re-posting feedback with spacing, hopefully this is a bit easier to read through!

Submission title: Guardian of the forests  

Student name: Dominyka Baliuanite 

Challenge tier: SFAS 

Assessor name: Caleb O’Brien - Junior Character Artist @Firesprite 

Research & Development   

Really nice concept I love that you took the time to explore and iterate an existing idea of yours with sketches before designing the final look of the character.  

There is little research or reference evident in the final document. I think a mood board or reference sheet would have been really nice to see here. This is especially important when aiming for a specific style such as Apex legends. I’m sure you do have some solid reference for the character, totally understand if you ran out of time to include this in your document.    

Technical Art 

Game mesh 

Good quality game mesh with evenly spaced quads and clean loops around areas of deformation. In future keep an eye out for separate elements that sit next to each other and ensure the loops line up across both meshes. You’ve nailed this for the most part with consistent density between separate elements. Nice clean loops in the face to support animation. I feel that you could be slightly more generous with the density around the hair line in order to support the nice fall off and details you’ve captured in the sculpt as the final hairline/scalp transition feels quite sharp.  

UVs are packed well, you’ve taken the time to lay them out efficiently by gridding them out nicely which is great to see. Appropriate use of texture sets to separate skin from cloth etc. One thing that may help with future characters is placing edge loops and running your UV seam lines along natural seams in the sculpt such as over the cloth seams. This helps to better hide your UV seams and means that if you tile patterns over the model they will terminate naturally at the cloth seams/intersections as the UV seams match the construction of the garment.  

Baking result is really solid and the high res sculpt details have for the most part translated well into your game mesh with no visible baking artifacts. Some of the lovely soft cloth folds evident in the sculpt are hard to spot on the final character. Don’t be afraid to support larger cloth folds with geometry by cutting them into the game mesh, or perhaps by pushing these details out further in the texturing phase. Certain features such as the jacket fold over the chest could be captured with geometry in order to support the strong lip of the cloth sections layered over one and other.  

Rig 

Highly commend you for creating a rig from scratch for this character. The final poses are very successful and dynamic so clearly your game mesh is set up well for defamation.  

Engine set-up 

Good material set up in engine and nice to see use of packed textures and material instances.  

Creative Art 

Sculpt 

Your sculpt is fantastic you’ve done a great job at capturing that Apex Legends style. The silhouette of the character is really interesting and unique featuring strong and appealing shapes. You’ve achieved great material expression with the cloth and fur feeling very soft which is aligns with your red panda inspiration. The hair treatment is lovely too really nice work here, though I do feel it would benefit from a few fly aways breaking away from the larger clumps of hair.  But overall you've got a really nice balance of realism and stylised which creates a very appealing result.  

Texturing 

I think you have a really solid base here and some lovely colour balance cross the model that creates a beautiful visual read. However, I think the material expression could be pushed slightly further, especially if you’re aiming for the desired Apex Legends style. Roughness levels on face/skin are working well and the make-up looks wonderful especially the way it creates highlight on the cheek bones from certain angles. The material expression on the tights is a good benchmark for the style you should aim to hit, I think the cloth needs a little work more work to reach this same quality bar. The surface on the cloth is a little hard to make out and could benefit from some weave influence into the diffuse/roughness. You could also consider scaling up the cloth weave details slightly so they read better from a distance as the materials feel quite smooth in the final renders.  

Pose 

Your poses are very dynamic and full of personality! Great work posing the face of your character too in order to add lots of life into the final renders. Your poses and characters personality are definitely the highlight of your project for me along with the brilliant sculpt.  

Documentation 

The documentation is clear and well-presented but sadly lacking overall. It would have been great to see further insight into how your character was put together. The broad strokes are covered well but there are no notes discussing interesting challenges and how they we’re overcome.  

Pre-production 

I like the fact you chose one of your old concepts and developed it further with some exploratory sketches. It’s great to see you exploring potential poses and personality in the early stages in order to inform your creative and technical decision making.  

Production 

Although each stage of the pipeline is nicely presented and evident in the doc, I would have liked to see more breakdowns and work in progress work like sculpt block outs etc. with written commentary in order to support the final result in each stage.  

Post-production 

Project has been rounded off nicely with some fantastic renders and presentation. However it would be great to show off a the tools and software used during development, along with a brief summary about the project as a whole and your lessons learnt.   

Final Presentation  

Final presentation is extremely successful. The character is presented clearly and well-lit creating some really aesthetically pleasing images. I love that you’re capturing a sense of movement in your leaping pose, showing this off from two various camera angles. The standing pose is fantastic too, you’ve captured a beautifully subtle gesture between the hips and shoulders that adds a tonne of personality to the character. My only criticism is that I’d love to see a firmer connection to the floor plane in the standing poses as the character feels like it’s floating in a void rather than being grounded within the scene. A Simple shadow beneath the feet would be enough here to really solidify those feet on the floor, supporting an already strong pose. You could even fake a floor shadow  in Photoshop. 

The final renders on your submission page would be perfect for an Artstation portfolio piece. Be sure to include renders of your sculpt and game mesh alongside in your portfolio as you have created a very strong piece here and I wouldn’t want this hard work going missed, great job! I'm Looking forward to seeing what you create next. 

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or would like any further feedback.