[Portfolio] – Nick Metcalf, Character Artist

meatle

Hey guys,

I'm graduating from my school (Webster University) in the next week. I chose to create a Portfolio website to display my work as my senior overview.

My website is at: http://nickjmetcalf.com

Just a background: Like many of you I'm self-taught in this stuff; my school offers 2 courses in 3d. One of which I skipped b/c it was intro, and the other "advanced" course was not as advanced as I was hoping it would be. I took this during my senior year.

So I've had slim-to-none guidance on the majority of this project, but I've gotten some nuggets on the site's design from a cool professor.

I'm really looking for any help I might get from you guys though. I'm very worried that it's not going to be able to get me a job. But with some guidance from whoever's awesome enough to respond I'll be reworking this as long as I have to after I graduate, content and/or site.

So please feel free to beat me into the ground :poly122:

Art-Machine

I'll bite the bullet and say it : The reason nobody is replying is because we all know you won't cut it in character yet, and nobody wants to be the one to tell you.

You sure look like you know the workflow, but your skill at making professional style characters is just not there yet and comes with time of making more on your spare time.

My advice to you is get your start as a texture artist or environment modeler. Make a portfolio that revolves around props and environment textures. Or go in the animation direction if you want. Because to be very honest I don't see any non-shady companies hiring you for character work at this point in your development.

Sorry if this is tough to swallow, but I'd hate to see you wait around for years wondering why you're not getting hired.

BradMyers82

Well, I like your site. I wish you didn't use the flash (lightbox whatever) looking stuff.
I think most of all you need to ditch the welcome page and just take the user straight to your strong point Page (modeling/texturing or animation). Which in your case, I believe your animations are your strengths (I really enjoyed the diving lessons clip and the music was great!).
Now one drawback is that you don't really say what you are on your website. It's just like, "This is 3d stuff I made"; where I think it should be more like: "I am an animator or character modeler and this is what I am capable of".
Since you asked for honest and tough crits, I believe you will still need to do quite a bit of work on your portfolio to land a job. You'll have to make a decision on what to focus on, character art or animation.
I don't know a lot about animation, but character art wise you need to improve quite a bit. The textures are really noisy with poor space of uv's, the geometry and mesh flow isn't really making sense, and the designs aren't so hot.
So I'll say what I tell everyone about getting better. Start a WIP here on Polycount and get crits as you go. You'll improve way, way faster and what's possibly even better, you'll get some recognition and contacts from the community. If you do choose to do character art, start by working on making realistic humans. It's hard to gauge skill by cartoony looking or monster/robot type characters. But if you can make a low poly character, put him in a game engine, and make him photorealistic; finding a job in the game industry will be easy. Good luck dude, and keep working hard!

meatle

Man, I didn't think my stuff would get such a negative reaction, but it's exactly what I need. Thanks so far guys. I wish I had been able to get these crits sooner, but I've spend this year (my senior year) just putting everything together from scratch.

I really starting understanding 3d last summer.
So I guess I have about another year or so to take it to the right level.

I was wondering what might be the most off-putting aspects regarding the characters? Are they not complex enough? The designs really stink? Textures bleh? I know you guys have mentioned this stuff, but I'm wondering what I might be able to change from existing work to get more 'bang-for-my-buck'.

I'm thinking I'm going to remove the alien guy at the top of the model's page altogether or shift him down as he's not a strong piece.

Please help me. I'd rather get to the point I need to be soon than later, and I'm driven enough to do so.

Thanks

Loraine Howard iii

Hey man,I totally agree with everyone else.Your Models are just not good enough to get a job, I would totally ditch all of em. The anatomy is bad,design,textures. I would focus on your animations more, but really to tell you the truth i think you are gonna need a hell of a lot more to your portfolio to get a a job. I know what you going through, Once I graduated from SCAD I thought i had a great portfolio but come to find out it was not up to par to get a job. So I spent a year working on my new portfolio. Been out of school 2 years, sometimes you have to evaluate your work with professional's and work on your craft to get your dream job.
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=62756
Just buckle down and work on your anatomy, try to pump out some high quality models. Good Luck!!!:)

Cubik

It shows that you are new at this.
None of the character designs appeals to me. They all have of late 1990s 3d art without the benefit of good, handpainted textures. I also keep getting a 3d software tutorial book vibe from your modeling work. Remove everything.
Look at other games, try to think out for yourself why certain people think that certain characters work and why other don't and if you are serious about that character position, spend a few more years at it.

Or continue what you are better at, animation.

I would keep working on your animations, get a couple of decent, likeable (look at pixar...) characters and keep animating. Make more realistic animations, I would expect to see good, solid walkcycles, combat animations, acrobatics and (depending on if you want to do fps projects) first person animations. Show that you can rig and animate within gameenigine, reasearch, pick one that has the feutures you want and go for it.


Take a look at this list:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=49362
Check who is doing what you want to do, their portfolios and where they work. You need to honest about your skills. The skilllevels of the people on this list is what you'll very likely have to match to get a good game artist job. This got me very down 4 years ago when I realised that my stuff was not at all where it needed to be (check my oldest posts) and I think that you need the same thing revealed to you.

Or do effects, no one wants to do that.

meatle

Good stuff guys.

Oddly enough I originally wanted to do animation, and still do more-so than modeling, but I thought the quality of my animations were a lot less strong. This is very interesting.

Unfortunately there seems to be a lot more and much better information regarding modeling out there than animating.

Well I'm going to do what I can to modify these models by Friday (senior overview presentation) and I guess I have a long summer in store for me.

Thanks again guys and to anyone else who has anything to throw in.

BradMyers82

Yeah, stay as positive as you can. It may sting a lot, but if you really want to make a career in this field you can't lie to yourself about what level your work is at, especially given how competitive the game industry is at the moment. I think most people who are now professionals in the game industry have had similar moments as these.
I, like Loraine Howard mentioned; have been working hard since graduation. It's been a little over a year now, and I feel I am just beginning to make some headway. I thought my work was great when I graduated, now I'm embarrassed by it. Your work won't get better overnight, but if your dedicated it eventually will. You already know how to teach yourself and I think that's the most important thing. Now that your finishing school, you can finally put all your effort into 3d art without all those other "distractions" (classes that don't help you grow as an artist). I look forward to seeing more from you around PC.

meatle

Awesome stuff Loraine, good to see people who've been in the same boat doing so well. I'll be putting around these parts this summer and maybe next fall I'll have something good to show for it.

I look forward to chatting with you guys more.

NyneDown

Stick around for as long as you can...the more you learn the better, and you will learn new tricks as you go along. I've been out of school since 06' and still trying to find work so dont get discouraged. You seem to be pretty passionate about this like many of us so just keep at it man. And post Work In Progress threads as much as you can...you'll learn a helluva' lot just by that alone.

Good luck man

achmedthesnake

yeah man, i emphasise - go wih what you're good at, if the animation is your strong point i'd make an 'animator's portfolio' which could just display your walkcycles/animation using the dummy/max biped/and/or generic man - and explore the rigging and stuff like that - having average models/textures will only subtract form the viewer's (potential employer's) experience..

so get working!

Cubik

If you want a good example of solid, cartoony animation I would look at TF2. Get source, gcfscape, a decompiler and start looking through stuff.