09-10-2015, 08:54 AM
Hey, David I had a skip through your work, here are some thoughts.
I thought your work was decent, and you have some nice technical foundations but many of your pieces seemed to lack a sense of impact and left me a bit unmoved.
There were some great pieces:
mountain-spearhead, shambling colossus, and the Hander were probably my favourites for various reasons. I also noted with interest that these ones generally had a larger dynamic colour range than the others.
In terms of issues, I saw a few things. Your not-photobashed figures and people have some anatomy and proportion problems. The winged lady isn't quite drawn in perspective properly and has anatomy issues; the megaman face is highlighting gaps in your facial structure knowledge. All your figures tend to be very static for the most part.
With your photobashed environments, I am left a bit underwhelmed. Technically you do integrate the textures fairly well and generally the compositions are good, but I do see scope for improvement. I also see some small errors in perspective here and there, that make things look a little off.
I think that the colour palettes you use end up a little on the drab/gray side of things. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
I think your lighting schemes are probably a bit weak. Adding a bit of dynamic lighting in areas would go far to enliven the pieces and create a bit more impact.
There is also very little "movement" and life in these enviro pieces. I know many of them are abandoned last of us style things, but a bit of dynamic weather effect, animals, smoke, fog or wind. Something to add a sense of a breathing world might help.
Lastly the topic of uniqueness. Looking honestly at most of the environments most of what I could see could be classified as "Last of Us" knockoffs or Kucara gumroad tutorial pieces. Anything that exhibits a bit more originality or felt like it had a bit more of your own vision in it, I liked more. Don't just do what Kucara or (insert big name concept guy) does, they are already doing it and are knocking it out of the park. What is it that you can bring to your pieces that they can't!
I think this is fairly important. Your own comment about being distracted by doing pieces based on jobs out there at the time is actually a very damaging mental space to be in. This means you are putting more priority on doing work that has been chosen based on job availability, rather than doing work that comes truly from within you. Perhaps you need to take a bit of a pause and have a good think about what kind of work you would like to do if money wasn't an issue. Then start to do some of those instead. You will probably end up with pieces that have a stronger sense of being to them.
Folio. I know quite a few people do this, but I personally don't think ArtStation does that well as a folio site. It is too generic, not personally branded and it would be very easy for people hiring you to wander off and check out a thousand other artists who are just one click away. Just something to think about, it will do in a pinch, but I think is the lazy way out.
Once again uniqueness: you are actually a business offering a service, you have to act like one and stand out from the crowd, not sit in the middle of it.
I think you need to be more brutal with the pieces you leave in your folio. Anything that shows errors in fundamentals needs to be removed or fixed. I would do this to the megaman piece (anatomy issues) , the heretic angel (anatomy, perspective, proportion issues) the forest pond (perspective, scale and comp issues), the sandbergh entrance (nice, but needs more punch), the delorean chase (I like it but that main figure is way too simple).
Using overly large images will slow download times, so keep them manageable.
Hope that helps!
I thought your work was decent, and you have some nice technical foundations but many of your pieces seemed to lack a sense of impact and left me a bit unmoved.
There were some great pieces:
mountain-spearhead, shambling colossus, and the Hander were probably my favourites for various reasons. I also noted with interest that these ones generally had a larger dynamic colour range than the others.
In terms of issues, I saw a few things. Your not-photobashed figures and people have some anatomy and proportion problems. The winged lady isn't quite drawn in perspective properly and has anatomy issues; the megaman face is highlighting gaps in your facial structure knowledge. All your figures tend to be very static for the most part.
With your photobashed environments, I am left a bit underwhelmed. Technically you do integrate the textures fairly well and generally the compositions are good, but I do see scope for improvement. I also see some small errors in perspective here and there, that make things look a little off.
I think that the colour palettes you use end up a little on the drab/gray side of things. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
I think your lighting schemes are probably a bit weak. Adding a bit of dynamic lighting in areas would go far to enliven the pieces and create a bit more impact.
There is also very little "movement" and life in these enviro pieces. I know many of them are abandoned last of us style things, but a bit of dynamic weather effect, animals, smoke, fog or wind. Something to add a sense of a breathing world might help.
Lastly the topic of uniqueness. Looking honestly at most of the environments most of what I could see could be classified as "Last of Us" knockoffs or Kucara gumroad tutorial pieces. Anything that exhibits a bit more originality or felt like it had a bit more of your own vision in it, I liked more. Don't just do what Kucara or (insert big name concept guy) does, they are already doing it and are knocking it out of the park. What is it that you can bring to your pieces that they can't!
I think this is fairly important. Your own comment about being distracted by doing pieces based on jobs out there at the time is actually a very damaging mental space to be in. This means you are putting more priority on doing work that has been chosen based on job availability, rather than doing work that comes truly from within you. Perhaps you need to take a bit of a pause and have a good think about what kind of work you would like to do if money wasn't an issue. Then start to do some of those instead. You will probably end up with pieces that have a stronger sense of being to them.
Folio. I know quite a few people do this, but I personally don't think ArtStation does that well as a folio site. It is too generic, not personally branded and it would be very easy for people hiring you to wander off and check out a thousand other artists who are just one click away. Just something to think about, it will do in a pinch, but I think is the lazy way out.
Once again uniqueness: you are actually a business offering a service, you have to act like one and stand out from the crowd, not sit in the middle of it.
I think you need to be more brutal with the pieces you leave in your folio. Anything that shows errors in fundamentals needs to be removed or fixed. I would do this to the megaman piece (anatomy issues) , the heretic angel (anatomy, perspective, proportion issues) the forest pond (perspective, scale and comp issues), the sandbergh entrance (nice, but needs more punch), the delorean chase (I like it but that main figure is way too simple).
Using overly large images will slow download times, so keep them manageable.
Hope that helps!