[Portoflio] - Brian Hong Character Artist Critiques please!

bhong

Hey everyone. I recently graduated and have gotten my website all updated. I'm looking for any advice you could offer on how to improve anything on it.

Please be as brutal as possible. Am I good enough to be able to break in? If not how can I improve? Thanks!

www.lastlinecreations.com

Edit: I'm not sure why 3 of the pics for the ancient are broken but if you click them the full size loads fine. Working on fixing that now. - Fixed!

pliang

Bhong, first thing I notice from the work you have on there, if not almost all assets you've shown are a bit too dark to make out the details you've put in. You've got quite a few models, but the lighting needs work if you wanna really bring them out some more.

I'm not sure what reference/anatomy study you went through for the head, but IMO it doesn't really resemble the actual person at first glance.

As for the site itself, it loads fine, but I think you should also make it simpler by having all the images on one page and maybe put your reel on the same page.

I also think you prolly won't need the reel since the characters shown aren't animated so therefore better rendered stills would prolly work better in your favor.

haikai

There's some promise, but in general there's not enough anatomical correctness to your characters. You've probably heard all this before, but I'd recommend doing more anatomy studies. Develop a solid sense for traditional proportions not only in the body, but in the head and face as well.

I think you may have some problems finding a position making realistic characters with your current work, but it's pretty rare for someone who just graduated to be able to jump right into working on games professionally. It's going to take some time, and as long as you keep working at it then there's no reason why it couldn't happen.

I've seen you post your work before, and it's clear that you put work into looking for good references. Sometimes it's just a matter of looking at your model in a different light. Maybe if you download a professionally made model and bring it in next to your model then you can see more clearly what you need to work on. I did that myself years ago and was pretty shocked at how wrong I was about everything.

Congratulations on finishing school, and good luck with the portfolio!

achillesian

the head isnt bad, but the diffuse is too dark to see the extreme detail, others have mentioned this. The monster is horrible, especially the sculpt, its clear you subd'd like 8 times before even touching it, which is the wrong approach, because of this the normal is only helping with texture, not forms. And the presentation and diffuse are so dark again you can't even tell its there on the realtime mesh. And the dancer girl looks copied out of a 3ds max for games book, from 5+ years ago. Your first finished model may help you get onto an indie game with back end payment, but i don't think it helps you get into the biz.

se7ered

a word on the html side. when i was looking at the pictures i kept closing your page because i expect them to have opened in a new tab as most pictures do. you should have the pictures load up in a new tab or what would be even better have them open in the same window everything else on your page opens in

bhong

Thanks for the crits everyone.

@pliang: I'm using the portfolio to show my main work and using the archive as a "I've got other stuff but its not so impressive" type thing. Is that the wrong approach to take? About the reel it was a school requirement thing so I figured I'd put it up since I had it. Does it hurt to have it up until I get other assets that make it outdated?

@haikai: Thanks for the advice. Would you recommend just doing male/female studies until I have it spot on and not worrying about clothing and such for the time being? And do you have any recommendations about where to go to download a professional model? And thank you for the kind wishes.

@achillesian: Thanks for being brutal as requested. Would you suggest I try to fix the monster and dancer more or go completely fresh? And for the head are you specifically talking about the green? Just making sure.

@se7ered: Hm I had them opening in other tabs before, I guess I forgot to set them up again after changing the pics in dreamweaver.

Again thanks for the help everyone, I'll post some updates in here as I make them.

haikai

These are two free models from zbrushcentral that I can think of at the moment:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=020709

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=61792

I'm sure there are others available if you do a search. I think Zach Petroc had one with the muscle groups too.

Both models are a few years old, and there are more impressive models out there these days, but at least they can be nice references. I don't agree with a lot of the Nick model, but I wanted to link more than one

Whether it's human, animal, alien or demon anatomy, we all share similar physiology. I think if you take some time to get a better feeling for human proportions and the shapes and planes of the body (muscle shapes, areas of fat, where bones protrude, etc.) then it will help in any kind of character or creature.

As for what you should work on specifically, I think you should always pick something that interests you or else you'll have a hard time enjoying it. It doesn't have to be a boring, nude studies of generic figures all the time.

There are also a number of anatomy videos available on youtube and similar places that are worth watching. I like Vilppu's ways of breaking down the body, and his dvd lectures are worth checking out:

http://www.youtube.com/user/vilppustore

Hope this helps.

Yozora

Initial page shows the gallery which is good, but too much text I think. A lot of this info can be put into some of the images (for example the tri count with a wireframe image, and the texture sizes on the texture sheet)

The top logo image looks pretty bad. I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at, looks like some smoke covering up some kind of pencil sketch. Anyway, doesn't matter what it is, it just doesn't look that good to me.

