2 year grad portolio

[elephant´s stroke]

What disgusts me even more are the bandwagon "starters" who feel the need to jeer
and concoct their own words to make themselves feel better.

With that logic, you´ll need to be an stablished movie director to have the right to say "that movie sucks"?
It is well known that regular people with nothing to do with a profession can give valuable insights. Maybe not about techicals aspects, but yes about the general output of something.
You can obviously disagree with what people are telling you, but since you are exposing your works for opinions, it has little point to argue with those opinons, though you can choise not to follow the advice.
You seem to have the mindset of an artist who wants to express himself and do what he feels like...that is very respectable and a lot of people do it with succes, and you can too since you are able to do good looking things.
But as far as i understand concept art, wich this forum is about not about art, the skills evaluated are other than the passion of an artist, but very stablished skills that can´t be just dismissed because they bore you, or you are not interested in.
You have all the right of the world to make any silhoutte you like, but you can´t argue with the fact that being able to design strong silhouettes is a very important skill in concept art.
As you see i´m not being agresive with you. I think the issue here is that you are showing very personal designs (with the potential succes by their own appealing), in a section related with another aspects of design, as for example being able to do whatever the clients ask you.

Cheers! and good luck.

[magnut]

Morris, you've totally missed the point of posting your work here on ConceptArt.org, and more specifically, in the forum thread that has to do with portfolio reviews. In fact, you yourself solicited opinions on your portfolio:

Howdy folks,
The name's Morris, and I am looking for some opinions
on my on my port. I graduated 2 years ago, worked at a
couple of places and I am looking for work once again....

When you post your work on this thread, you're going to get people who will comment about your work. A number of these people are working professionals who are helpful with their advice to a great many people on ConceptArt, or elsewhere.

Hitsu//San gave you some excellent advice:

If you want to sell toys or work on movies you have to enhance your design abilities by doing bp and stuff about your characters. Currently you're only showing final results but a company will need to see if you're able to do their concept and your concepts too.

I saw your sketches, those are only raw sketces, something you do to figure out your general designs and forms before starting to detail them. You can't do a 3d character based on those (well actually you could but you have to do the design work when doing the 3d model), this is not the way it works. You have to be able to draw "blueprints" of your models before doing the models. Your sketches doesn't have the details your models have. Actually you're not taking your studies in a good direction, you're in the middle between concept design and 3d modeling.

The problem is that companies ask for concepts before 3d models, and you're not providing them, then asks for 3d models which you're good but since you're not following any final concept it's not clear if you're reliable to do advanced 3d models with a provided concept. See the point?

Your response was very frustrating. You did not even acknowledge - or try to understand - Hitsu//San's advice about the process of the work, and how important that is. By asking for opinions, and then outright ignoring them, you presented yourself as someone who wished to do only what you want to do, not to learn anything about how working professionals do things. Or even openly be respectful of those giving you advice. This demonstrated that, even though you asked for people's criticisms, you did not care to learn from this good advice.

Then you said:

I'm just perplexed and want to just find a new place already.

That made no sense. No one can understand you when you say something that has no context.

Then The Dirt Syndicate gives you one of the best pieces of advice that toy designers - along with character designers for animation and comics - can ever have: that you must pay attention to your characters' silhouettes. That by doing so, your characters can become even more instantly recognizable.

Your very bizarre response:

And here it is!
Normal norms on the rise.
Judging by how you put things, you are seeing things with a
"Saturday Morning Mindset"
You gotta come in with a warrior's mindset

And I'm seeing old stuff there, I am one of the future,
and don't just include western fellows.

When I think of a character to design, I'm thinking of
BATTLE, SPECIALS, and transformation; not a slapstick type of
dude that looks cute.

I mean what the heck?!
Is it really that hard to understand?
The first character is egg super robot equipped with a cluck cannon,
the second you mentioned was a spheroid warrior who uses pipe propulsion.

Where in the world did you get the idea that it looked like a gorilla?

I'm not sure, this could be meat plot in disguise.

Yes, your egg was hard to understand. It was difficult to 'read', which makes me direct you back to what The Dirt Syndicate was telling you about silhouettes. When your silhouettes are clear as a bell, it goes a long way to being able to 'read' what the specific elements are in your design.

But again, you totally missed the point. Instead of acting like The Dirt Syndicate's post was an attack upon you (it wasn't), you should have listened to what he was telling you, figuring out why and how this would apply toward your longevity as a toy designer. You fought back against his advice, and you treated The Dirt Syndicate as if he said something offensive to you.

He did not, and you very well know it. This is where you willfully acted in an immature way; instead of taking this as a valuable learning opportunity, you decided to act as if everyone was not telling you what you wanted to hear.

