I need an evaluation of my skills.
Hey everyone, I'm still looking for a job, but I've applied to Blizzard, Insomniac and Square Enix. Bliz-WoW character and weapon modeler Insom-Concept Artist Squeenix-Concept Artist I would appreciate it very much if you were to take a look at my website and evaluate my skill level: http://jeffrey-chuang.com/ any advice and guidance would be most appreciated.
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I think you should be a concept artist, it looks like you could really excel at it, and that you like it most. I watched your Blizzard or Bust thread closely and you worked hardest on the concept it appears. I have a feeling you like it most, and it shows that way to me. But the rest of your concept work is not as good as that beastmaster. more more more!
many lost pieces that are rather sketches. It would be nice to see some illustrations that took 4+ hours so something not so sketchy on the quality execution level. I think you have fundamentals but it needs some proves of quality execution.
My favourite and the one that stands out imo is:
http://rhkstudios.iseenothing.com/images/2D_battle_bun_final_1.jpg
(though the Fraktur font is not so to my liking there)
3d:
this perspective is just bad
http://rhkstudios.iseenothing.com/images/3d_harvester_1.jpg
same for the other one from the other side- show at least 2 faces if not 3 for a better impression- like that makes no sense and looks not complete (webdesign wise, like a placeholder)
personally I like this piece the most:
http://rhkstudios.iseenothing.com/images/3d_cardslinger_1.jpg
even though it has no textures and looks very editing state (random colors ec.t)
in general I think that 3d needs more expierence (you even dont have that many examples nor complex ones). General taste and design skills are on the right track (something many casual 3d artist fail at) my suggestion would however bee to focus on booth as they booth will support what you want beeing a game artist with a strength of taste and designing.
no shame in trying though-
And the 2D section has multiple images. The thumbs are for projects. This is my favorite piece:
http://rhkstudios.iseenothing.com/images/2D_battle_bun_final_2.jpg
still like the other one
your first page is your name and what to click on. I think something stronger like immediately going to the 3D art page would be more beneficial to the person viewing your site.
Having to click multiple times in the image window to see your texture and wirefames, why not make 2 collages to show them all.?
You have 8 pieces of work on the main page, all low poly artwork. Yet, nothing on there really screams "hire me" especially if you apply to top places like Blizzard, Squaresoft etc. You need to make your characters and textures look upto this quality what blizzard or squaresoft would be expecting.
Blizzard Art Contest 2006
http://www.blizzard.com/us/inblizz/contests/artcontest2006/images/w54.jpg
http://www.blizzard.com/us/inblizz/contests/artcontest2006/images/w50.jpg
Lee3dee-> Hmmm, I should prob collage them. My concern was that the wireframe would become a white blob if I reduced it too much.
Odds are if someone has to take any extra efforts due to how you've set up your website (such as telling someone to enable scripts)... they will not care enough to go through the effort to look at it.
I agree with what others are summarizing though... you're aiming for too high end of studios for your current abilities, especially in the modeling department IMO (hopefully that doesn't discourage the attempts, I'm just going off my personal judgment obviously). I definitely dig your concepts but agree that you need more fully completed pieces and more content in general if you're going for a concept artist position. Best of luck in your search though!
the orthographic(?) front camera used for some of the renders is boring. Use a more interesting angle.
On top of that you should pose your characters in an interesting way. You can do that quite quick and dirty, just make that 1 still render work if you cannot be bothered with proper skin weighting etc.
The lighting on most if not all of the 3D pieces is kind of dull. Make an effort to light them better. Try the classic 3 Point Light way. You can even try to throw in a dash of color in some of the lights.
A few of your renders are on a black background. This make seeing subtle differences in variations quite difficult. Unless of course your 3D work is all in dark shades, but most of your work is quite bright and colorful. Instead you could use a semi-grey background, or why not an backdrop image with maybe some gradients or whatnot.
Also I'm aiming for the top! Since I don't see any openings at entry levels. it would be nice if there were art positions at mid level studios, but I don't see any.
You can judge for yourself how your portfolio compares to those by working concept artists:
http://totalrihal.com/
http://www.chrishowedesign.com/gallery.php?type=concept-art&project=hoanui
Drake's Fortune artist: http://www.erwinmadrid.com/
It's war out there man. Don't settle for being just a bodybags soldier. Fight like a fucking special forces commando.
Good luck.
Your 2d character sheets are nice, and some of the sketchbook stuff is nice.
Your 3d is poorly presented and is nowhere near the quality level of the studios you're applying for - you show no demonstrable ability to make anything with modern shaders.
I would strongly recommend you improve your 3d skills if you're focusing on being a 3d artist. If you want to be a 2d artist I would strongly recommend getting more realism into your portfolio of 2d work. As it is right now neither of them are at the level at which they need to be to even be considered at the studios to which you applied. I don't know who would hire you for your 3d work outside of perhaps a small casual games studio. I'm not as familiar with the requirements for 2d artists but I'd imagine you need to step up your game there as well.
It's not hopeless, but you're not there yet. Keep at it, you can do it!
