[Portfolio] - Junkie_XL, Character Artist
polycounter lvl 14
Hi,
Alright I guess it is my turn to get brutally destroyed. **scared**
I'm wondering if what I have may at least land me some art tests for any kind of junior 3d artist position?
I think anyone who is into toys will notice I have a lot of McFarlane stuff in there. I have a room full of this stuff which is most inspiring to me. I love the style. I mainly enjoy taking someones concept and bringing it to 3d as close as possible.
I have a piece in there under "Hard-Surface" that Kevin made for UT3 that I attempted. If that is in poor taste let me know. He never showed his wires which was part of the reason why I chose it. The other reason is it just looked damn fun to attempt.
Thanks for your time.
Click.
Alright I guess it is my turn to get brutally destroyed. **scared**
I'm wondering if what I have may at least land me some art tests for any kind of junior 3d artist position?
I think anyone who is into toys will notice I have a lot of McFarlane stuff in there. I have a room full of this stuff which is most inspiring to me. I love the style. I mainly enjoy taking someones concept and bringing it to 3d as close as possible.
I have a piece in there under "Hard-Surface" that Kevin made for UT3 that I attempted. If that is in poor taste let me know. He never showed his wires which was part of the reason why I chose it. The other reason is it just looked damn fun to attempt.
Thanks for your time.
Click.
Replies
Read this: http://www.thejonjones.com/2005/10/07/your-portfolio-repels-jobs/
Yep that's what I was afraid of. heh. I've read this before and it was the reason I moved away from flash that I previously had. I was also a fan of eraserheads layout with everything on one page. But is this not wise? Or am I just executing it wrong somehow?
Do they not load at all?
Lots of large image goodness, but in a format that is easily digestible and doesn't take too long to load.
How have you been prepping your images to post them online? Are you taking them into Photoshop and using the "Save for Web" feature or anything like that?
DnS: Thanks for the example...I'll give everything a run through.
Krypeia: I haven't been doing that no. I've just sorta kept jpegs between 300-400KB mostly...
I am a real fan of the scroll down simple sites but this is a really clever way to keep order on the first page (which is the uber important one). The enter page is really easy on the eye,... super.
I think getting away from flash was a good idea. The design atm is a bit all over the place. You have some nice stuff in there man.
Cheers
Just went thru everything and re-sized with a common width and used the "save for web" feature. A few of the images can open new tabs for larger versions.
If I could get some more eyes on things that'd be cool.
It's great that you have your artwork on the first page, so it's quick to see everything, but I think if you just made your thumbnails a little larger, they would stand on their own as examples, and then the viewer could click them to open a new page with all the relevant info/pictures for that model.
That's just my opinion anyway.
Also, I'd lose the neon green on black text. It's harsh on the eyes and feels very 90's.
I think currently you have a case of the rare, aforementioned "Too much front page info."
Your work is interesting. I'm not going to go into critiquing any individual problems, but the feeling I get from your work is that the quality varies greatly on single assets. Some parts of it will look masterfully detailed, while in other parts it will look amateurish. All of your pieces seem to have this problem in one place or another. You seem to get bored too fast, and don't spend enough time on the lower subdivision layers when you sculpt. Sometimes it looks like you don't put in quite enough time on the polishing stage either. I think if you managed to hold the same amount of focus over an entire character, rather than just zero-ing on the bits that interest you the most, you'd be much better off.
As a suggestion, I think if you took some life drawing classes and worked on your 2d art, you might get a better grasp of form in your 3d work.
Anyways, that was harsh as fuck. Keep making cool shit, because for sure, a lot of your art is fucking cool.
Just a few critiques from me on the layout. I think the nose cannon could be left out, since your going for a character position, it and the animation are not very relevant.
This is a bit nit-picky, but the images that have no borders (the first few on the page) feel like a better presentation to me, and it seems the site would benefit if all the images had no borders (or if you wanted them to have a border, use the same color/thickness). Having some with white, some with green, some with none just bugs me
I think you could consider dividing the site into characters and non-characters, as this would also help with the congestion on the front page.
As far as the pieces themselves, they are looking good, with my only criticism being the same as before, that the glow around 'The Curse' still seems a bit much.
toren3d: Removed the borders. Centered everything up now instead. I think I might be worrying too much on the semantics of the web design now. Unless there are any huge objections to these latest revisions I should probably move back to the actual art itself. Should I remove the Megatron character completely? I thought maybe it would impress beings it is a physical 3d print that was required to fully transform and pose. It had a different focus.
KP: Yeah that's something I wanted to do. Had him halfway rigged and then moved onto something else. I'll get back to it.
aesir: ouch indeed...lol can i haz my pride back now? No I appreciate the crits. It's what helps people to develop into something better I suppose. I think I may know what you're referring to on a couple of my characters. Going back and fixing things always nags on my brain but then I become more interested in moving forward and making something new. I also want to go back to school and take more traditional art classes...especially sculpting. I can't really afford to right now given my layoff sadly.
I agree with some of the other guys, that the megatron needs some spicing up. I think what hurts the presentation is the poor quality of the photos that go with them (high ISO distortion, not fully focused). If it is possible to pose the figure, and put it in a more dynamic pose, and then rig and pose the 3d model to match it, (along with a better quality photo) this would feel like a much better piece.
good stuff!
-Woog
A lot of those hard edged pieces at the bottom of the page are really quite excellent.
Anyways, as I said before. Just keep making more stuff.
aesir: No problem. The crits confirmed what I was thinking myself so I'll have to get back to it. I'm pretty happy with the cloth around the bottom of the pant legs of the faun. I'll need to try and bring some of that to the pirate and curse. Pirate also probably needs a new body with better tissue. All things in the back of my mind I've been thinking about.
woogity: Thanks. The short legs on the curse tend to be an illusion because of the long cybernetic arm piece. From the back view I was somewhat fond of the proportions there. ditto on the cloth...next on the list I suppose.
toren3d: I'm still debating if I should just remove the megatron character completely. Doesn't the saying go, a person is only as good as their worst piece? It really doesn't hold up well as a hard surface model I suppose with the other hard surface pieces in that section. I'm just somewhat proud of the rapid prototyping contruction. That took a ton of work making sure things could transform...lol I don't have the toy anymore. I'll have to see if I can find better posed shots if I decide to keep him there.
I dunno, what do others think? lose the megatron thing for now or attempt to pose and keep it?
Thanks again guys...you've all been very helpful.