I am planning on finding a new job soon and I aiming at a concept artists position. Here is some of the new stuff I did for my portfolio over the last week:
For the first image, the feet seem a bit too small. Let em jut out a bit more so he looks more stable. The platform hes standing on could do with some cleaning up as well. Looks a bit messy atm. I'd also really like to see you work on your presentation a bit more. Look at hawkprey's various concepts for ideas.
The 2nd one... I dont like the cloth. It has too high a specularity when cloth shouldn't have much of any spec. You also seem to paint a lot with black, which my traditional art professors scream at me when I do. The skin tones... im not too fond of. I can't really put my finger on why, but it just feels like they're a bit out of place in this painting. Like you used a seperate pallette then the one you had been painting with. My biggest problem is definitely the overuse of black though. I hate black.
The third one is pretty kickass. Perhaps a close foreground object would bring it together or some far away figures. just thoughts.
Also, companies love to see orthos in their concept artist portfolios. Make some plz.
Also, another idea, since you're a bit of a 3d guy. If you could make some 3d prototypes and then paint over them, and show your process, companies ought to love it because you can just give the mesh to the 3d artist so that he has a model to base his off of and keep it even closer to the concept.
ok well I like the guy with the gun. He is a little skewed in perspective and its hard to read some of the shapes well. SO, since a concept artists job is to communicate the right info to the artists who will build it I recommend you do some other studies of the same character. (profile/front/gun)
Also it might be a bit obvious but it wont hurt to show progression, or at least have those materials ready to show later and discuss the decisions you made leading up to the final piece. - Most studios will have a brief and will have you do many iterations on anything of importance.
I think you have good talent ninja's, take the time you need to make some great pieces with a lot of thought behind them and it will pay off!
i also agree that there are 'stuff' hard to read. if i were to model that gun-dude (this is an incredibly hypothetical proposition mind you) i wouldn't know what's in front of what, how do things look like, etc. in some areas it feels like the forms simply don't open up enough on the x-axis to be read spatially, more/better drawings would be essential.
for the figure: separate her hair from the background. the leg plains break in the center (below the exterior superior oblique), not towards the bone shaft on the side, where that highlight on her skin is off. her other leg also gets too much light. beyond the technical elements the concept itself is well done, very clear.
i think overall these are the nicest most pro stuff i seen from you, which means good progress!!
yes take ur time and push the quality up.
go ahead and pimp that third image as an in-line! the other pieces cry out to be complemented by their brother! table-breaking be damned, our bandwidth can handle it.
aesir, space and shotgun have mostly covered the broad comments. i also like the first and third best, but i think a lot of that just comes from the second piece being outside of your usual oeuvre (as it would be for me, too)--please continue to push in different directions.
most encouragingly I would say that that the color and paint quality on these definitely say "pro", as well as the mark-making and the difficult perspective choice on the third image, nice work.
crits: for powerarmor man, it looks like you got down to all the exciting detailing/rendering before taking time to set down a strong figural foundation. it's a good angle choice and overall is a nice piece, but the feet look weak/off, and overall the figure just not very commanding. whenever this happens to me (often enough, le sigh) the error tends to occur when setting up the figure initially. i know that when i don't take time with a good figure/sketch to build off from, it's all going to end up garbage. garbage in, garbage out as they say.
but there's plenty of your trademark form rendering/painting and good quality tech detailing in there, so it's far from a wash. good choice of color palette and presentation thereof, since the background doesn't fight with showing him off.
on the other hand, be careful about callouts. yeah they can give the viewer some extra info at what they're looking at, especially if it's superfuturetech as it is here, but they can also change the emphasis. you've got the callouts written in fairly large, so they tend to dominate the flow of the image more than they ought. make sure callouts are small and are secondary to the overall piece, which right now isn't exactly the case. fellows like Feng and especially Hawkprey have gotten very good at mastering callouts to spice up their tech designs.
for the woman piece, i always draw robots myself and have never met a girl in real life, so i basically can't help you but shotgun's right about popping the head out from the background so we can see her hair. i've only now just noticed that the hair trails far past her waist--that's definitely a detail that shouldn't get lost.
aaaand... no crits on the third image, other than to maybe suggest smuggling a figure or two in there for a sense of scale. the trees help, but we all know trees can be giant or tinyland, so put some guys in there to tell us just how huge that mysterious tower is!
good stuff, and it's always a joy to watch your progress/see new pieces.
