[Portfolio] – Sean "NyneDown" Smith, Character Artist

NyneDown

Hey polycounters - rip me a new one, please. I've hit a huge brick wall creatively so I'm looking to kick my ass back into gear and work on some new pieces. I know some don't dig free templates and hosting (blogspot, weebly, etc.) but I see no need with focusing too much time on my lack of web-design skills rather focus more on what's more important, making some gam3 artZ!

So please....rip it up. The content is pretty well out-dated but I would like to hear what you guys and girls think of what I currently have, what I could improve on, what character types my portfolio would benefit from, etc. I was going to hold off on getting crits, but after reading Art-Machines thread in GeneralDiscussion, it had me wondering "....if people are saying his content needs to beef up some, wtf do I need to do"? I've yet to get that 1st job so it's time to take my game up a few notches. I've been out of school since 2006, so I'm hoping 2010 is my year even though it looks pretty bleak! Obviously I need to post less and work more, so any insight on which direction I should head toward is really really appreciated!

seansmith3d.com

Ben Apuna

I'd say it looks like you know what you are doing, just need to kick it up a notch.

1. Finish some more characters all the way to low poly in engine, no more Zbrush busts.

2. Larger images grabbed from Marmoset or UDK.

3. Rig em all and get them into some more dynamic poses.

4. Need more polished texture work. EDIT2: Seems like more material definition would help, everything reads very samey. More attention to specular and gloss maps would be good.

Best of luck

EDIT:

5. Show wires of finished low poly models and textures.

EDIT3:

Website is pretty clean and usable.

The banner image should probably be switched to some awesome character art at some point.

Remove blog, keep it as a separate entity from your portfolio.

Change the title of the "Contact" link to your email address.

If you want to go really efficient change "About" to "Resume" and make it a html version of your resume while still offering both word and pdf formats for download.

EDIT4 lol:

Resume issues:

You seem to have an alignment issue in both of your resumes.

The description text under "Team Future // February2009-March2009" seems to be indented further than everything else.

I'd change "Santiago Orgaz’s XNormal" to just "XNormal", it looks weird to be so much longer than everything else.

I'm not a fan of red text on resumes, though I'm not a HR person so take that with a grain of salt.

If you can somehow condense it down to one printed page, it might be more effective. Less apparent reading and paper shuffling is always looked upon kindly, I think.

Yozora

I remember you posting your portfolio in PnP a long time ago (over a year), I do not recognize any completed new pieces since then.
I know you said yourself the work is outdated but not completing another piece in over a year is not a good sign.
There are plenty of people who haven't updated their portfolios for over 2 years but the difference is they already have a job in the industry For someone still trying to break into the industry, you do not really show it.

I don't know if you've applied to game companies before with your old portfolio, but if I can recognize you based on your old work then I'm sure employers you are applying to would recognize it too and would feel the same about your lack of recent work.

If you wanna improve at anything, you have to practice.

NyneDown

Man...thanks so much for the great feedback so far

Ben - glad you took the time to point out all those things! haha. I agree with ya on all of your crits...there are things I could be doing to push my pieces a bit further to really sell them. I'll look into making those changes to my site also. Hope things are back to normal in Hawaii!

Perna - that's one thing I noticed about the images too, they open up reaaally small. I'll drop those pieces that you mentioned since it's not helping me out any. And thanks for taking the time to respond man. Your crits in that thread that I mentioned in my first post were big eye openers for me.

Yozora - I totally agree with you. I hate it that I havent worked on anything in such a long ass time. I dont want to make excuses either...everybody has something going on in their life that prevents them from getting work done and for those that want it that bad, they find a way to get it done. So I have to do just that...thanks for the feedback man, I really appreciate it.

Ben Apuna

Yup everything's all good here. I'm glad I was up late working on stuff otherwise I would've missed out on getting some of the last water at a nearby grocery store. In the end I didn't need it but it's good to have supplies on hand just in case. I hope those in Chile are faring well.

Oftentimes I find it hard to set aside time to work on my portfolio as well. One thing that is working for me is to set small daily goals, do that and slowly but surely you'll make progress.