04-27-2015, 01:02 AM
I apologize in advance if any of this sounds harsh, just offering feedback not trying to be rude or anything
People will hire you if your work is good enough. A piece of paper really means nothing if your work doesn't match what they're looking for, and from looking at your portfolio I think you need study the fundamentals of illustration/art more, if that's what you want to do. Focus on making your art better and you will get jobs, it's really that simple. If you can't honestly put your best piece beside work from the kind of job you want and say that they're very similar, and no that doesn't mean "Its not as good but close", then you will most likely not get work.
You have a good basis to work off of; your perspective is decent, you have good understanding of anatomy and form, and you have a good sense of character design. Everything could be pushed further and improved imo (it always will be like this by the way d:), but here Where it's lacking most in my opinion:
1. Rendering; A lot of your work feels rushed and not thought out enough. I don't think this is something that you can correct just by spending more time on each piece. You need to study more and apply those studies to your piece. It's becoming a cliche to recommend this at this point, but it's really all there is to improving. Copy the real world so you can make your imagined ones more believable and interesting
2. Colour and light. It's a common problem among strong draftsmen, as you seem to be judging by your folio. It's sort of related to rendering, however you can have excellent colour and light and still have a looser aesthetic, so they're not dependent on each other. A lot of your lighting is either very flat and doesn't show any form, is very consistent across the whole image and doesn't help lead the eye to focal points or is extremely white and forces you into uninteresting colour schemes. In some of the environment pieces the lighting just straight up doesn't make sense (ie the light of the environment doesn't affect the things in it in any noticeable way, the quality of the light source isn't reflected in the buildings and so on). Again this could be corrected with study. If you have to, do studies where you force yourself to not use any lines at all and focus entirely on the lighting and colours. Analyze how they're working and see how they can make better pictures. I highly recommend practical colour and light by jeremy vickery, and also Colour Theory by richard keyes. James gurney's colour and light book is also very good. "How to render" by scott robertson is also very good to learn about how shadows work. His book "How to draw" is a prerequisite to that though, so make sure you understand that before hand. It sounds crazy but understanding perspective in depth is paramount to understanding how to accurately light things. You seem to understand it already though
3. Consistency in message. By this I mean, what exactly are you trying to get as a job? Your portfolio doesn't have any singular message that really stands out to me and tells me what I should hire you for. Your strength honestly seems to be vehicle/prop design, yet it's the last group on your page and some of your weaker work is the first thing we see. You're better off having a small, super tight and sexy portfolio with 6-12 of your BEST and ONLY your best work that shows what you're best at. If your characters aren't to the same polish as your vehicles or objects get rid of them. If you're illustrations aren't as strong as your characters get rid of those too. You will be judged by your weakest work, and if there's a large gap between your best and worst then you will likely be passed off on. if the first works aren't captivating or clearly show what you want to do as a job and what you can do in terms of your drawing ability they will stop looking by the 5th image.
In your study time you can focus on improving your weaknesses, or you can become amazing at one thing. Thats up to you, but getting good at one thing is faster and easier. I still think you should study and do a bit of everything, since they all feed off of each other, but ultimately early in your career you should focus on one kind of job and become amazing at that
When it comes to focusing on working, building discipline and learning how to stop slacking off, I wrote an article about that. It's quite long but it's in my signature if you're interested. The strategies I discuss helped me a ton and they have helped some other people as well, and most of them are quite concrete as opposed to wishy washy life advice
I will leave you with this though: love the process of learning and getting better. Make that your life long goal. Destroy your skill ceiling, make the sky the limit and always seek to get better, even if you feel comfortable where you're at there's always more to learn. If you fall in love with the act of putting down marks and of creating images rather than the final product you will never run out of discipline and will always be wanting to do some work each day. Also don't be afraid to experiment and try new things in your workflow
If you have any questions or anything was unclear let me know and I can elaborate more. And if you do read that article and nothing helps to get you working on your own, join a google hangout and get in touch with other artists or join a study group and share your stuff. Doing that has stood the test of time, community is always one of the best ways to get things done. If that still doesn't work, ask someone to hold you accountable with the amount of work you're doing so that you become consistent in your output. When people are expecting you to do something you tend to get it done, even if the consequences are minor.
