Artist looking for mutually benificial relationship in Austin, TX

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24 comments, last by jbadams 12 years, 9 months ago
Constructive critique:
Your portfolio shows promising talent, but is mainly displaying one type of urban combat warfare.
What I would like to see is that you extend your portfolio to include concept art in other genres, like fantasy, sci-fi, horror, perhaps even pixel art.

If you want to add GUI to your portfolio, there no need for you to actually use a real UI library, just draw an UI design as an image like this:
http://www.antonw.co...face-design.JPG
http://www.antonw.co...y-game-gui2.JPG
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Your taking this too personal, as if I am attacking you because I've known you previously and that no matter what you post on the internet I am going say bad things about it. If it was awesome I would have said it was awesome.The only negative part of my post was my point about you being invested 8 or more years in trying to be an artist. That is a long time and very shocking. It really just looks like you did the minimum amount of school work, which is never enough.

dmitsuki: Indie studios are not and will never be about being the "best" at something.[/quote]
Really though, you didn't find that negative. You said you are trying to get a paid salary job, and this guy says. "You don't have to be the best to be an indie." So already he stripped you down to "indie".

Zethariel: If the OP will be "good enough", confident and have some experience in making games[/quote]
Abel Oroz: In concept art, "good enough" is definitely not good enough. [/quote]
So here is one guy saying that you might be "good enough", and another guy saying good enough doesn't cut it.

So you can say I'm negative all you want, I'm giving you way more feedback than what these guys are ever going to.

So here is exactly what I did when I first viewed your portfolio: I would have sent this as a PM, but nobody has critiqued u at all. They are just whinning because my critique was negative, and in turn indirectly said negative things. They are simply being too nice, and that is not helping anyone. I have had friends make me feel bad about my work. Some program and some just play games. They will say, yea its cool but it looks like shit, its not next gen, etc etc. Someones perception is someones perception. What people are also missing is that when you comment on peoples work, if its awesome, your going to say dude its awesome I'm a fan. If it sucks, your going to say it sucks. Anything else would be a lie. So here is my public critique.

(begin critique)
Cool, I live down the road from this guy, hopefully he is good because I'm always looking for someone to team up with to venture into a business with. I don't care what the website looks like or the domain name, but the website is boring. Also, drop the hamsta stuff, when your domain expires just use your full name. That is pretty typical and looks more professional that your infact selling yourself on this website and not worried about being funny/unique/blogger. Ok first concept piece is mediocore. He has at least artistic ideas to come up with some mech/robot designs. 2nd picture of tanks is very cartoonish/childish none of them have a sharp form / distinguished form. The first row I cant even tell what I'm looking at when compared to your robot designs in the first image. The next images are of a mech tank that are very basic designs with no detail, just basic shapes. Then they are in different colors (which is more of a pop art flyer for an art show than a concept artist a 3D artist can use). The characters are very indistinguishable, no personality. Landscapes are basically just ground anyone cant paint ground. Most environment work will have plants, trees, shapes of terrain that makes them unique. So if I took one of those and asked what is the setting for this game. "Well its a desert." Ok well is it
alien, rocky/pointy, big craters, what type of vegetation, is there a war going on, peaceful, animals.. The studies page is pretty useless. Again what can I do with those pictures, most are impressionsim which doesn't help someone that needs to model something. The worst part of concept to modeling is going "What should I make this part look like?" For instance your tank. How are the legs connected, a round hinge, are there cables etc etc. Then (whatever I cant not say this offensively), I see "Resume link" and was like what? How does at 16 year old have a resume and saw what you
did. So while I disagree with some people that go, well this is art or whatever, Impressionsism and pop art etc are not useful to games. So after seeing that this is years of work, I would think you put your best work on your site if your applying to game companies and basically if that is it, then I stand by everything I said. Seeing as your background is in graphic design, I think that work resembles your work if your going to try and get into games you either need to: draw a lot more and complete your ideas not just some basic shapes/landscapes. At that point I basically said for as much art as I do, (just being flat out honest) that I can draw more useful stuff that I can use for myself to do 3D work.

