Portfolio feedback

#1

(First, I hope this is the right forum - if not, my apologies!)

Hello. I’d love to get some feedback on my portfolio and some pointers regarding what to do next. Let me introduce myself first though.

My name is Robert, I’m 28, from Dublin but living in London since late 2016. I have a BA in product design from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. I work in furniture making here in London. I’ve been doing CG in some form or another since I was 11 years old, but only got serious about it in the last five years.

As you have probably guessed, I have no interest in making furniture. I want to do CGI (duh). So how does someone in my situation go about getting into CGI as a career? I have a few projects on Artstation - this seems to be the go-to platform now for artists to show off their work. I had some stuff on behance, but frankly the stuff I had there was full of old filler material, including industrial design stuff. The three projects on Artstation are all CG vehicles. I am working hard on getting my organic modeling skills up to scratch, but this is a long term (years!) effort and I don’t want to dilute my portfolio with WIPs. I’d be interested to hear feedback from you guys - more so on the overall impression rather than specifics (though if there are glaring issues, it would be nice to know about 'em!).

I’ve been doing this in my room on my own for so long now, and it’s hard to know where to start in terms of getting a job out of it. I know there are a few small studios around London that do advertisements, product shots, TV shows etc. I think this would be a grand start.

The all important link:
https://www.artstation.com/temppe

And, if anyone thinks it’s relevant, my anatomy thread:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=200&t=1181193
(hasn’t been updated in a lil’ while!)

Images of the portfolio projex:


I kind of wish I had some more specific questions. But as I said, I really just don’t know where to start. I feel a bit lost, to be honest. To start with, maybe I’ll just mention the following things. I know it’s important to network, and having worked on my own in my room for the last decade, I’m not exactly an expert on this. How/where would I network with other London artists/studios? And is it necessary to have an animated reel to show off models? I read that a bunch of renders is just as good (and frankly, some of these renders take 30 minutes a pop, so I don’t really have a choice!). Finally, here’s what I intend to do next for my personal projects in no particular order: more anatomy/figurative study, experimenting with Substance Designer in Vray, methods for doing ULTRA high detail close up work, real-time assets.

Let me sign off by saying that I deeply appreciate every iota of advice you offer.

Thank you.

#2

Hi Robert ~ Hope I can shed a little bit of light to you.
As far as getting hired on the job, yes networking is important. Knowing someone just speeds up the process of getting your foot in the door.
Lot of networking does happen online these days however, people also network going to events. I believe living in London should provide this access for you. You just got to research if there is any event happening around there. Also, meeting people in person can also lead you into meeting other people you would have not expected to :slight_smile:
When applying for a studio, know what type of art they produce. For example, you would submit bunch of Zombies to a studio like Disney. Be strategic in the projects you choose to get the job that you want. Lot of students coming out of school is a matter of just getting your foot in the door then pursuing what your “dream job/studio” is after.

Some comments on your portfolio. Your model only seems to have a color pass on it. There’s no specular or other maps that helps break up material. Everything just looks really flat. Your modeling seems to be working, it’s just a bit hard to tell what’s going on probably because of the texture. You’re more than welcome to show work in progress and help you get feedback :smiley:

#3

Thanks for your input Hannah.

Hmm… Looking at the renders I can see that they do look flat indeed. The thing is all my materials have diffuse, bump and reflection maps. Either the actual values of the maps are way off or (more likely) the lighting sucks. Now that I think of it, I never pay much attention to lighting. I suppose I can look for some tutorials on standard light set-ups to show off a model and see if that helps. If not, I’ll have to play with the reflection maps - which is a MUCH longer task!

I found an event happening just a twenty minute walk from my front door in February with heavy hitters like Framestore and MPC giving talks in February. I’ll try get one of those days off work so I can go. And I’ll keep looking for more.

#4

I played with the reflection map values in some of the mats in the last project. And I moved some lights around to act as rim lights. I presume this is the kind of thing you were talking about Hanna?

Old and new shown below.

#5

I can see the changes but it doesn’t seem like much changed. May I see different maps to see what’s going on ?

#6

Here are the maps as they are used on the chassis. It’s pretty much the same story with every object in the scene: all the same maps are piped into three comp nodes, each one layering them differently to produce a diffuse, reflection and bump.

render:

diffuse:

bump:

reflection:

node graph:

Looking at it now, I’m not sure my bump map is doing much.

Also I’ll be away from my workstation for two weeks around Christmas so won’t be able to update this for a bit. But I’m still all ears for any feedback. Thanks!