Udated Porfolio [2010]

_Aurel_

www.johnhawkins3d.com

Hi all, I've been working on updating my demo reel for the past year. Its mostly new work from just the past year, and I've gotten some feed back from a few people but I need some more critique on it. Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Excuse the typo - I was working today and I'm hopped up on caffeine.

AtlusZMH

The demo reel could be reworked.. i dont really see the benefit of showing off yourself running around in the editor.. Reordering some of the props may help too.. i think that Saloon is one of your stronger pieces, put it up front and get rid of the simple turn-table.. make some camera movement around it. A lot of people done even think reels are all that important for modeling/texturing anyway.

Your hard surface stuff seems a lot stronger to me than your character work.. What ive been told is that your portfolio needs to be just a few decent props/ 1 or 2 scenes of your BEST work. Maybe prune out a bit of the dated stuff and order your stronger pieces first

Even your untextured space ship and stool are stronger than that character IMO

Good luck!

_Aurel_

Thank you for the input. I didn't model the character, but I did create the normal and texture map out of him. I definitely do not want focus on character modeling/texturing by my boss wanted me to finish up that character for, and I think the face is probably the best part of it. I'll take your advice on the re-ordering though and put him in the back after I do a couple of re-renders.

Is there a better way I could capture some of the in-game shots of my models? I don't think Torque has strafe keys (to pan around) but maybe they have a camera/rails system.

Thanks.

slipsius

that RC race has gotta go. and you running around in the editor.

i like the setup of the spinning models with the UVs next to it. pick your best pieces and just do that if you really want to have a demo reel. but get rid of all that editor junk and the rc race.

edit: also, your gallery could use some work. the pieces are pretty nice, but theres just too many pictures to click on. you have 5 or 6 pictures for each prop. cut it down to having 1 picture for each, and when you click that pic, it brings you to another page with all 6 pictures in large, already on the page. that pop up system you have now is slow, and annoying.

AtlusZMH

I'd say just take screenshots of each of your models.. and like slipsius said, you can compile a beauty render, wireframe, and texture sheet all into one larger pic so the viewer gets everything hes looking for in one click.

But yeah, i agree.. running around the editor isnt very interesting unless you're trying to be a level designer or something

NoChance

The texturing overall needs a little work definetely not your strongest area.

The high poly at the bottom look good, and so does your concepts. I would say trim down most of your 3d models, it's about showing your best work, quality over quantity having only 3 or 4 models/scenes is fine. Take out the character completely, especially the closeup the first thing I noticed when I looked at it was the buttons texture bleeding into the coat pretty badly. I agree with the others your saloon is definetely your strongest textured piece.

The jail and the other building need some texture work, I think part of the problem might be that the rock texture or whatever you used for the walls wasn't scaled down enough and doesn't fit the wall and gives it a toyish feeling since the texture is out of proportion with the building size. Thats just what I think though, I can't quite pin what it is the texture sheets look ok, but its not working on the model.

Also you would really benefit from taking these pieces into Marmoset and getting renders from that, its a really good real time renderer for beauty shots.

I'm not sure if the concepts are yours but if they are you should take out the demo reel section and add a concept section. Spend some time adding some color to those and get 4 or 5 concepts in and that will add a lot to your portfolio. Lots of companies put a lot of stock in the ability to transfer ideas to 2d for modelers, and it shows a artistic grounding.

Orgoth02

The reel took me like a minute to load...NEXT!

Take a look at this it will tell you everything you need to know.

http://envartist.blogspot.com/

[Deleted User]

In the interest of efficient viewing, I'd say nix the Updates page altogether, have it default to the Gallery, and make a page for each model with all its stuff instead of the flash thing.

Contentwise, I think your best work is the RC remote, the revolver, the untextured high poly stuff, the saloon, and maybe that metal boiler thing. Show those first. In the space where you currently have 48 thumbnails, you could show larger full-model thumbnails of just those, and it'd be a better representation of the kind of work you can do.

The character and the 2d work are the weakest things there and they're dragging down the overall quality by being there. The textures on the character are really blurry and there's a lot of wasted UV space where the pixels were obviously mirrored, but they have unique UVs anyway. In the 2d, the perspective is kind of all over the place.

The good stuff looks good though. If I were you, I'd focus on making that stuff stand out more or look even better on the site (bigger thumbnails and maybe re-render it with some nicer lighting and take out the viewport stats and replace them with some clean text) and making a couple more things of the same quality.

_Aurel_

Thanks for the feedback so far. I was able to update the gallery section of my resume and take out the updates. I used the marmoset toolbag as was suggested and got some really good renders.

I haven't finished re-organizing my demo reel yet because first I haven't figured out how to create a movie from the marmoset toolbag. I'd like to use that in my demo reel, but I haven't found anything on how to do it in the post about marmoset on these forums, or from google. Can anyone give me a link or some how-to on how it's done? Thanks.

ZacD

You don't need a demoreel to apply for jobs in video games, just gotta have a nice portfolio.