Sati Hartigan - would love a portfolio review
polycounter lvl 3
www.satihartigan.com
Hey all
I've had a 6 year long career in the casino gaming industry making 3D for next-gen slot machines, I'm out of that now, and trying to break into the video game industry (pc/console or mobile). I realize it's a whole new ballgame I'm entering into. I'm a character artist, but I found myself doing many other things at my last job and became more of a generalist. I want to refocus on characters now.
Would love some feedback on my portfolio - it's a combo of personal and professional work - specifically on the layout of my site, or if it seems like it's sorely lacking in something. My next project is going going to be a realistic high-res sculpt with textures.
I was curious if anyone thought it'd be a good idea to just sculpt multiple busts- idealistic male, female, old dude and such, with retopologized, in-game ready, meshes? Not worrying about textures so much...to kinda fill out my portfolio.
Anywho, I appreciate any feedback you want to give! Thanks!
www.satihartigan.com
Hey all
I've had a 6 year long career in the casino gaming industry making 3D for next-gen slot machines, I'm out of that now, and trying to break into the video game industry (pc/console or mobile). I realize it's a whole new ballgame I'm entering into. I'm a character artist, but I found myself doing many other things at my last job and became more of a generalist. I want to refocus on characters now.
Would love some feedback on my portfolio - it's a combo of personal and professional work - specifically on the layout of my site, or if it seems like it's sorely lacking in something. My next project is going going to be a realistic high-res sculpt with textures.
I was curious if anyone thought it'd be a good idea to just sculpt multiple busts- idealistic male, female, old dude and such, with retopologized, in-game ready, meshes? Not worrying about textures so much...to kinda fill out my portfolio.
Anywho, I appreciate any feedback you want to give! Thanks!
www.satihartigan.com
Replies
As an immediate practical step, the Green Goblin could use more wear and tear and material definition on its armor. Assuming you have the files still, just go back in and give it more damage and separation between the armored plates the and body suit. The model looks great, but the textures could be pushed further. But it could be an art direction thing, I have no clue. Your call on that one.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm thinking the portfolio looks fine, it just ends up being a style-fit depending on the studio?
Hiya Brian! How goes it, dude? Totally nailed it on the clean factor of the green goblin. He was for work, and it's all happy colors and rainbows in slot machines...He's not UV'd because we went with a VRay shader...so it's not immediately prepped for me to make the adjustment. I do agree with you though, so I'll slot that in as something I should do!
The next thing I want to make is realistic and gritty, hopefully that can make up for his cleanliness for now, or maybe even take the place of him all together.
Thanks!
My personal thoughts are that this is good, but I reckon you can make it even better by way of creating more pieces that are to your own taste and/or just up to date. Site is functional and clean, I think you should have your actual email instead of a form page, though. Make it easy for people to contact you if they're interested.
Oh, and I think you should create optimised and game-ready characters. Finished, with textures. Been seeing a lot of untextured stuff recently, and to be honest they tend to seem unfinished more than anything else, kind of gives a bad impression if there's a lot of them.
Really solid, I'm thinking along the same lines - I'll keep moving forward with creating new, game-ready content. I've also been seeing a lot of untextured sculpts lately, which is why I asked, wondered if I was missing something. Ultimately I prefer to finish up a piece anyway.
Good call on the email, nobody likes forms!
Thanks again
Totally. The green goblin was like 3 inches tall, mostly in the background for this battle sequence between him and Spidey. Now I'm here rendering him out all large, trying to make him look cool, and the lack of grit and detail is painfully evident :P I do have a screenshot from the game...maybe I could put that up there to give some context.
Done and done. I guess I was just excited about the Cleopatra model, so I wanted to showcase her, but I didn't realize it was causing confusion. I changed the main page to be the character page and moved the map to the bottom of the contact page. Thanks for the suggestions!
2.) Cleopatra was one of the last images I clicked. Why? Because I thought it was just a 2D illustration you had put up. It turned out to be my favorite 3D piece and I didn't even know it was 3D at first glance. My suggestion is to give the thumbnail a very subtle wireframe overlay so that other dummies like me don't assume it's an illustration. Also, take that as a compliment. You're painted textures are that good.
PS: I think the scorpion could go too. It doesn't hold up as well as your other stuff, but I can see keeping it just for some diversity. Up to you!
Huh, interesting that it shows up that way for you. It should be 3 fish in the center of the image, that's what shows up for me at least. I'll look into it. Thanks for the heads-up!
I disabled the Balrog (demon) for now until I can better represent him.
