I think you need to be more specific about which aspects you were responsible for. For example, in the car racing clip, did you also create the models and textures, etc?
Blending textures via vertex color isn't voodoo.. In Shaderforge, for example, it would take you 5 minutes to make this: http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/wiki/index.php?title=Texture_Splatting#Using_Vertex_colors
There's about 2 people in our 170-person studio that regularly post on polycount. Perhaps a couple more who post on 3DTotal and other forums. None of them are leads. Just an example...
More hand studies. The second digital one was more of an attempt to speedpaint a bit to capture quick values/form after I spent too long focusing on details on the first example.
If you're going to put a question as the title of a thread, it's a decent choice to write the answer to that question directly on your post (quoted from the website), instead of only a link to the external site. Example:
So what would differentiate a tool developer and a script monkey? Since this is about portfolios, what would be a good example of well thought out tool, rather than a simple script?
I can't remember if it's supossed to work in the UV window but maybe the other zoom options work? Not a fix, but a workaround. ctrl+alt+ middle or right mouse and dragging zooms in the viewports for example.
Yeah, it varies on different locations. A quick search in my city in Artstation for example shows that there are a lot of great Character and Prop artists, but not many environment lighting or texture artists that stand out.
...and now to see your love set free you'll need a witches cabin key... Looks very good. And about scale. As Rick mentioned, for example the railing looks a bit inflated.
Mark: 1. No that was just an example story. I'm not posting looking for that ever again. 2. TL/DR... But its in the title. Probably took you longer to type a response than to get it. :) .