When you ask for opinions, criticisms and advice, you should expect to actually recieve some. When you do receive criticism, advice and opinions from others, it is the polite thing - the respectful thing - to actually (like you're in a regular conversation) to communicate with those who are giving you advice. Those people aren't attacking you. They're HELPING you!

And it is nothing short of rude of you not to do so, which you haven't done in this thread. It is nothing short of being short-sighted of you for not trying to learn what we're all telling you, because if you wish to have a career where you pay for your life from your talents, then you must understand how the business works.

You said you were looking for work, and we're all trying to help you with that. It is a crying shame that even though you asked for help, you refuse to accept it.

When Shorinji_Knight said he also couldn't tell what your designs were, instead of actually paying attention to what he said, you decided to again act like an immature child:

idk at this point it seems like no one will be happy
no matter what i do.

All the people either want meat/death games, woodland fantasy types, or generic items.

No matter what site I am or what ever I produce, people are going to get angry.
This is no good.

No one got angry with you. Everyone is incredibly frustrated with you for not maturely treating this very good advice as constructive criticism. It is the silliest thing for you to act like people are attacking you. THEY ARE NOT, AND YOU KNOW IT.

Use of profanity, really professional.

If I see something I don't agree with,
I'm going to say something about it.

You made a sweeping generalization that the pieces I made
had no faces, and you posted 90's cartoons; when in fact
you work in vfx and shooter based media.

Who are you to say that I am stupid when you
come in with standard designs and become extremely
hateful when it doesn't fill your quota of death and gore.

A common trait among those who enjoy killing spree and medieval escapist games.

You seem to be
a very insecure and angry individual who's
opinion must reign supreme.

Well with that, Cheers.

It is a false complaint to talk about someone using profanity. Everyone uses profanity, so you really need to get used to it.

I have known The Dirt Syndicate for over 8 years. He loves blood and gore, but as a working professional, I have seen him do all sorts of things, including science fiction designs, cartoony designs, super hero designs, realistic & many other kinds of designs for many different kinds of jobs for print, TV commercials, feature films & animation. He has an extremely broad range of ability that you could only hope to have. He has also worked in many different kinds of creative art jobs, primarily because of his wide range of ability.

However, you choose not to even acknowledge what he wrote to you. What a terribly immature thing. Hypocritical too, considering you were the one who asked for others' opinions.

You seem to be
a very insecure and angry individual who's
opinion must reign supreme.

You are describing yourself. Especially when you ask for opinions that you choose to only argue with, instead of learning from.

In fact, The Dirt Syndicate told you things that I and others have told you on this thread. This bears repeating:

1. you didn't just "not agree" with me, you argued. there's a big difference between accepting someones critique of your work and not agreeing with it and arguing with that person. try that on a client and see how well you get paid.

2. i did not make a comment about your characters not having faces; i said it wasn't clear where the face was, where the arms and legs are, etc. having a strong silhouette will solve those issues.
so not only did i point out a problem with your designs, i offered a solution to that problem. this is what is called a "good critique".
someone who isn't good at doing critique would just come in and say "this sucks" and not explain why or offer any solutions. i didn't do that. i offered you a good critique backed by experience from doing concept art for film and video games, and you wanted to fight me on it. thats why i called you stupid.
the only words that should have come from you are: "thank you for your critique, i dont entirely agree with you, but i appreciate your comments and will think on them"
any other response is just plain stupid.

3. again, i guess i must repeat this because you're reading comprehension is terrible: i posted the 90's cartoons because it was the first example i found on google images. a strong silhouette is one of the absolute most important aspects of a character design. it doesn't matter what style you're drawing/designing in.
and this isn't MY opinion, its the opinion of all the pro level designers that taught me.
i'm trying to pass on knowledge. i'm trying to help you become a better artist.

4. death and gore? quote the comment where i mentioned anything about that please.
i'm talking about having a good character design. i never said anything about death and gore, i have no idea what you're talking about.
i've been talking about silhouettes and how important they are to character design.
this is another reason i think you're stupid. you're manufacturing arguments based upon things i haven't said.

The highlights, underlines and italics on his quote were added by me, to hopefully get you to focus on the good helpful things The Dirt Syndicate was saying to you.

I am not going to be the laughing stock of this site because I was too nice.

No one is making you out to be a laughing stock, except for yourself. If you are a laughing stock, it will be because you have acted immaturely to people's helpful criticisms. It will be because you waste time with fabricating your fake outrage and offense, acting like you're being victimized by the criticism you're receiving, when in fact we are all trying to RAISE YOUR STANDARDS.

One of the most difficult things when you try to become a working professional, is to have a thick enough skin that will allow you to hear that your work is not good enough, and to gain the patience and wisdom enough to be able to learn from this criticism, so you can get better at what you do. If you act and react to every bit of criticism as if people are simply insulting you and being mean to you (which nobody on this thread has been doing), then you simply will not learn anything valuable in the art world, or even in everyday life itself.

