[PORTFOLIO] Imogia 3D Character Artist

Imogia

Hello to all here at polyount!

-- Okay, time for an update --

I'm replacing the DeviantArt link with a more professionnal one. Long story short, thing being what they are, my previous jobs were not all game related, so I had (alas) to cast character creation aside for a wide, so that's why there are still many things to improve.

Here is the new portfolio!
http://imogia.daportfolio.com/

Thanks to you polycounters,

Here's for the story, now let's the images talk!

BradMyers82

Welcome to Polycount Imogia. Well, I see potential in your models and textures but I think if you do a few things it would greatly improve your work.

First off, I think you should ditch deviant art as a way of showing your 3d art. It could just be me, but I find the presentation you get through it to be really bad for 3d. Also, I have no idea what I am about to see from those thumbnails before I click on them. This is a big pet peeve of mine. Regardless, I think making your own website would help you quite a bit and make things look more professional.

Art wise I think what might help most is if you look at other peoples low poly art and try to replicate what they do. One of the most common examples that was often given to me is to look at Quake 3 Arenas character art. Studying the meshes and textures from Quake can really open your eyes to what works and doesn't work for low poly art.

If I take your Stelligrid character for example. I don't understand why you modeled areas the way you did. The robe seems to have several chamfers on the edge and weird mesh flow through out. Did you list Polygon count or Triangle count? I am guessing Polygon by the number you gave and the look of the mesh, and this should probably be switched to the actual Triangle count. The textures look sort of flat to me because there isn't a light source painted in, and there isn't a whole lot of contrast and color variation.

I can see you have done quite a bit of work though, so I believe that if you keep at it you could turn out some really great pieces. Why not start a WIP of your next character here on Polycount and get crits as you go. Good luck man, and sorry to hear about the lay off.

raiskul

hey so the stuff is looking good i cant really give technical crits but looking at the meshes it seems like the faces are a bit drawn or longer than they should be the best example is in mod training 2 the face on the mesh looks longer than the concept art a little modification on the scaling in the face should fix it right up

sorry bout the lay off

welcome to polycount

renderhjs

the modeling is not so strong - I would say that the textures have promise though. Many of the models look great in tiny thumbnails but rather bad in a bigger version - it's almost as if they were made for a smaller resolution e.g mobile, DS,...

Many of the smaller character models have a rectangular (90° angles, lots of horizontal and vertical slices) mesh flow - this is typical if you only model at the left, front, top views. I would say that quite a few of them need more vertex pushing so they look more organic.

This one:
http://imogia.deviantart.com/art/FREED-3D-Characters-Details-99310348
, and I dont want to insult you, but that one looks somewhat Poser or other body toolkit alike. His face has no expression is basicly dead when it comes to that while still the topology looks clean, acutally much better as these types:
http://imogia.deviantart.com/art/Low-poly-character-Bliss-104277178


my suggestions thus:
- work on your textures (some look sloppy)
- more organic and fluid topolgy - don't leave a extrusion or other operation untweaked
- emotion, expression: many of the characters have odd poses, expressions or faces. Try to work that perhaps by drawing and looking more at references if you pose or create them

Imogia

Hello, thanks to all your replies.

-> BradMyers82
- I am actually working on my personal website, but it's going quite slowly, so that's why I keep updating deviantart, so I can have a place to show my stuff
- For the characters (and basically all of them) I am not very used to low-poly modeling, these ones are somewhat the first ones I did for a video game use. So, lots of errors of course. I also thought deviant art would be the right place for crits, but it's way too huge for that. (Thanks I found polycount ^^)
- I'll go look for Quake3 refs immediately.
- You have also a good idea, I'll post a thread in witch I'll update my WIPs.

-> raiskul
I find someone on the internet kind enough for helping me step by step with this model. So "training 2" is the model dedicated to this training, but I can't continue for now as I did not have his reply, but I'll remember your words when I'll be back working on it.

renderhjs->
aaaw you hurt me lol. nah kidding. the character "poser-like" you mention was my very second model destined to be very high poly for my short movie end year project at school. (the movie itself is not really worth of mentionning due to a lots of reasons: short on time, I had to lead a game project at the same time, for the same schoolyear, I had to work the afternoon for earning money in order to pay the school... etc)
He don't have expression on his face because I used morphs for this. Maybe I should include them in the presentation.
- for the very low poly chars, I guess they look angular because of the restriction of less than 500 tris. it's quite hard to have smooth angle with such a constraint. I wanted also to have something different from the typical FF III and IV characters DS vesion.
- When I'm modeling, I use the user/orthographic viewport 90% of the time, sometimes switching to persp view. I use the top/left/front principally at the beginning.
quote:
"it's almost as if they were made for a smaller resolution e.g mobile, DS,..."
-> it actually was the purpose

So far, thanks to all, for both your crits and understanding. Now that I have more time that I used to have I can entirely focus on serious 3D training.
Stay tuned!

Imogia.

Imogia

Hi.
Long time since I last posted here.


Here is my latest work
And here a link to a realtime model viewer:
https://skfb.ly/Dxz8

Nosslak

Your work, pretty much across the board, need a lot more specular highlights as there currently seem be none. You can either handpaint them in or use specular/gloss maps to get dynamic ones, but if you want to sell something as metal the highlights are absolutely key. Without specular highlights that armor could just as well have been made out of stone. So going forward you need to make your metals darker and just make the highlights bright IMO.
Your work isn't bad, it's pretty good, but without highlights (and more contrast in general)it looks a bit bland and unfinished.

Also, as people told you years ago, don't use DeviantArt as your portfolio. I use DeviantArt a little as well, but only as an additional channel to spam my stuff sometimes, not as my primary portfolio. Either make your own site or use ArtStation instead, as that will look simpler and cleaner.

You might also want to look into doing some project with newer techniques such as dynamic specular highlights and maybe even PBR, to further show some diversity in your skill.

BradMyers82

I agree with what Nosslak said.

"Long time", its been like 6 years! Super long time haha. Keep at it dude!

Imogia

To Nosslak:
Hi, thanks a lot for your advices, I think you are totally right. I changed the head post's link to another portfolio. I'll also take a closer look to ARtStation, it seems really nice for showcasing one art, and more appropriated than DA.

To Brad:
Hey dude It's nice to hear you even after all these years, thanks!

Ok, so I will work again on that texture on the next few days and I'll post the pictures. Thanks guys, see you soon!

Imogia

Hello again folks, 
Here is a little update on that (old) model :

https://skfb.ly/Dxz8
I added some specular maps on the metal pieces.