Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Creating  a digital human is without a doubt the most difficult of CG tasks, and I can see the enormous effort you've put into this. Well done. Your Hair is excellent, and you've done a commendable job the face and clothing. Keep sculpting faces, as may as possible. However I'd suggest looking at scan data as well - there's a lot to be learned. check out texturingXYZ  also, its' all industry standard stuff. Great work.

• superb

• Excellent technical work and workflow process, with detailing to a very high standard. While you've made a good effort with the child scaling and proportions I think that it's not quite there yet, which can be seen from the standing poses. Your initial blockouts look a lot closer to scale, though it seems as the project progressed you may have made some changes to the neck and head areas that have thrown it off a little. An excellent project though, completed to a very high level.

• Submission Title:                                  Jake Chambers – Dark Tower

  Submission Tier:                                   Search for a Star             

  Assessor: Anthony O’Donnell          Lead Artist           Firesprite

   Concept design & Development:

  Even though the work is based on an existing fictional character appropriate additional research was done to lock down the design and define the proper body type and look suitable for the characters age.

   Technical Art:

  Polycount wise the character would be suitable for use in a current gen third person game.

  Textures on the other hand still being at 4k even for the satchel is a bit high. Cut scene pending the 4k textures could be loaded for these. In terms of a character this is a minor issue comparative to an environment using 4k textures and can easily be reduced for use at runtime.

  The sculpting process was well considered including the option to also work in Maya to get the base shapes down.

  UV unwraps are tight and packed. Lightmap density is consistent on the character.

  Material definition is good and there is roughness variation in considered areas such as a smoother surface response where the face would be greasier or rougher dirt build up on the satchel base.

  The hair creation technique was good and resulted in really natural looking hair albeit a nightmare to rig :)

  Channel packed textures were used and correctly set to no sRGB.

   Creative Art:

  A lot of subtlety in detailing is required to pull off a character of this age along with anatomical knowledge. The artist has done a really good job with this. Evidence of observation skills and restraint in detailing is evident. The characters facial features are not over defined, the considered and well executed youthful softness / fat in the face help greatly to portray the characters age.

  Minor criticisms would be the back of the knee area I’d expect the muscles and tendons to be a touch tighter / better defined along with the neck muscles. Where the left arm bends in the campfire pose volume around the upper forearm is lost around the elbow joint. This could be rectified with a blend shape.

  The fine detailing such as the shirt sticking out from under the jumper, dirty / greasy face, the scratch on the characters leg and satchel with period stickers really add a lot of visual interest that also supports the narrative.

   

  The additional work of producing an environment for the characters presentation are a nice touch. Being a character entry I’ll not review these elements.

  Lighting wise it may be worthwhile to consider real-world light temperatures / colours to light the scene unless the colourful stylised work is intentional, it does give on otherworldly feel to the images.

  http://planetpixelemporium.com/tutorialpages/light.html

   Written Documentation:

  The written documentation was well presented and went into detail regarding the artist’s decision making processes and also techniques used to produce the character.

   Final Presentation:

  The final renders look really good. Depth of field and some fog would help add more depth to the scene and take away the somewhat present “gamey” look. The posed character along with all the aforementioned detailing to the character model and nicely handled anatomical  and clothing sculpting make this a strong piece overall.