I hear ya, all I've heard is, wow that's 3D? At first I thought that was awesome, but like you said, if you don't know it's 3D you might pass over it thinking it's not relevant. I added a wireframe version of the ortho views in the gallery with that in mind, but didn't think to change the thumbnail. Did that and I updated others to show a wireframe as well.
I made a wireframe thumbnail for the scorpion. I'll keep him in my portfolio for now unless I hear a resounding, "get rid of that thing!"
Thanks for the critiques J!
I'm going to give you some slight counter-advice to a few of the others here. I wouldn't put a whole lot of stock in absolutely needing wireframes for the thumbnail images. I think that's part of the appeal of your handpainted work - when someone expands a gallery on what initially appears to be a 2D render and is pleasantly surprised to find a 3D model. But honestly, it's a page of 3D characters...I kind of go in with the expectation of seeing nothing but 3D work.
That said, you don't have to remove your current wireframe thumbnails, as they are nicely subtle, but definitely pick another shot of Cleo there. The profile image does not do her adorable face justice. You'll want nearly stright-on or three-quarter angle view for her (see attached). Additionally, swap the places of her beauty shot render with the wireframe overlay version in her gallery. The general rule I use: beauty shots first, details and process after.
Oh and those grey wireframe orthos for her are pure gold.
The scorpion is currently the weakest piece on there and as the saying goes, you're only as strong as your weakest link. Unfortunately, our portfolios can end up being judged by the weaker work we include so it's usually best to have only a few strong pieces than a lot of mediocre ones. However...it's still work experience stuff, so you might just tack that on to the rest of the Aladdin gallery in your props section.
Thanks Brian! Glad you like Cleo
Good call on nesting the scorpion in the Aladdin props gallery. I still wanted to show it, since it was production related, so that was a good compromise.
Thanks for the solid feedback!
Characters and website show that you got the artistic vision which is very nice, but its clear that your technical skills are not as far and I would try putting more weight into all these other things to complete your skillset. Spiderman with his super simple textures would require an offline renderer with good lighting to look best (and personally I think your type of work would do best with something offline, v-ray, c4d etc for real artistic freedom, Marmoset etc has no learning curve anyways so you have that free time)
The skeleton sculpt is not detailed enough to show it up close, and your only touch at sculpting from what you show, you could also do great things there with Zbrush etc.
The lowpoly props like the camera and the green gremlin? have too sharp edges and partially flawed shading or use not enough polys and generally there is no display of that you can do any realistic texturing / materials at all, so I would spend most time on those things as they are holding you back (mainly texturing), aside I really enjoyed viewing all the things
Consider placing cleopatra at the left, so she dosnt look outside your page
Spiderman colors are very saturated
Also generally cutting some images can only help, like for the Rose, the texure page only hurts it, generally think about cutting some things, the camera and the glider below are not up par etc
Thanks for the comments! I hear ya, I'm working on showing off my technical skills with the personal work I create. Glad you like the look of my site
I removed the close-up shot of the Beetlejuice sculpt but will keep the rest to showcase the various licenses I've worked on.
I agree, I don't have much to show in the way of truly realistic texturing. All of the stuff you mentioned was for production in slot machines, so it was done to the deadline and appropriate level of polish for the project. Ultimately I think it's clear I have to keep making new pieces to show off my texturing/shading abilities.
I moved Cleo over to the left to be the first thumbnail. She is my favorite so I should be showcasing her!
I temporarily disabled the camera and glider while I look into adjusting them. As an alternative to large beauty shots I'm considering just showing them in context by posting screenshots of the reels in-game.
Thanks for taking the time to look at my site and give me feedback, much appreciated Shrike!
I'll continue to prune the slot gaming art. I feel like I'm walking a fine line between showing examples of production work that would be considered strong in the casino gaming industry, but at the same time not necessarily up to standard in the video game industry.
Thanks again for all of the critiques and feedback so far! You guys are awesome for taking the time to help a girl out. Polycount community ftw
In my experience being a generalist is a plus for casino gaming, while I've found that overall the video game industry is looking for specialists in character art or environment art.
I've noticed a difference in the expectation of the style of art, too. Slot gaming generally requires bright, saturated colors without a lot of grit. They're also not creating hyper realistic game characters and environments. In slot gaming there's a certain look that players are accustom to, and a lot of time the 3D needs to match the feel of the base game that's defined by the reels and UI. So there's not much wiggle room for getting around that.
Anyhow, those are main discrepancies I've noticed.