my portfolio site

Ben_Flex

hello all,
as the crits i had on polycount were always usefull, here is the adress of my site. Comments are welcome!

http://benflex.free.fr/index.html

pliang

First glance, it seems that everything is a little cluttered, might want to sort out the type of work in sections.

cholden

Some of your environment and concept stuff looks done. Everything else looks like a WIP. Too many images, not enough content.

Jaco

Straight to the art, good. You've definetly got some painting skills, I especially like this one. You've got some great props in there too.

It's a bit confusing with all those thumbs. I'd reccomend sifting through all your work, only keeping the best. After that, put the rest into categories, like 2d/3d character/environment. What job are you aiming for? Environment or character artist? I don't think you've got enough complete and polished characters in there if you're going for character artist.

Overall it's promising, it just needs some focus.

And your page title says 'page model' on every page, might want to change that.

JasonLavoie

Hey Ben, you have some interesting work, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around it (if that makes sense).

Your style is really unique, but I honestly can't tell if its unique because it really IS unique, or its unique because you are still learning / missed some fundamental skillsets.

Now don't take that as me dissing you or your work, I just haven't seen anything like this before. Your texturing is interesting, but at the same time very plain... but again, at the same time it works for me. Some of it is pleasing, while others just doesn't make sense.

Like here for example - http://benflex.free.fr/original/Corpse.html

This is very nice, some good detail (i like the folds, but no ear detail, why?) and has a painterly feel to it. I love the skin tone as you bring in some nice purples and reds, and overall it's just a cool style.

But then i see this - http://benflex.free.fr/original/Zombie_girl.html

Now I know this is completely different because now you are using a normal, but you have lost ALL the detail from your texturing, and only relying on the normals to do so... which just doesn't work man. What happened to the awesome skin tones? The great use of colour (this is more realistic I persume, but still).

I think the issue you have is inconsistency in work quality, which is fine... it's just now you really gotta push yourself to get that in control (at least knowing where you want to focus, which looks like characters is a good start).

Another issue I see is your wireframes, most look broken and over complicated for the most part. I see you have some nice flow in some main areas (your backs for the most part) and it looks like you understand why that is... instead of just doing it because others are doing the same (to know why you are making the cuts is always a nice feeling).

Here for exmaple - http://benflex.free.fr/original/Statue_wire.html

I actually really like this mesh man, you convey some nice details with some nicely placed cuts (except for the back top of the elbow... is that bunched up clothing?) and you can tell this would look great with some nice smoothing groups set in place.

But again, I see this - http://benflex.free.fr/original/Narcos.html

How come so many 5 sided faces (the crotch man, how do you think that's going to hold up when someone animates that) and what is up with the unfinished loops? (forearm). You have a lot of bunched up cuts around the shoulder as well, which really adds to the messiness of the model. And then i see the back which has some pretty nice flow :P

I can tell that there is a solid artist under there, and I can see some glimpses of him, but then your other work hides that. I think you really need to get rid of some of the clutter, and focus on going back and practicing some mesh flow, looking at other artist's work and asking yourself "why did they place those cuts there?".

Your texturing work is nice on simple meshes, but your higher res meshes (using normals) all the detail gets lost, and you REALLY need to learn how to capture that detail in your texturing. Baking out a simple AO map usually helps setup a solid starting point for texturing, so maybe try that out... and again, look at other artist's pieces, and see what they are doing right... to make it look so gawd-damn good.

Good luck Ben, I know you can do it buddy, we all can see it... just gotta bust your ass

BradMyers82

Like Jason pointed out, there is good and not so good on your site.
I also agree with cholden that too much of it looks like WIP.

I always hear people saying your only as good as your worst piece. Don't show the stuff that isn't so good, only show the few that are absolutely the best. The surgery scene is definitely one of the best in my opinion. Even if you have just 3 really solid things on your portfolio site, its way better than showing a slew of mediocre things on top of that.

So you probably either are showing older work in some cases, or haven't quite invested enough time into some of them. Not a big deal though, you have the talent. Just ditch some of these, produce a couple more really nice pieces, and you should have a truly great portfolio.

SHEPEIRO

be harsh put everyt up to that you know isnt upto scratch in a WIP section, with some anotaion as to why its WIP

EarthQuake

Not much of anything here looks finished.

woogity

hey man id say kick most of the stuff from the lower half of the site unless u are going for enviro. u have some serious ngons in some of your work too, i would try to avoid showing anything that has them. gl


-woog