[Portfolio] Giles Ruscoe

gilesruscoe

Looking for portfolio crits please, anything from layout and navigation to the art itself and its presentation.

www.artofgiles.weebly.com

Resume isn't up yet (because i need to write one!) so here's a little about my experience so far;

Im 18, I learnt everything from polycount and internet tutorials over the last 2 1/2 years working from home inbetween going to school. I recently started my first year doing Creative Computer Games Design at Swansea Metropolitan University and done a little bit of freelance here and there.

Questions i'd like to ask;

Does this work on my portfolio reflect the years (2.5) i've been doing game art for?

Does this portfolio look professional? Taking into account the URL, presentation, wording, font etc.

Do you think this portfolio makes me hirable as a junior roll in a studio? If not, what would you suggest i do to improve upon it and my level of work.

Cheers

Skillmister

Your work is far better than a lot of people at my uni who have been doing 3D for the same amount of time


Can i ask why you decided to go to uni instead of carrying on learning by yourself or applying for studio jobs?

gilesruscoe

I'm not sure really, probably has something to do with being far to scared that i'd have to finally leave education, despite how much i hated it haha. All my siblings went to university aswell, so it just seemed like the done thing. Being at university though, i find that im still finding out 99% of things online and university is working more as a motivator and goal. I understand that a degree in games design these days is worth next to nothing, but it allows me to be able to spend 3 years solidly on improving my art skills without having to spend the majority of my time in a day job.

Thanks for the complements on my work, much appreciated

Tenchi

A degree will come in handy should you ever wish to find work abroad and need to satisfy the visa regulations.

Portrfolio layout is simple, easy to navigate and displays everything a recruiter wants to see straight off the bat which is good. Design wise, which isn't as important, you could add a few bells and whistles like perhaps a fancier font for the titles, a logo etc, aesthetic stuff...

More importantly you have work which could be improved, the explorer character looks promising; more attention to folds and breaking the silhouette, more anatomy definition etc. The Sci Fi scout looks great. Overall solid stuff that will get better.

Hope that helps ^^

Wesley

Nice stuff! Yeah a lot of your stuff is better than people leaving my uni. Not that that means you should stop learning, obviously. Have fun at uni and be awesome!

samcole

I would drop the 2D work. Many of them look like rough sketches done in a life drawing class, and most don't look finished to any degree. I would say your characters look more complete then your props. I'd label yourself and apply for character positions if I were you.

gilesruscoe

Cheers guys

@Tenchi, ahh yes i forgot about work visa's, i suppose it has some uses after all. I'm glad you think the site is clean and easy to get round, definately what im aiming for. I'l try designing myself some kind of logo to spice things up a bit though. Definately is room for improvement in my work like you say, just gotta practise more.

@Wesley, what university are you at, if you don't mind me asking? Definately having (too much?) fun at uni, don't you worry aha.

@Samcole, yea i don't really have many polished 2D pieces, because, well, im not that great at it haha. Would you say that the 2D section is detracting from my portfolio as opposed to being a positive element? I definately want to be a character artist, but i wasn't sure if it was too early in the day to start specialising?

samcole

Yes, it is detracting. As I'm sure when you get closer to graduation you'll see more and more recruiters come through the school. Everyone I've ever seen give portfolio critiques always say you're judged by your worse piece. On the one hand it is good that you are showing your willing to stretch your boundaries artistically and creatively, however the work isn't quite finished enough to put in your portfolio. It would have to be close to the detail level of your 3D characters.

gilesruscoe

Alright i'l remove that page from my site until i have some decent stuff to go in it. Would you say that i have enough work samples? Somebody mentioned to me that i don't have any significant in the misc section, like a finished gun or a vehicle... something other than some lamps and a crate.. lol.

gilesruscoe

Alright, i've just added a new character, new posed renders of other characters and some more props to my portfolio site, i also took out the 2d section.
www.artofgiles.weebly.com
I was thinking of removing the scifi scout and the explorer as they are... bad. Verdicts?

gilesruscoe

Over the last 4 months i've been working my ass off trying to improve. I've completely overhauled my portfolio, all new characters, new layout, less clutter, a logo and a shiny domain name. I'd like to get some more opinions on the work and layout/anything else.

www.artofgiles.com

Yuke

I don't know if it's just me as I'm only at Uni myself, but I really like little write-ups with each portfolio piece.. Maybe describing inspirations/what the piece is or the goal you set out with for the finalised piece.