Yes, they are. For every portfolio like yours, there's 200 more that are better, with years and years of industry experience behind them. They see hundreds of portfolio's a day, if it takes more then 20 seconds to view your work, and it's not knocking their socks off from the first click, it's on to the next candidate. Especially for the places you are trying to get into, you'd need probably, 5-6 years experience in the industry and at the top of your game at that as well. You've got quite a ways to go to get there though. There's nothing wrong with starting lower and working your way up.
Jobs are hard all over, with all the studios closing and downsizing THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of 'veterans' are out there looking for the same jobs as you.. That makes it even more important for you to work 3x harder to get your work up to par as the links above but 'better' since you have no previous industry experience you need to show your work off and it's not up to industry standards in most cases, the latest peice is nice but you need many more like that.
Keep going, but you can still get to the top but, you can't just jump to the top rung, there's a few rungs you have to traverse to get there.
In regards to your site, I'd echo the hard as hell to navigate, I didn't notice until the 3rd time I viewed your page each thumbnail you clicked on said "Image 1- of 8" or what have you, I'd have the thumbnails be larger so you can see what it is you modelled and then take it to a new page with all the images so people don't just see one front image and think that's all there is.
When you are submitting an application at "X" studio they will be comparing you with a ton of other applicants applying for the same position. As MagicSugar said you should be judging yourself against others in the position you are apply for. Is your work as good or comparable to theirs?
With the all the layoffs in this economy, there is so many people looking for work again. You should be using the time you have to make yourself as hireable as possible. Post pics of your work on the forum, Polycount members will generally tell it how it is, tons of talented people on this forum use it to your advantage. If it needs work you'll hear about it but...... it will make your work stronger!
Haha... I just realized this as well. I had completely missed the fact that these were actually the first picture in a series of pictures. So I'll second this, work on the site navigation/layout.
I found your sketches to be the strongest work, especially the tonal studies, but that being said, only include your best work. your painting skill set needs a lot of attention, it looks amateurish over all, again only include your very best work, you dont need to have volume, just quality.
hope it helps and good luck!
Haha dang I guess I have a long ways to go. I have friend who works in EA in Canada, and apparently HR people really love lightbox. I used to have straight thumbnails of every image, but then it was like a wall of thumbnails. i really wanted to show each stage of development and so with lightbox i could group things together and not make an overly cluttered gallery.
Also why does scrolling vertically suck?
Right now people hit your main page, then go down a level to one art section, then down another level to a single project. A better organization will have a single level that people can scroll through constantly, with bookmarks to certain sections. For a lightbox portfolio, you want it to work like this - when they arrive at portfolio.com , they are presented with a page full of thumbnails. These are broken up by headers, and if this page of thumbnails extends beyond a single screen, there is a navigation bar at the top that links to different headers. Clicking a thumbnail takes you to that image, and then pressing the next button scrolls you to the next image - you should be able to see every single image without leaving the lightbox window.
to date I think outside of the small thumbnails (which are still pretty usable since they are zoomed out enough), http://www.30lives.com/ is one of the most usable portfolios out there (plus his work is pretty sweet). if you want to use lightbox, you'd simply link to the image in lightbox rather than just the plain image.
I hate lightbox because it means I can't open up additional tabs - I'd rather be able to load up and then tab through all your images at once.
As for the navigation, I don't hate the flash viewer, but I don't love it either. I didn't realize upon initial viewing that there were multiple images per thumbnail. An easy fix is to put under the thumbnails something like "7 images" so people know beforehand what they're getting, but that may ruin the clean nature of the page. I'm like ghostscape and prefer thumbnails that open separately, but I can't say that's what everyone is looking for. I do think, overall, the site is presented well. It's nice and simple, which makes it better than a lot of portfolio sites out there. It's been touched on, but change your title to something other than "some artist", or leave it off altogether. Game Artist, Concept Artist, Digital Artist, Artist all would be better representations of what you do. Personally, I'd make the page default to your concepts if that's what you're applying for.
Are those the only 3 places you've applied? Nothing wrong with throwing yourself at the top, but realize there's VERY little chance you're going to get your industry start there. You need to be open to moving out of California. Granted, there's a lot of jobs there, but quality game studios are all over the place.
JMYoung: My family and friends are all here. I've lived here all my life. It would be a serious uprooting.
Also I'm going to put all the thumbnails up and use "Game Artist". Ghostscape's idea is pretty good. I should put thumbs, and they'll automatically go to that spot in light box. With vertical thumbs, I will be able put a lot more in. I am also going to trim out some of the less successful pieces.
Which ones do you think i should remove?
That's certainly understandable, and CA is a good place to be if you want to be in the graphics industry. At some point, though, you may need to consider it if this is really want you want to do. You can always move back to CA when the time and opportunity are right. I'm not trying to be a debbie downer to your hopes and dreams, but I really think you should keep your options open.
This is true. I'm going to focus toward 2D work. Also for the thumbnail thing, light box is really limited and I am not able to get the customization to work. I might well just use a little flash widget.