It's all part of growing up. We have all gone through it. If you have any hope of becoming a working professional (the kind that will pay for your life through your talents), then you must simply GROW UP. Stop acting and reacting like a child would. It does not help you.

You yourself said that every place you go, you get this kind of criticism. Sometimes you have to realize that's happening for a very good reason...

Again, I am a professional fellow who works at places and no one on the web thinks so because I don't do gore or medival based things. So I will say something when someone is on the verge of saying rude things before they start.

No one has been rude to you here. Everyone has been very helpful, but you refuse to accept that help.

By your actions, you prove that you're not a "professional fellow". If you were, then you would act like you understand what we're telling you, and you would be able to communicate back to us your goals, your full experience, where you wish to go in life. You would have then been receptive to the valuable things we've all been telling you.

again, i never said you should do gore or medieval based things at all. nobody here is saying that theres anything wrong with having a cartoony style.
i dont know where you are getting that.

look man, the only reason i commented on this thread was because i think your stuff is on the right track but could be better.
if i didn't like your work i wouldn't have commented on it at all.

That goes for all of us. We wouldn't be trying to help you if we didn't see something good in your work. I don't understand why you aren't mature enough (smart enough?) to understand this.

Then I spend a good deal of time giving you excellent advice, and you just seemed to blow it off, like it (or anyone else's critiques) didn't matter. Only because you asked for people's opinions & criticisms on a forum that specifically is all about critiquing your work, makes your attitude incredibly frustrating.

Your last post demonstrates that you - AGAIN - don't care about the criticism that other people have given you, that you yourself have asked for.

I have a challenge for you that I would bet money you won't try: I would hope that you get your parents to read this thread, to see if they agree with what we're all saying to you. Then I would challenge you to have several other people in your life who have always challenged you, like a school counselor or a few bosses from your art jobs, to see what they think about what we're all trying to say to you.

I would bet you money that - even if they agree with your objection to our 'salty language' - they would tell you that we all are giving you good advice, and that you are doing the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears while yelling, "la la la la la la la!"

There's no evil going on here, even though you're trying to act as if there were. What's going on here is your immature and hypocritical reaction to people giving you advice and criticism, when you're the one who asked for it in the first place.

[magnut]

I'm cutting the abuse off at the head

NO ONE is abusing you here. You know this. To say otherwise is you being dishonest.

I'm not going to be jeered at like I was there.

You are not being jeered at here. You are being helped here. Only your irrational obstinacy is blinding you to acknowledging that.

No longer will threads be about my use of the word "fellow".

No one knows what that means. That makes no sense.

I know who I am and what I do, and I'm putting my foot down.

You know that you're more ignorant than you care to admit. You know that you do nothing to open your mind to be receptive, and you know you do everything you can to avoid being humble enough to learn from other people who are trying to help you.

You are putting your foot down, meaning you are taking a stand. What you are taking a stand 'for', is for keeping your head buried in the sand, never to learn from others. So essentially, you are putting your foot down, and are taking a stand for nothing. For remaining ignorant and obstinate, hurting yourself professionally and personally in the process, all the while fending off and avoiding those who have great things to teach you.

I think I maybe generally done with forums

That is you giving up. That is you admitting out loud that you refuse to learn from others. That is you claiming that you are above the need for criticism of your work. That is you grinding to a halt any ability to learn from other people's invaluable experiences, so you can better yourself in your life and career.

Or, that is you pretending to be a martyr.

You're better than that. I know you are.

Why don't you?

[ikken]

Morris, either change your meds or ragequit, whatever you find acceptable.

> People on forums generally seem to be hateful.
nonono bb, it's you being both pressed and pretentious.

I can speculate how you've come here looking for emotional support, kittens and hugs, and the first batches of commercial product critique don't really meet your own expectations,
but it's no excuse for your rude and immature behavior. that, combined with less than stellar "I'm up my own ass" work, gives an overall bad impression of an over defensive art kid.
How do you take art-directors critique in that case?
Have you ever been told to RE-paint/re-model something?
(Have you even worked in conceptart/3D production, aside from qute toyz?)

[Hitsu//San]

Oh my god, are we wasting our time here again instead of helping those who cares? Look was the only one who said something true and useful in 2 days. What's happening here it's a shame, this guy is not ready to grow up and doesn't want to do it right now (and he can't even explain what he says) and no one of us can do anything about it with words. Please leave him be, we have already helped him so freaking much and that wasn't what he wanted...

There are other people that will trow this guy out of the window to have someone like us to talk about this work.

[Triplaneta]

You can't even accept critiques from the people on the internet, I wonder how would you feel if you get to meet one IRL...

Less QQ more pewpew... gg yo!

[Velocity Kendall]