portfolio crit plz! and be brutal

dannedadon

Short version:
Please give me input on my portfolio: http://www.rashart.com


Hello polycounters! Like many others before me I am a lurker.... But I have seen the light and am now stepping over the line from observer to a MAN OF ACTION!

This is the deal, i am a student at a swedish game art education and I am currently doing my internship at a Swedish company on an undisclosed title for the PS3 and PC. My internship will end pretty soon so its time to get my act together and get my portfolio to a level where someone would like to give me a job. Therefor I have fashioned myself a website: www.rashart.com (its not a portfolio of peoples rashes) and i would like some critique and comments.

I would like to hear any and all comments since I am going to send it out pretty soon (in a matter of days). So if you have anything about the layout or the artwork or anything at all, please share.

Here are some pics from the website to those of you who cant click on every link you see on these threads :P

THANKS!

JustinPunio

Website looks presentable, big thumbnails, like the overall website design...

Matroskin

i am not a character guy, so no comments on that side from me (though i find characters quite good, especially considering a student level).

The porfolio organisation itsefl seems to be quite correct to me as well.
Few minor things tho.
Right now the frontpage is quite big. Thumbs r quite big and the way they r placed requires quite big space.
You could compress the space by doing them smaller and grouping them in 2 nice centered rows or something like that.
I had to almost full expand my browser window to see the entire page.
Reducing it will make it easier for ppl to get max info from the first glance. In my oppinion it works better when ppl can understand and analyse the contents of your portfolio as quick as possible. It will give more time to concentrate on details of particular works that they might be interested in. And they might feel less tired of scrolling Well, me at least :P
Same goes for resume. It is just too large where things are arranged a bit everywhere and also take considerable amount of space.
The picture of yours could be croped to have max of you in it plus it can be smaller as well

Good luck with your future job hunt

cholden

I like the site alright.

The chair and shipping container look the most polished thanks to their texturing.

The characters need some work for the same reason. The textures don't seem finished. The zombie in particular. I'd remove it and the dragon. It just looks super low poly. No wips please, finish it for a new piece. It's better to have fewer, good pieces, than a bunch of mediocre ones.

Look into getting some better presentation for characters. Most of these renders are dark.

If you're looking for a character artist position, you need finished pieces of people with faces. Currently, there is no indication you can take a human face to final. Otherwise, focus on more environment pieces.

Stinger88

Can you get the thumbs to be 2 rows of 4 rather than 6 and 2. Would balance it.

WIP image character. Has a nice looking image of full character for thumb but only a head model in the images. You must have more for that. It also looks like your best piece. So get more in there if you got it.

Art is well presented though. Nice looking portfolio.

haikai

Your work is pretty decent. It shows technical competency and a fair grasp for completing models.

However your work is somewhat forgettable. It's okay to have somewhat generic designs, but if you do then you really need to push the envelope on the execution. It's a combination of things, but one thing you should really be striving for is to make your work "beautiful." Even a grotesque zombie or a gritty soldier character can have a "beauty" to them. Right now you're just presenting these characters "as is." We can tell what they're supposed to be, but so what? There's got to be something that makes people want to keep looking at your model even after they understand what it is.

You should examine professional models that you admire and try to see what qualities your models are missing. Or even just examine cool art or nice photographs. Those stir something in you, and you should try to stir those kinds of emotions with your work as well.

I know this is kind of vague advice, but I think you're at the point where that stuff becomes more important. You know the technical aspects, and are good enough to reasonably portray what you intend, but it's the finer aesthetics that you're lacking now.

Good luck!

megalmn2000

I would suggest you to put your title at the bottom of your name, so people can easily recognize which kind of game artist you are. From what I've saw from your portfolio, you should write: Character artist.

Snader

I think it'd look a lot nicer if everything was aligned a bit nicer. You also have a lot of empty space on the right.

dannedadon

Wow, thanks for some really good feedback, keep it coming please.

About the WIP Char:
Not sure if I should display it? I had it up at first. But as cholden mentioned, maybe a WIP isnt such a good idea. The thing is that its probably my best char. Im going to start the texturing pretty soon. Should I just wait until its finished or just show the sculpt and the bake and not mention the fact that its a WIP?

So this is what Im going to do based on the crits:

- Change the size of the whole thing. Perhaps 4 thumbs on each row and have more rows when i add new stuff. And center the whole layout
- Change the size of the resume and alter the layout so its easier to get an overview instead of the boxes all over the place
- Take some new renders of most of the stuff. Focus on not getting too dark material.
- Get some new renders of the zombie, not show the low poly areas as much. Maybe change the mesh. I have learned a lot since i made it and notice that I could remove a lot of polys without damaging the silhouette.
- Add some small environment to them, maybe just a pedistal/mini-environment to make the charater more interesting and fit into some sort of setting.
- Add character Artist under my name in the title.



Long term shit:

- Get better :P
- More faces and add more sculpts
- Practice more texturing
- Look and compare my stuff to some great artist and try to steal their tricks


Really appreciate all the advice, especially since you guys are in the industry and doing what I want to be doing