As a retarded drawer I can say nothing at all.
Guys did great work in criticism and hinting ( use full either for me, thx 4 that).
And, for me, U made great job. 1one and 3rd one are great.
Jaw drop.
I will do some orthos for the spacesuit I think. That is a really good idea, and something everybody has mentioned. Good call on the presentation.
About the spec on the cloth, it is meant to be silk-- I am not trying to say you are wrong or anything, but I think I will keep that how it is, although I will get rid of the pure black. I had this idea, but I think it must not be working so well. The skin has been nothing but trouble for me. I think I will take another shot at recoloring it.
spacemonkey:
Hehe, I wish I had progression to show. A lot of times I keep working on the shape and merging or erasing as I work, so I lose a lot of my intermediate stuff. I guess I should start doing the normal thing of thumbnailing.
shotgun:
I think I am going to add in some slight haze to break out the different depths of the spacesuit from each other. I agree it is not reading well. I will make those changes to the legs like you mentioned.
gauss:
With the spaceman I made the mistake of using a biped dummy to paint over. I had this idea that it would save me time, but I wasn't really happy with it, and I think that is why the final is a bit weak like you say. Really good point about the callouts. I will resize them> I wasn't sure what the final size of the image would be, but you are right that they are way too large.
I am going to make those changes to the girl picture. I hope I can bring the quality up on it a bit more.
The girl's left hand seems to be in a very unnatural position that doesn't seem like it would occur in her pose/stance. The arm almost looks like it's half broken in order to support the hand's position.
Other than that everything is quite good, and far beyond my capabilities.
EDIT: on a second look the hand issue may be due to the fact that the hand also looks really meaty/bulky in comparison to the right hand, as the thumb is really stubby and under sized, as well as the palm being very very bulgy.
Great concepts man! I especially like the tower, it just has alot of character to it in that jungle surrounding. the girl is nice as well. As for the space suit, I would give the same crit about the feet, but aside from that, I like where its headed.
Dang Ninjas, some solid work there from you. I've always been a fan of your stuff and this proves why! Keep at it dude, you only seem to be getting better and better. Good luck with landing a concept artist position.
Replies
The 2nd one, not so much.
For the first image, the feet seem a bit too small. Let em jut out a bit more so he looks more stable. The platform hes standing on could do with some cleaning up as well. Looks a bit messy atm. I'd also really like to see you work on your presentation a bit more. Look at hawkprey's various concepts for ideas.
The 2nd one... I dont like the cloth. It has too high a specularity when cloth shouldn't have much of any spec. You also seem to paint a lot with black, which my traditional art professors scream at me when I do. The skin tones... im not too fond of. I can't really put my finger on why, but it just feels like they're a bit out of place in this painting. Like you used a seperate pallette then the one you had been painting with. My biggest problem is definitely the overuse of black though. I hate black.
The third one is pretty kickass. Perhaps a close foreground object would bring it together or some far away figures. just thoughts.
Also, companies love to see orthos in their concept artist portfolios. Make some plz.
Also, another idea, since you're a bit of a 3d guy. If you could make some 3d prototypes and then paint over them, and show your process, companies ought to love it because you can just give the mesh to the 3d artist so that he has a model to base his off of and keep it even closer to the concept.
Also it might be a bit obvious but it wont hurt to show progression, or at least have those materials ready to show later and discuss the decisions you made leading up to the final piece. - Most studios will have a brief and will have you do many iterations on anything of importance.
