portfolio website critique

tahakitan · Dec 2014

Hello,

I am a Junior at UCF and I'm looking to get critique on my portfolio website. Any help/critique on what to improve, remove, layout, etc... I'm looking to apply for some internships and I am not sure if I am headed the right direction with my website.

http://www.jackbanta.com

Any help would be appreciated.

ScottHoneycutt · Dec 2014

The alien is easily my favorite piece.

Actually its the only one I like. The environment props aren't well textured. The materials aren't well defined. I would suggest really working on material definition by studying/researching as much as you can. The diffuse-only style needs way more levels of detail to shine. Have you seen any of these?:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hand+painted+textures

Watch and watch and watch and watch! Study, learn, research, ask, and observe as much as you create your own work. That's one of the biggest things I would tell a younger me.

As for the website, the images take way too long to load on my end.

tahakitan · Dec 2014

ScottMichaelH wrote: »

The alien is easily my favorite piece.

Actually its the only one I like. The environment props aren't well textured. The materials aren't well defined. I would suggest really working on material definition by studying/researching as much as you can. The diffuse-only style needs way more levels of detail to shine. Have you seen any of these?:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hand+painted+textures

Watch and watch and watch and watch! Study, learn, research, ask, and observe as much as you create your own work. That's one of the biggest things I would tell a younger me.

As for the website, the images take way too long to load on my end.

thanks for the link, I'll def. start looking at these videos. I'll scrap the diffuse and start it from scratch.

thanks avlot for the feedback

BagelHero · Dec 2014

- Don't rely on DDo so much, it's really, really obvious. This goes like triple for characters.

- I'd honestly remove the "mechanic" and "Liz" pieces. They're both in awkward poses and have major flaws. Just replace them at this point. For the future: Look into Aniso for hair, Subdermal/Transparency for skin... Proper gloss/roughness details.
In fact: http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/character-setup

- Don't have large amounts of Grey in your Metalness, it's supposed to be fairly binary. White = metal, Black = not. Only very few materials and transitions need grey.

- The alien is the best piece, but honestly I feel his face needs work. Even for an alien, it's a bit uncanny. Rig it up and do a beauty shot of him posed, too.

-Most of your environment/objects are... weird? Nothing is really defined and I have trouble understanding what I'm looking at. Really, super old-gen with all this reliance on diffuse detail and hard shadowing. The spaceship is cute and looks the most up to date out of basically everything here, but I think the black outlines around all the paneling doesn't do it justice. Again with all the grey in your metalness and no interest in your gloss. I think a more interesting albedo without all the black outlines would be in order. Like... Something more colorful, and with some black charring from the engines and scrapes/dirt/paint chipping. Stuff like that.

- The paintover of the standoff scene is pretty miserable, I'd just get rid of it. It's far too... Old-CG-with-photoshop-brushes-and-filters-over-it looking.
"Homeless" scene has all the same problems. Both would be far more impressive as redone fully fledged real-time scenes, but as they are they're... not good. Sorry.

- The environment that's only in your reel and labelled as your reel should probably be labeled as just that environment. It's pretty impressive compared to your other stuff, but it doesn't have any proper shots or breakdowns anywhere. I almost didn't bother to watch it, so make it a page as well.

Good luck, this was hastily written at work so if you need any further clarification on some things please feel free to ask for it. Remember, quality over quantity.

Edit: and you don't need the 2D work section on the main page, that's better off removed or on your blog.

tahakitan · Dec 2014

BagelHero wrote: »

- Don't rely on DDo so much, it's really, really obvious. This goes like triple for characters.

- I'd honestly remove the "mechanic" and "Liz" pieces. They're both in awkward poses and have major flaws. Just replace them at this point. For the future: Look into Aniso for hair, Subdermal/Transparency for skin... Proper gloss/roughness details.
In fact: http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/character-setup

- Don't have large amounts of Grey in your Metalness, it's supposed to be fairly binary. White = metal, Black = not. Only very few materials and transitions need grey.

- The alien is the best piece, but honestly I feel his face needs work. Even for an alien, it's a bit uncanny. Rig it up and do a beauty shot of him posed, too.

-Most of your environment/objects are... weird? Nothing is really defined and I have trouble understanding what I'm looking at. Really, super old-gen with all this reliance on diffuse detail and hard shadowing. The spaceship is cute and looks the most up to date out of basically everything here, but I think the black outlines around all the paneling doesn't do it justice. Again with all the grey in your metalness and no interest in your gloss. I think a more interesting albedo without all the black outlines would be in order. Like... Something more colorful, and with some black charring from the engines and scrapes/dirt/paint chipping. Stuff like that.

- The paintover of the standoff scene is pretty miserable, I'd just get rid of it. It's far too... Old-CG-with-photoshop-brushes-and-filters-over-it looking.
"Homeless" scene has all the same problems. Both would be far more impressive as redone fully fledged real-time scenes, but as they are they're... not good. Sorry.

- The environment that's only in your reel and labelled as your reel should probably be labeled as just that environment. It's pretty impressive compared to your other stuff, but it doesn't have any proper shots or breakdowns anywhere. I almost didn't bother to watch it, so make it a page as well.

Good luck, this was hastily written at work so if you need any further clarification on some things please feel free to ask for it. Remember, quality over quantity.

Edit: and you don't need the 2D work section on the main page, that's better off removed or on your blog.

I really appreciate the feedback. It was really helpful. I'm still pretty knew to 3D so I'm sure I'll get better stuff as I go on. I'll start doing some shots and breakdown for the environment like you said. I think that's a good idea.

tahakitan · Jun 2015

well it has been 6 months since my last critique on my website and artwork... I am about to be a Senior now. all my artwork except for the alien has changed since last December. if anybody would like to give me some feedback, it would be awesome.

gotta get ready to apply for jobs

scary lol

DooDee · Jun 2015

I'm not going to comment on the models specifically, but more on the site itself.

Your grammar hurts my eyes, get some capital letters in there. Form sentences with your descriptions. You have spelling mistakes on all of the model links, specifically "zbursh". Fix those.

On a side note, I really disliked that I couldn't open up your art pages in separate tabs, just a personal thing I guess.

tahakitan · Jun 2015

@DooDee

Thanks for the heads up on the grammar mistakes. I never really paid attention to that which is really bad on my part.

For the separate tabs, I was told by many people not to do that so I am not sure if I should or not.

portfolio website critique

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