David Szilagyi

**Sizzle** · August 2nd, 2012, 12:30 AM

The highlights are below. Seeking work as a concept artist and illustrator, eventually at a later date with Visceral Games and specifically for Dead Space. In all honesty, none of this current work screams much "Dead Space creepy" as it should if I were really gunning for it. For now I'm hitting the large scale fantasy genre, and honing in on my dream from there. My biggest weaknesses right now are the human form and clothing/armor designs, or so I've seen so far. Gimmie dat rough love

http://davidszilagyi.carbonmade.com/

**Sizzle** · August 9th, 2012, 11:45 AM

Bumping this. I'm getting no work and I have no idea why. I was getting work offers before updating my portfolio, and now I'm not getting any prospects at all. It feels like the better I get and the more I study, the more I'm losing potential clients.

I really need a professional honest critique on this, I'll accept anything at this point.

**Resenhista** · August 10th, 2012, 10:20 PM

Hey David! Getting no work huh? I totally understand, I'm passing through the same...and the lack of feedback is really bothering.

So...my humble opinion, as a non-professional (yet): I see lots of mixed media, what makes it good for concept art, matte painting and environment design. The 3 first are the most striking in my opinion. I really really like the waterfall scene, it has gorgeous colors and composition!

I think what you should improve is the "depth" of the paintings. Some pictures lose a bit of their awesomeness because they look flat and have little atmospheric perspective. Adding this depth to the pictures will have a greater impact later.

Also, the textures and pics stand out to my eye more than the art itself, and then, because of all the little details, it tends to be a little messy. I think they must serve to the art, not the other way. So what you could do is to paint over the images. Not imitating them, but using them as reference to the rest of your concept.

There are cool and powerful works, full of impact. Studying the fundamentals (color theory, composition and storytelling) will make them reach a higher level.

Hope I didn't say anything silly though.

Cheers!

**Sizzle** · August 12th, 2012, 01:38 PM

Resenhista,

Thanks so much for the review! Also, can you expound on the "textures sticking out more than the art"? I think I understand, but I need a little more detail, even if it might sound a little silly

Thanks again!

**TheDonQuixotic** · August 15th, 2012, 10:43 AM

Hey Sizzle,

Just some thoughts from another not-quite-professional artist.

The textures stick out because they're so sharply defined. The pictures tend to lack depth because in the background you have nearly as much detail as in the foreground. If you let the background be a little more blurred and a little more painterly you would achieve a greater sense of depth and not overwhelm the eye.

And some of this is a matter of taste. I look at your work and it looks very "digital" to me. A lot of use of photo textures etc, is a fast way of achieving an effect but it often looks cookie cutter too.

The last pictures hows you have plenty of rendering form skill so let that show a bit more.

Also, I do photography stuff to as a hobby and I've found some good ways at making photographs look more painterly

The issue of making a photography look more painted is breaking down and simplifying it's color swatches without breaking down the defined aspects and lines of the individual forms.

So it's not about using a filter, so much as it's about using several layering over each other in several passes.

My usual technique is to first make sure the contrast is good. Use the "curves" function to do this. You probably already know how to use that but if not, there are plenty of tuts online.

Second, I then begin breaking down the pixel plane on it's simplest level by using the "facet" filter in the "effects/pixelate" menu. This breaks down the pixels in their simplest way along color boundaries. The effect is slight but it prepares the picture for:

Effects/artistic/Paper cutout or Dry Brush or Paint Daubs. And perhaps in the case of some very rare images you might use Watercolor (this can be problematic for shadows.)

You might use one, or all three of these examples. The thing is, using them in a very restrained way. Rather than jacking up the settings to high, it's better to do several runs, even of the same filter because it allows you to nudge the photo in the right direction without letting the algorithms going crazy and just making it look like a photo that is really blurry (instead of looking painted)

The end result looks something like this:

I don't know if this will help you at all, but I'd consider applying that kind of effect to your textures, so they don't look quite so photographic. That may be partially up to taste too.