DigiPen Student, Soon to be a Graduate, Looking for Input on Portfolio

[godhatesglobes]

Hi, I'm Dan Moyer
Here's a LINK to my site, please feel free to pick the weakest image or animation and tear it apart! I would greatly appreciate any input.

I know it's a bit of a tall order to ask for critique on my entire portfolio, but the time is quickly approaching that I will need to get a job and start wrangling those pesky student loans, so anything you've got to say about my work would help me a ton.

Thanks in advance,
Dan

[McLean]

One of the things that says "student" more than anything else in a portfolio is life drawing. I mean, its super important to do that, but when a studio or art director looks a portfolio and sees that, well, it just doesn't pertain at all to what they need from an illustrator. Ive had other people disagree with me on that one, but I'm just speaking from personal experience.

I'd say put in turnarounds or orthographics. more production art. Most entry-level concept artists don't do soley concepts, a fair amount of it is production artwork to be handed off to modellers or texture artists, environment artists, etc. I swear I remember there being a thread about that somewhere in these forums, I'm sure you could find it with a little effort, its quite informative as to what you should have in a gaming portfolio.

[godhatesglobes]

Thanks for the reply;

Just to clarify, your suggestion is to take down my figure drawings?

[chopinlover]

Yea I agree with McLean, you really need to work on life drawings

[McLean]

sorry- to clarify, yes, I'd remove any life-drawings from the actual portfolio if I were you. I would then try to fortify my portfolio turnarounds and similar kinds of production art.

my 2 cents.

[Sidharth Chaturvedi]

I dunno, I've heard the opposite advice regarding life drawings. If you were to take them out you'd at least need your other art to show off some really mad figure skills.

Anyway, it's a neat portfolio and I like the variety in it. One thing I'd work on a lot is edges though- your stuff still has a bit of a fuzzy look, and in other pieces it looks like parts could've been pasted on. This will be your best friend. Good luck!

-Sid

[RyerOrdStar]

Take out figure drawings. They are not relevant at all since no one prints naked people in illustrations, unless it's for a specific purpose. There should be enough people in your other illustrations to show that you can draw a person. Same goes for still lives.

[McLean]

Quite right! There should still be artwork that demonstrates skill with color, anatomy, composition, and etc. A good illustration portfolio will have all that without needing to include life drawings or paintings of still lives. Generally speaking, a gaming or movie studio doesn't care that you draw a mean self-portrait. They care if you can put together some great storyboards, or if you can paint really sound color-keys. They want to see your character design skills and your ability to draw motion or action.

All of those things should demonstrate that you can paint, draw, that you know anatomy, and all the rest of those things that foundational excercises are supposed to teach you.

Sure, a figure drawing in a portfolio might show that you can draw a nude figure that sits in front of you for an hour, but it doesn't show that you can apply that knowledge to a work environment.


Soooo, yeah. My viewpoint remains the same. I hope I'm not beating a dead horse here. =P

[godhatesglobes]

Thanks y'folks for the advice! I'll try to work some hard edges into what I've got there. That has been an issue for me in the past, and I've just recently started to really figure out how to control the sharpness of an edge in Photoshop.

In terms of the figure drawings, I think I need to demonstrate some more knowledge of human anatomy if I'm going to take those life drawings down. So, for the moment, I'll move them to the end of the list of thumbnails, and I guess my next portfolio piece will have to incorporate some people with some, you know, anatomy.