Love you work though, better than most character artists at my Uni

Dylan Brady

nice Giles, shit I wish I was this good at 18.
Just make sure you get a resume at some point. I know it seems odd when you have barley any work expirience to put on ther, but just keep it short.

GOBEE

Stellar work man! Love it. Only thing that jumps out at me is there is too much noise in the normal map on the boxer. It would look better smoothed out a bit. Especially on the back, forehead and elbows, it could be toned down.

Other than that, I think you know what to do from here. Love the little smirk on the Rogue too.

ablaine

That's some great stuff! Saw you working on the Rogue textures the other day in a Google+ hangout and really liked it. Nice work!

The only suggestion I have is to maybe put all of the characters in vertical thumbnails on one line so that the person looking at the portfolio doesn't have to scroll at all.

dpaynter26

look at that giles finally got his own domain name :P

and finished the boxer

Chimp

hey giles!

like the portfolio, the layout is clean and easy to navigate

Joseph Silverman

Looks nice!

put a note about my concept on the rogue page dude! come on!

disanski

Hey Giles.
I like the layout nice and easy to navigate.
I looked at all of your work and it all looks great.
One thing I noticed is that you don't really pack your uvs very tight so I would try to improve at that area next time around.

SanderDL

Very nice! Your work has been much improved lately. A few nitpicks for your site:

- Some of your texture maps are a bit hard to read due the way you present them. Mostly on the rogue character, the other ones are no so bad actually.

- Your images still have the old url. I don't know if it leads to the new domain but you might still want to change it.

- The titles of your pages are listed as: "Character 1", "Character 2" etc. Maybe just give them simple titles like Rogue and Boxer.

Ok that's it for super nitpicking. Keep up the good work!

Kilkus

Just a few nitpicks for me, Generally i think your UVs could be more tightly packed while still leaving enough room for padding, which you generally don't need to worry about for personal work but its a good habit to get into either way. and whilst on the subject of padding try to paint the areas around your uv islands a similar colour to the main diffuse colour, for example on both your Demon type dude and Boxer the diffuse background colour is white which if the texture where mipped could cause issues. These are pretty minor things and don't take away from your work, just something to bare in mind.
Apart from those the website is clean, easy to navigate and overall nicely presented, and for someone self taught you are doing a great job, keep it up.

funkbro

Only crit is maybe stick to one background when presenting the characters? Like you've got the khaki one for Sileg, the alien thing and the demon, then two different ones for boxer and rogue, rogue one looks best imo though.

gilesruscoe

Thanks for the crits guys. The old image URL is really annoying yea But it's something im going to just filter out over time, just start making new art with the new URL written on it. If anything its an incentive to make more content for my site! I'l change the page names, thats from my old layout when they were just tittled that. Uv's i obviously can't really fix up at this stage but il focus on packing them better in future, i think they're a lot better packed on my most recent model (the boxer) compared to other things.
The different backgrounds is from using different viewport filters in marmoset, they all have the same bg colour but it ends up getting tinted differently.

lincolnhughes

all of the crits for the actual art have already been stated in past replies. Site looks clean and the function is easy etc as well. I'm still not the biggest fan of the layout. Maybe it's the mid-gray color or something, as well as the lack of a dominant title at the top of the page.. As well as the font saying "Hi i'm Giles Ruscoe and i'm a character artist from the UK. Please contact me at gilesruscoe@googlemail.com", maybe try switching that to the same font that you used for your logo?? It just looks out of place..