Good luck and remember to have fun with this
People will hire you if your work is good enough. A piece of paper really means nothing if your work doesn't match what they're looking for, and from looking at your portfolio I think you need study the fundamentals of illustration/art more, if that's what you want to do. Focus on making your art better and you will get jobs, it's really that simple. If you can't honestly put your best piece beside work from the kind of job you want and say that they're very similar, and no that doesn't mean "Its not as good but close", then you will most likely not get work.
You have a good basis to work off of; your perspective is decent, you have good understanding of anatomy and form, and you have a good sense of character design. Everything could be pushed further and improved imo (it always will be like this by the way d:), but here Where it's lacking most in my opinion:
1. Rendering; A lot of your work feels rushed and not thought out enough. I don't think this is something that you can correct just by spending more time on each piece. You need to study more and apply those studies to your piece. It's becoming a cliche to recommend this at this point, but it's really all there is to improving. Copy the real world so you can make your imagined ones more believable and interesting
2. Colour and light. It's a common problem among strong draftsmen, as you seem to be judging by your folio. It's sort of related to rendering, however you can have excellent colour and light and still have a looser aesthetic, so they're not dependent on each other. A lot of your lighting is either very flat and doesn't show any form, is very consistent across the whole image and doesn't help lead the eye to focal points or is extremely white and forces you into uninteresting colour schemes. In some of the environment pieces the lighting just straight up doesn't make sense (ie the light of the environment doesn't affect the things in it in any noticeable way, the quality of the light source isn't reflected in the buildings and so on). Again this could be corrected with study. If you have to, do studies where you force yourself to not use any lines at all and focus entirely on the lighting and colours. Analyze how they're working and see how they can make better pictures. I highly recommend practical colour and light by jeremy vickery, and also Colour Theory by richard keyes. James gurney's colour and light book is also very good. "How to render" by scott robertson is also very good to learn about how shadows work. His book "How to draw" is a prerequisite to that though, so make sure you understand that before hand. It sounds crazy but understanding perspective in depth is paramount to understanding how to accurately light things. You seem to understand it already though
3. Consistency in message. By this I mean, what exactly are you trying to get as a job? Your portfolio doesn't have any singular message that really stands out to me and tells me what I should hire you for. Your strength honestly seems to be vehicle/prop design, yet it's the last group on your page and some of your weaker work is the first thing we see. You're better off having a small, super tight and sexy portfolio with 6-12 of your BEST and ONLY your best work that shows what you're best at. If your characters aren't to the same polish as your vehicles or objects get rid of them. If you're illustrations aren't as strong as your characters get rid of those too. You will be judged by your weakest work, and if there's a large gap between your best and worst then you will likely be passed off on. if the first works aren't captivating or clearly show what you want to do as a job and what you can do in terms of your drawing ability they will stop looking by the 5th image.
In your study time you can focus on improving your weaknesses, or you can become amazing at one thing. Thats up to you, but getting good at one thing is faster and easier. I still think you should study and do a bit of everything, since they all feed off of each other, but ultimately early in your career you should focus on one kind of job and become amazing at that
When it comes to focusing on working, building discipline and learning how to stop slacking off, I wrote an article about that. It's quite long but it's in my signature if you're interested. The strategies I discuss helped me a ton and they have helped some other people as well, and most of them are quite concrete as opposed to wishy washy life advice
I will leave you with this though: love the process of learning and getting better. Make that your life long goal. Destroy your skill ceiling, make the sky the limit and always seek to get better, even if you feel comfortable where you're at there's always more to learn. If you fall in love with the act of putting down marks and of creating images rather than the final product you will never run out of discipline and will always be wanting to do some work each day. Also don't be afraid to experiment and try new things in your workflow
If you have any questions or anything was unclear let me know and I can elaborate more. And if you do read that article and nothing helps to get you working on your own, join a google hangout and get in touch with other artists or join a study group and share your stuff. Doing that has stood the test of time, community is always one of the best ways to get things done. If that still doesn't work, ask someone to hold you accountable with the amount of work you're doing so that you become consistent in your output. When people are expecting you to do something you tend to get it done, even if the consequences are minor.
Good luck and remember to have fun with this