[Portfolio] Casey Addler - Character art wannabe
polycounter lvl 7
I'll never get better until I take this step, so here goes everything...
Hi, Polycount! I'm looking for some critiques in my portfolio. My next goal is a junior art position with an artistically compatible studio, so any feedback on how I can become a better artist and present my work more professionally would be phenomenal.
My site is www.kcla3d.com
I'm mostly character focused, have been practicing in zBrush for the past year and have a few years of 3D Studio Max familiarity. I'm working on new art constantly when not at my day job, and want to be as good as some of the amazing Polycount community.
Where should I improve first?
Hi, Polycount! I'm looking for some critiques in my portfolio. My next goal is a junior art position with an artistically compatible studio, so any feedback on how I can become a better artist and present my work more professionally would be phenomenal.
My site is www.kcla3d.com
I'm mostly character focused, have been practicing in zBrush for the past year and have a few years of 3D Studio Max familiarity. I'm working on new art constantly when not at my day job, and want to be as good as some of the amazing Polycount community.
Where should I improve first?
Replies
I can see who have a solid start in ZBrush sculptures and using basic polypaint functions.
But nothing says you've retopologized, UV and textured, have made normal, specular, gloss, height, etc maps. I do not know what your topology looks like for your characters. I do not know if you have control over material definition, differentiating texturing hair vs skin vs metal vs plastic based on what you have right now. We need to see this or people that even I'm trying to impress will gloss over your stuff.
Do this now. Do not stop until this has been solved. From what I see, you are not game-ready.
I like the set up, Clean direct thumbnails. Simple layout, though it could use a Graphic Design pass since it feels a tad stale.
Oh, as well, please put a download link or a clear location on your website where I can access your Resume. A simple PDF download link should do the trick, or just post it up in HTML.
At the end of the day it's all about the pixels on the screen. That's all that matters to the viewer. Bad lighting and shaders/textures can ruin what was a good or even great model.
1: Images in your portfolio should never have aliasing unless it's an in engine shot.
2: lighting, Get your stuff into 3ds max and try a basic 3 point lighting setup. Use a nice realtime shader too.
3: Drop the Pokemon for now. Unless there's a next gen pokemon game in the works I'm not sure how far these will get you. If you want to make creatures for games, study anatomy and get some solid realistic sculpts on your site first.
General philosophy: Study the basics! Anatomy, design, composition, color theory.
Specific advice about becoming a character artist:
Human anatomy has to be automatic. It's not something only the best character artists master, it's a requirement for every level. Do a ton of anatomy studies and pick the best to go on your site.
Good luck!
Quick question: The images now are zbrush document exports composited in Photoshop. Are Max renders and photoshop compositing the way to go for putting my hi poly stuff together, or is there a better pipeline I should be using?
re: pokemon I nearly left them off originally, they're earlier work anyway.
re: anatomy, I picked up some Ryan Kingslien tuts and anatomy books, I'm working on developing in that direction with my next sculpts.
If you use BPR in zbrush it's not bad. But you have a lot less control over the materials in zbrush if you don't do a lot of planning though. If you want to work in games then I suggest getting used to the basic diffuse/spec/normal shader setup first and then as quickly as you can start learning about texturing for physically based shaders and tessellation. The future is just around the corner
Get this app for anatomy if you can. It's amazing!
http://md3dinc.com/
I will get on BPR on my next build for sure, then. On these images, I had layers with different shaders applied and masked areas with different specular values in photoshop, and applied layers w/ masks. Does BPR combine materials, or will it be similar? What is the best way to prepare spec maps in zbrush? I've done normal and diffuse, but I've not found consistent info on specular maps.
Sorry to barrage you with questions, but i really appreciate the feedback you've given me thus far.
Also, thanks for the app referral. This will come in very handy.