recent grad /w a crap reel, would love some crit
polycounter lvl 12
Hey everyone,
I am a recent college grad and would love some feed back on my reel. I am planing on getting the room at the end textured over the next week. Here's a link to my site. Thanks www.zachperez.com
I am a recent college grad and would love some feed back on my reel. I am planing on getting the room at the end textured over the next week. Here's a link to my site. Thanks www.zachperez.com
Replies
Basically, just keep working on your pieces and polish them up a tad. You're definitely going in the right direction, and you already evidence a great deal of technical expertise. I would like to see more animation pieces in your demo reel. I know that environmental work is quite desireable these days, but I always like to see something done with environmental pieces. Especially in video demo reel.
The gallery part off to the side looks like it has some things that aren't your best work though. For example - judging by the room you made from the Massive Black concept, it looks like you've improved a lot since when you made the room for the Texturing & Lighting class. So you might not want to include the older one if it's not the best you can do anymore. (I'm guessing they're there partially because your school wanted you to include work from every semester or something; but I figured I'd mention it anyway.)
The Modeling-1 final and the rocket tank look good (the latter in particular). If you hammer out a low poly for each of them and paint some nice textures for them, both should be pretty awesome.
For the layout of the site itself, why not cut out all the empty thumbnail placeholders and put some bigger and more descriptive ones in their place? Also, since the demo reel stays up as the rest of the site is navigated anyway, you could have the site open right onto your 3d section on the right side and save several clicks.
Alex
good luck getting employment mate!
I think the first 2 scenes of your reel needs to go. Start with your tube room as it's yours strongest work, then go into the tank model. But finish the tank and tube room with color, normal maps before you update it. Add the screenshots you have under 3D on your website and you should have a decent reel. Your work ain't bad. What do you want to do though, environments? Characters? Props? Your work is kind of all over the place.
Gobee- That wasn't even the song that was being complained about before 8( so I'll get rid of the new one. And in terms of my actual work, Yeah I've been working on the tube room and learning to do normals in zbrush so it's been a slow process for me. Unfortunately my school didnt teach normal mapping, but they do get all the great gnomon and digital tutors dvds. And in terms of what I want to do, that's another little problem with my school they teach you to be a generalist, so i had a hard time desideding what route to go, but i would say that I have been thinking about going the route of starting as a prop modeler and seeing where it takes me from there.
Thanks guys
yeah, some more texture work would be nice to see.. i think you could benefit from just one more level of detail in general, perhaps. in your first building for example, the concept has some interesting debris kicking about, and some cracks here and there. it wouldn't need much.. just one or two spots with a bit more descriptive detail to give my eye some interesting bits to figgure out, and then rest with the general, appealing simplicity of the rest of it.. the top is already workin pretty good for me.. i suppose in particular those foreground posts could use some bashing up. adam brome had some cool cement wear and tear in one of his scenes here....
http://www.adambromell.com/subpage2/big2.php gotta love that cracked cement on those pillars.
Some people might try to make you feel better and encourage you. Others might just take your word for it.
Oh yea, don't say your reel is crap anymore. Aldo makes a good point.. people will start agreeing with you if you keep saying it. Luckily, you have a lot of honest people responding with nice comments on your work. Keep at it and you're confidence will grow.
The room has a very nice warm metallic feel to it...its definitely worth shifting to the upper page when its refined a little bit more...
not so crappy.
link below
As for your website the thing that stands out the most is that you are currently violating the following rule from the Your Portfolio Repels Jobs thread/article and it's hurting your overall presentation.
Perhaps you could make your thumbnails wider, that would allow you to show more of what the larger image is going to be without destroying the overall design aesthetic of your site.
Your tube room and watch tower could both benefit from reworking the lighting to something more dramatic.
Ditch Dorothy altogether, she reminds me too much of the millions of similar styled college work characters I've seen over the years.
The props that are shown after clicking the first professional work thumbnail are pretty good you should break some of them out of there and give them each their own thumbnail and page.
I think your Para Zombie is a cool idea, it took a while for me to figure out what I was looking at though and that's kind of bad for something so iconic. Perhaps giving some more love to the texture of it's eye would help sell the character a bit more. The materials of this character are all reading a bit too samey as well, try to get some more contrast into your spec map so that each of the different materials are identifiable. Boots should look like leather, exposed meat should be wet/shiny, etc...
EDIT:
Just checked out your bio page, It's not in English. That really doesn't matter though as a bio page really isn't necessary, you might want to remove it as it's just a distraction from your work and resume.
Oh yeah almost forgot to mention: Best of luck finding a new job.