3D/Concept Art Portfolio - seeking feedback

omaii

Hello!
I'd like to ask for any thoughts, advice and suggestions for my current portfolio  (<- link) - primarily on the 3D stuff I've included, although any thoughts about my concept art are also appreciated. I'm less confident in my 3D skills so I'd love to know what aspects I should brush up on and refine further to improve my work.

I'm aware it's quite a broad and generalised collection of work at present since it reflects my current indecisiveness as to what specialism I want to choose as an artist. Since I've taken up the helm of an environment artist on my university group project I've actually found a growing fondness for environment art and level design, but in the sense of coming to like it as much as I like character and prop art rather than feeling like it's my favourite thing to do. I have a similar dilemma with concept art. The specialism I lean towards seems to change almost daily ;-;

Thank you in advance to anyone reading this

(EDIT: I'm in the process of revamping my portfolio to tailor it towards environmental art, so I've removed almost all the other stuff I had since it's not relevant :"D I'll update this thread again when I've got more stuff to show beyond my two environmental concepts. I'm planning on focusing on making small props and/or a diorama to add to my portfolio!)

ZacD

If you're going to start looking for work, you really need to narrow down your portfolio to mostly one skillset, characters, creatures, environments, concept art, etc. Generally the presentation, optimization, topology, and texturing could be better, and any sort of consistency in style and subject matter would make your portfolio seem much more cohesive. 

omaii

ZacD said:

If you're going to start looking for work, you really need to narrow down your portfolio to mostly one skillset, characters, creatures, environments, concept art, etc. Generally the presentation, optimization, topology, and texturing could be better, and any sort of consistency in style and subject matter would make your portfolio seem much more cohesive. 

Thank you for the feedback! My technical understanding of 3D definitely needs some work so I'll be sure to research those in more detail.

I think I've been aware for a while that specialisation is the way to go, I've just been anxious to take the dive because it seemed like such a "no-turning-back-now" thing in my head when later down the line I can probably change my specialism if I want to (provided I do enough practice on the side). I've also been quite confused about whether having a generalist set of skills is beneficial or not since I hear mixed things about it (more helpful to wear multiple hats in a smaller team but less beneficial in the long run etc.) but I concluded it's easier for me to pick one thing to focus on for now.

After some further reading and thinking, I think I'm going to work towards becoming an environment artist since that'll let me dabble with props and tech art along the way which I'm also interested in. I wanted to be a character artist for the longest time so it feels a bit strange letting go of that to an extent but I figure since it's something I still enjoy I can learn it in my own time, same with concept art which is my 'ultimate' ambition, but I recognise it's incredibly difficult to get into and probably a less ideal choice for when I really start looking for work. One of my tutors at uni advised that I get some experience as a 3D artist of some kind and then look into concept art later down the line so I'm hoping that works out :")

omaii

I figured even if I'm not planning on including these pieces in my portfolio anymore (wiped them off my AS lol) now that I've decided what I want to specialise in I'm still going to leave these 3D pieces here for feedback. 
These are all pieces I plan on revisiting and improving when I have time, especially since they're quite old (all except the ukulele are first-year work) so I'd appreciate any specific pointers on things I should consider when I do this!

Posting my sculpted stuff in this reply and hard-surface things in the next. 
Character Bust of Ophilia Clement (Octopath Traveller)



Areas to improve noted so far:
- Optimisation (reduce polycount on low resolution model) and topology esp. around face
- Texturing - tone down cloth bumps and reduce waxy feel of the whole model
- Face sculpt/texturing - define features like the nostrils, lips and eyelids more clearly

Great White Shark

omaii

Hard-surface stuff - the car is from last year and the ukulele from earlier this academic year. I probably won't revisit the car because I'm not interested in modelling vehicles but I think I'll make a more stylised and hand-painted version of the ukulele to suit my tastes :") I tried to go for realism with it but don't think that came across well due to the texturing.

Fiat 500
Modelled and UV'd in Maya, shaders/lighting in Houdini. Followed more of a VFX pipeline for this I think.


https://youtu.be/S_euqP5xivk

Places to improve:
- forgot to extrude the glass = distortion
- seam on back
- topology wobbly in places

Ukulele





https://youtu.be/m4pwo_02dco

Stuff to work on:
- need more polys for low-poly, looks too blocky RN
- Texturing

omaii

Bumping this thread back up again because I've made some more portfolio changes, this time not featuring any of the previous models posted here but focused more on environment work now that I actually have more environment work to show :P I still have some things pending upload (freelance work mainly) but I've posted all my parts from my second-year group project on ArtStation and my website too!

Full environment renders - https://www.artstation.com/artwork/49D0DL
Foliage - https://www.artstation.com/artwork/yDaO1K
Materials - https://www.artstation.com/artwork/6NWr1W

Website project portfolio page - https://aumaiiee.carrd.co/#pounce

Any particular feedback on the presentation would be fantastic alongside any critiques of the art I've produced since I'm conscious there's a lot of room for improvement but want to apply any feedback as future considerations for my new works rather than continuing to noodle on the same pieces xD I'm a bit tired of working on this environment for now but definitely plan on revisiting it.

ThisisVictoriaZ

Hi! I think the presentation of the environments and materials in your portfolio is pretty good, so no notes there! As far as the art goes I think your project Pounce is pretty impressive! One thing I noticed is that in most of your trees, for the foliage portion, you can pretty clearly see where the individual cards are, I've outlined some of the more noticeable ones in one of your screen shots here 
It may not be super noticeable during game play, I cant really tell, but for renders its sticks out to me. What you can do to fix that is probably use more smaller cards, or use a different shader for just the leaves, I like this one alot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BfZSfX6_Go It could potentially also be that your vertex normals need to be adjusted, so it wouldn't hurt to look into that as well! I think your materials are fine, the weakest one is probably the bark one, but I think it just need to be cleaned up a bit, and your environment as a whole is beautiful, so great job so far! Keep it up!