Advice to Improve my 3D Character Art Portfolio

obscure_official · Mar 2020

I am aware that in order to enter the video game industry as a 3D character artist, the characters of your creation must be of paramount quality. I am familiar with the game art pipeline from sculpting, retypologizing, UV unwrapping, texturing, and rigging; all I need to do now is make my work better. This is my portfolio so far: https://www.artstation.com/the_obscure_official

The characters I have now is the latest batch of characters I created that replaced older works that were of less quality, I will work on new characters soon as my practice improved my craft. I do have one particular technical question, how would you go about to create photorealistic textures?

Taylor Brown · Mar 2020

I'm not a character artist but this will still apply.

The only way to get better is through practice. You seem to have a basic understanding of some the fundamentals which is a good place to be because now you can start leveling up each area and it won't be such a mystery. Definitely need to start studying anatomy, I see it recommended quite often to pick up some life drawing to build a better understanding of form. Also, don't be afraid to separare your meshes... For example the belt on that soldier is half melted into the jacket. That ain't right. Your UVing could be far more optimized but that can come later after you get a better understanding of making a quality high poly.

For textures (and really any part of the pipeline), you need tons of ref. With time your artistic eye will develop and it will get easier (and faster) to hit the look you're going for but never stop using ref.

It might not align with what you want to be but id recommend producing one really top notch prop asset just to hone in on all the steps of asset creation for games. It will help you in the long run.

Zi0 · Mar 2020

If you want to work as a 3D Character artist you have a long way to go. Don't even bother with photo realistic textures at this point you still need to master the basics of character art, I would start with human anatomy and then move on to cloth/clothing. You should arm yourself with a nice tutorial https://gumroad.com/grassettiart?sort=page_layout and keep practicing! Eventually you will get there

Below comparison of your sculpt with a game ready asset from 2015 made by Jasper Vick. This is the quality level you want to aim for. I'm not showing you this to be rude, just to show what quality will be expected for your portfolio pieces.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/vg/p869a3l1jdje.jpg

Alex_J · Mar 2020

https://p3dm.ru/files/characters/soldier/14894-call-of-duty-3-feldgendarmerie.html

You can get models from games like those above ^^^ to study what the pro's are doing.

BagelHero · Mar 2020

+1 to the prior comments, and an additional note. It may also help to drop making your own concepts for your portfolio pieces. They're a little hard to understand/cryptic, and that's the last thing you need when applying to a more practical job where you will usually be replicating a more down-to-earth concept. You may want to browse Artstation for some nice concepts from peers that you can ask to use, or browse some of the threads here on polycount where concept artists give permission to use their concepts. It will also help people who are looking to critique or help you in threads nail down more specific advice and suggestions if they can see where you're getting lost. You can of course still work on them for fun, but as portfolio additions I think they confuse the matter.

Otherwise, this is a good start but you have some art fundamentals to really polish still. Good luck & hope to see you around more.

obscure_official · Mar 2020

I thank you all for your advice and encouragement, I am on my way to bettering my craft. What I have made now is certainly an improvement to what I have made months before, and it to will be surpassed by what is to come months in the future.

Advice to Improve my 3D Character Art Portfolio

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