I think you have good talent ninja's, take the time you need to make some great pieces with a lot of thought behind them and it will pay off!
i also agree that there are 'stuff' hard to read. if i were to model that gun-dude (this is an incredibly hypothetical proposition mind you) i wouldn't know what's in front of what, how do things look like, etc. in some areas it feels like the forms simply don't open up enough on the x-axis to be read spatially, more/better drawings would be essential.
for the figure: separate her hair from the background. the leg plains break in the center (below the exterior superior oblique), not towards the bone shaft on the side, where that highlight on her skin is off. her other leg also gets too much light. beyond the technical elements the concept itself is well done, very clear.
i think overall these are the nicest most pro stuff i seen from you, which means good progress!!
yes take ur time and push the quality up.
aesir, space and shotgun have mostly covered the broad comments. i also like the first and third best, but i think a lot of that just comes from the second piece being outside of your usual oeuvre (as it would be for me, too)--please continue to push in different directions.
most encouragingly I would say that that the color and paint quality on these definitely say "pro", as well as the mark-making and the difficult perspective choice on the third image, nice work.
crits: for powerarmor man, it looks like you got down to all the exciting detailing/rendering before taking time to set down a strong figural foundation. it's a good angle choice and overall is a nice piece, but the feet look weak/off, and overall the figure just not very commanding. whenever this happens to me (often enough, le sigh) the error tends to occur when setting up the figure initially. i know that when i don't take time with a good figure/sketch to build off from, it's all going to end up garbage. garbage in, garbage out as they say.
but there's plenty of your trademark form rendering/painting and good quality tech detailing in there, so it's far from a wash. good choice of color palette and presentation thereof, since the background doesn't fight with showing him off.
on the other hand, be careful about callouts. yeah they can give the viewer some extra info at what they're looking at, especially if it's superfuturetech as it is here, but they can also change the emphasis. you've got the callouts written in fairly large, so they tend to dominate the flow of the image more than they ought. make sure callouts are small and are secondary to the overall piece, which right now isn't exactly the case. fellows like Feng and especially Hawkprey have gotten very good at mastering callouts to spice up their tech designs.
for the woman piece, i always draw robots myself and have never met a girl in real life, so i basically can't help you
aaaand... no crits on the third image, other than to maybe suggest smuggling a figure or two in there for a sense of scale. the trees help, but we all know trees can be giant or tinyland, so put some guys in there to tell us just how huge that mysterious tower is!
good stuff, and it's always a joy to watch your progress/see new pieces.
Guys did great work in criticism and hinting ( use full either for me, thx 4 that).
And, for me, U made great job. 1one and 3rd one are great.
Jaw drop.
I will do some orthos for the spacesuit I think. That is a really good idea, and something everybody has mentioned. Good call on the presentation.
About the spec on the cloth, it is meant to be silk-- I am not trying to say you are wrong or anything, but I think I will keep that how it is, although I will get rid of the pure black. I had this idea, but I think it must not be working so well. The skin has been nothing but trouble for me. I think I will take another shot at recoloring it.
spacemonkey:
Hehe, I wish I had progression to show. A lot of times I keep working on the shape and merging or erasing as I work, so I lose a lot of my intermediate stuff. I guess I should start doing the normal thing of thumbnailing.
shotgun:
I think I am going to add in some slight haze to break out the different depths of the spacesuit from each other. I agree it is not reading well. I will make those changes to the legs like you mentioned.
gauss:
With the spaceman I made the mistake of using a biped dummy to paint over. I had this idea that it would save me time, but I wasn't really happy with it, and I think that is why the final is a bit weak like you say. Really good point about the callouts. I will resize them> I wasn't sure what the final size of the image would be, but you are right that they are way too large.
I am going to make those changes to the girl picture. I hope I can bring the quality up on it a bit more.
Poraszek:
Thanks!
That environment piece is stunning, regardless of the flawed perspective.
Here are some revisions:
Other than that everything is quite good, and far beyond my capabilities.
EDIT: on a second look the hand issue may be due to the fact that the hand also looks really meaty/bulky in comparison to the right hand, as the thumb is really stubby and under sized, as well as the palm being very very bulgy.
good stuff man, good to see you working on this again =]
Well done!
-Dread_Reaper
-caseyjones