So if I am actually hiring someone I ask, how creative is this guy. Concept artist need to be able to create wide variety of characters, elfs, dragons, vehicles.......they are the creative point in the game. Your not showing you are creative. Maybe you are but I cant hire you for a maybe.
(end critique)

If your still pissed at me for that, then sit back and clear you head and then try to answer all those relevant theoretical questions I posted in my critique of your work and then look at these concepts and ask yourself those same questions about this random guys work. Can he draw characters...blah blah....what are the settings/plot for his environments, is he creative to make stuff for my new fantasy game or horror game whatever. Even if they were shitty sketches and black and white, we aren't comparing that, thats what these other guys are saying about who is better
and thats not what I'm trying to show you.
http://conceptjunkyard.blogspot.com/

Thats it. I'm not going to post any more comments after this. If you can't find ANY bit of advice that is good out of that then I don't know what else to say. That is WAY more than anyone else is doing for you in their other posts.

NBA2K, Madden, Maneater, Killing Floor, Sims http://www.pawlowskipinball.com/pinballeternal

"Really though, you didn't find that negative. You said you are trying to get a paid salary job, and this guy says. "You don't have to be the best to
be an indie." So already he stripped you down to "indie"."

Really this is the most ignorant thing I have read in a long time. Just because you are a independent developer (which means you do not have a publisher) doesn't mean you cannot get a salary. Valve is a indie studio, I guess they must be a stripped down version of a real studio.
You need to be able to take criticism.

Me and others like me use the help wanted forum to look for potentional artists for our indie games. You’re portfolio might be good enough but if I get the impression that you become defensive and/or aggressive when someone criticizes you. I loose interest and look somewhere else. Whether or not you asked for criticism is utterly irrelevant. If you feel that the person criticizing you is wrong or out of place respond politely or don’t respond at all. Also dpadam450 gave you some good advice. It wasnt a personal attack on you and even if it was you must still keep your composure.

Working with someone that starts a fight with you after receiving critique from you is one of the worsts things for a team leader.

If you feel that the person criticizing you is wrong or out of place respond politely or don’t respond at all.

You could also report one or more posts for moderation using the report buttons in the lower left of each post; if someone is genuinely over-stepping the mark a moderator will tell them to cut it out, and potentially remove or edit posts, issue warnings, etc.


That being said, cut the banter please everyone -- only enquiries from interested parties from this post onwards please!
If the original poster wants further feedback they have the option of asking for it in the Visual Arts forum.

Anyone wanting to offer further advice otherwise may do so politely via private message rather than cluttering and continually bumping this topic.

- Jason Astle-Adams

@dpadam450

As good as criticism is for every artist (along with self-criticism and a stronge sense of judgement), misinformed criticism can be misleading.

On your comments on how useless is to show studies and sketches in a portfolio, I must disagree very strongly. A concept portfolio is not done for 3D modelers, but for art directors. As and art director I expect to see several things in a portfolio:

- a strong personal style
- the potential to get out of that style (more cartoony/styilised stuff if your main style is realistic, etc).
- strong imagination
- strong problem-solving skills implicit in your art
- fast sketching, the ability to iterate on it, and eventually develop a finished piece.
- very strong artistic education. That means life-drawing sketches, plein-air paintings, anatomy, fast compositions, etc are a SUPER important part.

As you can see, there is much more to a portfolio than the final results, that must be implicit in an artist's work. I wouldn't surely hire an artist with only hyper-real, ultra-detailed stuff, because I don't know if he is able to work upon restrictions or adapt to other styles, or show me something unfinished that still communicates (there is not always time to finish stuff). Besides, to see a hyper-real tank, I'd go and take a photo of it, I don't need a concept artist.
Abel: I've just warned everyone to restrict further replies to queries from interested parties -- take it elsewhere (private message for example) if you want to continue that discussion -- that applies to any replies you'd like to make to me as well by the way.

Everyone: Any further posts other than serious enquiries or updates from the original poster in this topic will be deleted.

- Jason Astle-Adams

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