[Portfolio] – Luke Brubaker, Character Artist

Shiniku

http://www.shiniku.com

Just overhauled my portfolio site, feedback and critiques are appreciated, both in regards to the site itself and the work displayed.

Let me have it!

Koochy

i had to tilt my head to read the titles of the projects and even then i struggled a bit with the font.

Eastlin

The text is quite hard to read.

Oh and i'm with Dustinbrown on the battle mage.

Der Hollander

Overall, I'd say your presentation needs work. Your Marmoset renders aren't cutting it, and you lack any kind of consistency in your presentation and render style.

In all honesty, your environment assets are the best in your portfolio, which is not probably sending the right message across if you're advertising yourself as a character artist. Those assets are also the most pleasing presentation of the bunch, with the exception of your wireframe render and your UDK screengrab at the bottom.

On the technical side, all but your rpg bodies UVs are a mess, tons of wasted space, and a lot of non-mirrored UVs that don't take advantage of the unique texel space. Also, you have really obvious seams on your rpg heads where the face meets the cranium.

Your characters are also really heavy on the tri count for the amount of detail you actually have in there, and the geo on your basilisk is fairly terrifying to look at in various areas.

Thirding on nixing the battlemage, and I'd get rid of the table on your Michael C. Hall bust. You don't need it, the pedestal grounds it enough.

On the 2D side, again, your environmental stuff is way more impressing than your characters.

My suggestion would be to revisit your previous projects armed with the knowledge that you have now (seeing your progression is pretty plain in your projects) and tightening them up. Rework your UVs, nuke tris where you don't need them, have a consistent style that you present everything in. Write down your render settings, pick one way to present your wires, and get some interesting lighting(not default, but still keeps the model well lit and readable).

You're headed in the right direction, and this isn't meant to bring you down, it's just meant to be a decently thorough and very direct critique in order to show you next steps on improving your work and getting it to that professional level polish.

chrisradsby

The characters do look kind of weird, they don't look soft and squishy like humans should do. More like clay? I don't know if it's the current lighting setup or something but maybe you should try and work some more on the presentation and the lighting setups. The portfolio itself looks pretty good and yes I really like the environment pieces, they are def your strongest works in the portfolio.

Shiniku

Thanks for the feedback guys! It's really helpful, I'll try to take it all in.

Yes, I agree on the battle-mage, that was more of a placeholder to fill out the site, but I'll take it out.

As for the environment work being better - yikes! I didn't expect that. However, the environment work is my newest stuff, right behind that being the RPG characters. The Armored woman is an older piece, but one I spent the most time on. Hopefully when I spend the proper amount of time on a new character piece it will be a lot better.

chrisradsby wrote: »

The characters do look kind of weird, they don't look soft and squishy like humans should do. More like clay?

yeah, this is something I've been struggling with. Not even sure what I should be doing to fix it. messed around a lot though this morning, is this better?



And yes I'm aware of the seam where the face meets the body, but I don't know why it's happening. As far as I can tell that shouldn't be there.. maybe it had something to do with the normal bake.

The feedback is hugely helpful and motivating, keep it coming!