Demo Reel / Website Feedback Wanted

toby

Hello everybody--
I'm another n00b just getting started, thinking about a future in game art. I've seen a lot of amazing artwork here and brutally frank criticism, but I’d like to post a link to my portfolio anyway

I have a posted demo reel here:
http://www.tobyhilden.com/3d_2007.asp

and I have a project by project break down for my most current stuff as well as my previous work here:
http://www.tobyhilden.com/3d.asp

All crits, comments and feedback welcome.

Question: I’ve seen some 3d-demo reels that include traditional art, not so much with the game art reels. Thoughts anyone?

cholden

Well, it's good you know this forum as a place of "brutally frank criticism", because you have jumped the gun and made a portfolio/demo reel before you are ready. SOME of your guns show technical promise, but that is all.

Go ahead a stop all plans, put your site on hold and start posting individual pieces for feedback on how to improve your skills.

Additionally, if I were you, I'd forget about characters completely, and start focusing on high tech props, weapons and environment pieces. These are your strong point. You can learn how to create things properly faster pointing your skills in this direction. Then when you've got the basics down, you can look into characters again.

Ferg

cholden tells it like it is. Good advice.

zerojs

I like the super soaker style gun, great texturing and its got character.
But as far as the characters, their a little bland. Are they meant to be cute low poly characters or where they models you created as you were learning to model? If so they maybe think about replacing them with more up to date models that you have made.

Richard Kain

Okay, it seems that you are using asp to code the Windows Media Player into your pages for video. That could be a mistake. A lot of graphic-oriented companies use Apples. And Windows Media Player is not installed by default on Apple computers. You would probably be better off using a Flash video player.

toby

Thanks all for your feedback!

I've had a my web site up, documenting my various art projects for 10 years, only recently have I started posting my 3-d stuff. My thinking is 3-d artists who haven't been brought up in a class room setting, without much peer review, might work in
a bubble for a long time before thinking they "Are Ready". So, I've put my stuff out. In the future, I'll post in "what are you working on" and I'll most definitely will be focusing on prop objects and environments.

The Iron Man is a recent model. The other character are earlier work i've taken another run at as a uv mapping / texturing exercise. Most people I know have
warned me that characters are really challenging, I'm just trying to do a little of everything to learn.

I've been told the direction artists have gotten on polycount helped their skills tremendously. thanks.