Its generally not a good idea to show all your previous work if its worse than your current work. There is no point of having an archive page with that kind of work. None of the models in the archive page are worth showing.
Overall, I don't think the quality of your work stands out from the competition.

The resume, about me and contact can all be put onto 1 page. I'd prefer if the contact email was on all the pages, either in the header or footer. A separate contact page is definitely unnecessary. The "reference" (or "links") page is also useless for a professional portfolio.

Your "home/news/updates" page is another useless page and a waste of time. This is not your blog, go make a blog for that.

Don't bother going back to "fix" old work, just make new stuff.

Here's a link to a professional-quality game model, winner of dominance war 3 by Dmitry Parkin: http://www.parkparkin.com/personal_art/imrod.htm
Not really for anatomy studies, just awesome game art in general.

bhong

Thanks for all the feedback guys. Based on all of this I've made the decision to fix all the website issues now and then start working on a new model immediately afterwards. Look for the post in the near future.

Again thanks for taking the time to look at my stuff.

Sukotto

I'm gonna echo what everyone else is saying about leaving your old work out completely.

Also, just a little bit of nitpicking on your resume:
-get rid of your high school info and the stuff about your college, employers don't care about your GPA or attendance, just say in education: College - Full Sail University - Bachelor of Science in Game Art

-Get rid of the community stuff, no one will care that you donated blood or were in the National Honor Society. As much as I hate to say it, grades don't really matter in the art world, its ALL about the portfolio.

You want a resume to be clean and concise with a list of experience and skills so employers can look at it quickly and make a decision, they don't have tons of time to scroll through gobbledygook to find the good stuff.
A few of my professors have told me that some places throw out demo reels if they take too long to load. These are busy people so keep that stuff in mind.

bhong

@Sukotto: Thanks for the tips. Just a quick question since I'm getting mixed messages on that. My career development guy said that stuff like that was good from an HR perspective as it showed personality traits that they might be looking for in an employee. And does my reel take long to load for you? Its instant for me. Or are you talking about the 2 seconds of black at the beginning?

Sukotto

Is your career development guy in the Game Design/Art field? Or is he just someone helping out with resumes?

Now I'm not saying I know for a fact but I'm currently studying Animation(but it's in the same department as Game Art at my school) so I know some professors that teach those classes who are in the industry and what I've heard from them about portfolio is really nothing else matters other than a good portfolio and experience. They want to just look at the meat of a resume. They may want to see that you have a degree mainly because it shows you can put effort forth and finish something but grades and extra curricular activities don't really need to be shown. I'm not saying I'm an expert on this but its just what I have been told by my professors

About your demo reel. No, it loads fine for me, I was just using that as an example as to how much time these people have to look for employees but it is good that your reel is under 2 minutes though I would like to see more models in it

d2king10

Sukotto wrote: »

I'm gonna echo what everyone else is saying about leaving your old work out completely.

Also, just a little bit of nitpicking on your resume:
-get rid of your high school info and the stuff about your college, employers don't care about your GPA or attendance, just say in education: College - Full Sail University - Bachelor of Science in Game Art

-Get rid of the community stuff, no one will care that you donated blood or were in the National Honor Society. As much as I hate to say it, grades don't really matter in the art world, its ALL about the portfolio.

You want a resume to be clean and concise with a list of experience and skills so employers can look at it quickly and make a decision, they don't have tons of time to scroll through gobbledygook to find the good stuff.
A few of my professors have told me that some places throw out demo reels if they take too long to load. These are busy people so keep that stuff in mind.

This.

It doesn't matter if you attend class 99% of the time with a 4.0, if your art isn't up to par, then you aren't going to get the job. I keep a good GPA during my schooling, but I do not plan to stick it on my resume unless I ever intended to get a career outside of art. I will let my art show how good of a worker I am.

bhong

@Sukotto: He handles both Game Devlopment and Game Art. I guess his advice is skewed towards the former a bit. He does bring boatloads of companies in for talks and such and he's current with the needs of the industry so I trust his judgement on this one.

@d2king10: Already working on the content problem.

haikai

I don't think it hurts to include a line or two about how well you did in school. Those who aren't interested will gloss over it, but it's interesting to me because:

- good grades show that you applied yourself sufficiently when asked to. Perhaps even in situations that may have been uninteresting or unrelated to your focus areas.
- good grades, if your education also consisted of general ed courses, show that you are well-rounded. It's good to be able to show that you can communicate like an adult and have had access to formal education. It can be a crude measure of maturity.

Obviously, all this takes a back seat to a good portfolio, but I would notice if someone had a great GPA. I would cut out anything before college though.