Hey, guys.
So, a couple weeks ago, I got let go from my company as the primary concept artist. Since then I've been trying to put together a portfolio for other big-boy jobs in the field, but since I've been basically making it up as I go along I've decided to post some work from my time there and get some feedback.
Feedback on what I can do to improve the quality of my designs, their descriptiveness, and any tips on improving rate of output would be appreciated. Perhaps most importantly, though, I'd to know if any of these could be used as portfolio material, and what would be the best way to present them.
Some preface: The images presented for each design represent the bulk of the work performed from start to finish. There is some work in between, but in a general sense these images represent the arc of development from the very start to the very end. Since this is such a major dump, I'm going to sort these into spoiler tags.
All material copyright (c) 2013 One Planet Education Network®. All Rights Reserved unless otherwise stated.
1: Sea Demi-goddess Main Character
Initial silhouette sketches to establish basic shape.
Honing the elements chosen and exploring basic design options
Focusing in on specific clothing elements and experimenting
Face/hair design. The project director felt pretty good about where the face was at in the previous stages of development and decided he didn't want to stray too far from that basic shape.
Pants
More pants
Testing patterns for trim on pants
Quick sketches to test out the near-complete design with all the chosen elements together.
Final design (after a brief phase of picking colors)
2: Super Spy Class for Player Avatar
Initial silhouettes (body type already previously chosen)
Second pass silhouettes after feedback
Designing the back elements
More backs, based on feedback
Zero-point Gravity Gauntlet designs
Gauntlets in action
Final gauntlet design
Boot details
Color options
Final pass for helmet design
Rough 4 point turnaround
Final design
3: Synthetic Animal Companion for Player Avatar
Initials thumbs and silhouettes
Silhouettes, second pass
Quick color passes/synthesis of all chosen design elements up to that point
Horns
Legs
Final design and notes
4: Miscellaneous examples of different design work
Color/patterning passes (copyright (c) 2013 Eric Dagley)
Facial designs for main character
Further tweaking after feedback
Facial designs for alien race
That's it for now. Let me know what you think.
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the weakest spot, in my opinion is here:
You have such confident forms everywhere else, but the eyes on these guys seem to be flat, messy, and unsure of how to extend themselves out of a manga style. You may want to do some flexing in that area, just to see where you could push it.
I would also say that you seem to err on the side of skinny, when it comes to making animals and robots, it'd be interesting to see what you did with some really heavy, boxy forms. Tank characters, tank animals, tank robot, that kind of thing. Show a little flexibility in your visual vocabulary.
For the most part though, I think your work is pretty great.
Was the contract up at the company you worked for?
@Godfather There were a few reasons, though I don't really want to get into specifics just now.
I'm wondering if anybody had any thoughts or tips about the Superspy 4-point turnaround. Turnarounds are my weakest point. They take me forever to do, and I never feel like I know if I'm wasting a lot of time on exacting detail.
Is there a standard for how detailed and literal they need to be when it isn't specified? I know when doing turnarounds for toy designs, immaculate proportional and texture consistency is vital, but does the same hold true when doing turnarounds for a 3D modeler? Is the 4 point turnaround I posted appropriate, even for something that needed to be done in a crunch?
Wish I had something constructive to tell you
Perhaps you could reference this for the 3/4 pose. I'm not sure if the model is supposed to be in the same pose in the 3/4 as the full 360, but the feet of the front back and side poses are all pointed nearly straight forward, whereas the 3/4 feet are pointed at nearly a 90 degree angle. If you actually stand like that, you feel a lot of pressure in your hips and is incredibly uncomfortable, so perhaps that is giving the pose a rather stiff appearance. And I have to agree about the arm. Because the rear arm and shoulder is so forward the front arm feels a little unnatural and forced.
And this may be a nitpick, in all the design drawings the arm attachment is on the left arm, but in the action shot it has switched arms. Idk
This is just my amateur observation, but that's all I got. Hope it helps
Thanks for the input, guys.
I've spent the past few days experimenting with different ways to do silhouettes, trying to create a method that's quick, aesthetically pleasing, and descriptive of the overall shape while providing a few other touchpoints to indicate some of the shapes within the silhouette. While my old silhouetting processes were pretty good at giving me a good foundation to work from, and were typically pretty easy for a director to make decisions from provided we could communicate easily, I want to push them further. Ultimately, I'm trying to reach something approaching the clean and communicative work of artists like Kat Nicole.
Here's my latest batch. The design is for a walking tank serving as a light/medium armored infantry fighting vehicle, with an aesthetic roughly rooted in mid-to-current military aesthetic. I decided to constrict the design to these parameters to approximate an actual assignment instead of going hogwild on drawing whatever cool robot designs came to mind.
ND already provided me with a lot of great input last night. If anybody has any suggestions or ideas on what I should be doing to improve my process/make these more interesting/communicate ideas better, let me know.
[Edit] Also, for some reason my Firefox seems to be upscaling my inline images slightly, so it looks blurrier than it should.
You say they are for infantry fighting vehicles, from that I think of something not a whole lot bigger than a tank? But on some they give of the impression of being building sized. I think maybe it's the windows. If you look at number 6 or 10 for example, that line on the top left looks like the bridge. If it's meant to look that big then ignore me and well done because it does
The other thing was on a couple, 16 in particular, it looks like you were getting a bit rushed and wanted to finish, so didn't polish it as much as the others. If you are sending it to an employer I'd try to be really critical with yourself and make sure they're all up to par.
Great designs though. Keep going!
And thanks for the input on 16. For 15 and 16 I briefly switched up my process for something a bit quicker (under a minute) to see if it would produce something usable. Good to know it doesn't really work.
I want to say you should vary the armament/add some, but I don't know what to change it to, so...
And some next-phase development, fleshing out materials and specific shapes, as well as some very rough colors.
Here's a robot I'm drawing.
(also, thank you, buffylove)
Your robots have just gotten cooler and cooler, man. It'll be nice to see your stuff accumulated in the thread, it really helps with the giving of crits. Just looking at the robots in the OP, you can see cleaner and more variety of forms in your work now and a little more confidence and polish to your rendering.
Futurecars
I love you....
Trying to get better at character design, and drawing humans in general.
You should take a look at Old City Blues if you haven't already. Think you'd dig the style.
My Portfolio Site
It's taking all those influences and making something entirely new. I'm telling you, almost none of the people I study with don't even come close to such a level of uniqueness in their styles, most of them are just regurgitated anime, Simon Biesly or Dan Clowes, they are shadows of their idols, but you guys in the AC, damn... you're casting shadows.
I hadn't heard of Old City Blues, as a matter of fact! It's apparently all online for free so I guess this is what I'm doing with my life for the short term.
I basically agree, m3nace. I tend to think the types of people who work really hard to establish themselves in a community are more likely to try and really define a personality for their work. As opposed to, I guess, the types of people who are mostly just using the internet as a one-way communication/promotion channel.