing, materials, rigging etc. I have only basic knowledge and experience, hence the simplistic materials and somewhat clunky looking character poses in many cases.

Any feedback, advice or anything would be greatly received and appreciated.

I don't want to ramble on too much, so here's the link:
https://www.artstation.com/vomo/albums/all

Fabi_G

Hi

I think your Space Rogue character designs look simple but cool - however presentation of all models could use more interesting lighting and (as you noted) materials. You could focus on learning this, by using what you got as a basis. If you want to make characters for games, try implementing a character into a game engine.

For what kind of job do you want to apply? This will dictate what you need to show.

Much success

vavavoom

Thanks @Fabi_G,
appreciate you looking and your feedback greatly


I'm glad you think the characters are cool. The character designs are simple in design through a combination of style choice and my skill limitation.

I tried to design characters that can be identified from a distance and still have enough detail to be interesting and unique looking.
I see a lot of character art which, while technically impressive, are so minutely detailed and complex I feel they can end up kinda looking indistinguishable.

my design goals also considered production time and performance for a theoretical implementation of assets in a game engine.

That said, I do wish I could push them to a more polished state with things such as lighting and materials as you mentioned.
At the moment they are all in various states of concept, with just enough polish to convey the feel I'm aiming for.



One of my goals was to pick one character at some point and try and take it through a pipeline: retopoing, rigging it for animation, try substance painter, etc. and see if I could get it in Unreal engine.

Ultimately, my goal would be to build out a very small level with a handful of characters and environment props to use as a proof of concept for a RPG game.

It seems such a daunting task and I'm always torn between concepting more characters and things I want in the world, or using my time to try and learn new skills.

I would love to find a job in the art/game industry but I don't have any credentials, all i have is my art and ideas

Fabi_G

Yeah get your hands dirty

Maybe start with smaller scoped projects to get better at texturing. Something like a prop or a bust to get used to it, then apply the learnings to more complex subjects (well, I suppose a bust can already be quite complex).

Rigify addon in blender (and Art tool during Maya times) helped me a lot to get characters rigged and posed.
I think if you want to use the character with stock animations, it's good to make some sprints to learn the pitfalls of the process.

For lighting, you could already put meshes into unreal or blender and experiment around with real-time rendering. Could make some uv independent materials that works with sculpts.

Keep it up

Zoddo

When it comes to portfolios; Quality is better than quanity.

Start by taking your best character, add materials to that character and set-up a better presentaton scene (lighting, angles etc.)

Your models look good, but the presentaton is lacking and it's a major major sin to keep them untextured for portfolio work.

If you're hestitant on texturing, don't be... it's a pretty simple process. find some tileable textures and UVW map them on your characters to get a feel. Than you can start customising them in SP or Mixer.

vavavoom

Thanks for your feedback, it's really encouraging and appreciated.

I have a few more concepts in the pipeline i'm gonna crank out, then I plan on taking your advice and picking one to focus on , polish up and add new skills to to try and make a showcase piece.

I have so many characters and stuff I want to bring to life it seems impossible to do all on my own. But I hope I can at least take some of them through to a more professional looking state.

Thanks again :)

SgtHK

The poses on your characters look good. Getting good at modeling and texturing takes many years (at least for me). If you'd like immediate results, I think what you can do to improve right now is to get good at lighting, rendering, and presentation. Then when you're practicing modeling and texturing, you can augment your creations with good lighting. No matter how good your modeling and texturing is, it's gonna look like crap with crappy lighting. So learn how to light up your characters!

I personally taught myself how to light by removing all the textures from my characters, and just apply a gray material, as if your model is a clay sculpture. Then I would experiment with different lighting setups to see how it makes the model feel different. Adding an HDRI to your lighting setups works wonders.

vavavoom

Thanks @SgtHK

Yeah, my lighting an presentation skills are severely lacking unfortunately >_<.

I get what you mean about lighting taking away from a model by being bad, It's another thing i'm hoping to search out through youtube tutorials when time allows.

I glad you like the poses, I did it super dirty by moving parts of the sculpts without rigs (another thing i don't know how to do). There's lot's of areas in the characters where I messed up but is hidden as much as possible by the pose angles :)

Hope to show you all some improvements in the new year! :)