Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Hi! First of all, congratulations on taking part in SFAS. Participating in a contest like this is always a challenge. Your submission is looking good overall, here you have some feedback: Technical feedback: - Boots are looking cool, however I’d recommend you to bake the shoelaces in future. Otherwise they will eat a lot of your poly count budget. The knot can be modeled tho. - This is something that it’s different from one project to another but straightening the UVs is becoming more and more common nowadays. It’s a great way to make better use of the UV space. - The topology is looking mostly good but I think some optimization can be done in the body mesh (head or arms) or shoes. - Good use of symmetry objects but you can go a bit further and symmetrize more parts. - Good use of SP/SD in order to avoid making tedious/complex patterns in Zbrush. - Good use of naming conventions. - Good packing texture maps Creative feedback: - Overall improve anatomy skills - Perhaps increasing the size of the stockings pattern could be a good option in order to improve readability. It really depends on the final renders/how the character is gonna be displayed in the game. - The jacket is intersecting the belt in the back area. - There is some bleeding happening in the lowest part of the jacket. It might be a vertex not well aligned or it might need some extra geo. - I like the symbols in her jacket and shirt, they add her realism Keep doing great art! Jose Gonzalez
• Student: Kade Griffin Challenge Tier: Search For A Star Assessor: Jessie Chan Hi Kade! Amazing work on this character, I’m impressed by how much you’ve improved since last year’s submission, keep it up! One thing that particularly stood out to me was the anatomy of your character. I think it’s really important to constantly keep the fundamentals and the bigger picture in mind. Areas that could’ve used more focus are the arms, hips, torso and face. (particularly the width of the elbows, wrists and size of hands On the torso, I think the top of her ribs (where the breasts meet the clavicle) is too planar and slightly too far forward. Thinking about the silhouette, we want to “feel the anatomy” underneath her clothes and from all angles and the way you have it at the moment feels like she is wearing a padded top that smoothes out these forms. That being said, I think the exposed stomach area is quite nice! I like the line that separates the abs and leads into the navel, carrying this idea through to the rest of the character. Even though your character is covered by a long jacket, the problems in the underlying form will always show through. Taking the hair away reveals the issues in the face and head too. Looking at the side profile, I think the face is too far forward on the head, which makes the features feel very far away from the ears. For realism, the features are slightly out of alignment too; the nostril, corner of the lips and inner corner of the eyes should (approximately) line up when looking at the side view. The cheekbone and brow bone are quite exaggerated, and you can see at a ¾ view the high cheekbones bring out hollows of the cheeks at the jaw. The eyes are also perhaps slightly too small for this head but I think this may be because they feel squashed between the surrounding bone structure. I appreciate that’s quite a lot of feedback, but you’ll start seeing these changes after working on more faces. I’d recommend practising with some short 1-2 hour face studies, here’s a great resource “30 heads in 30 days” that you can practise. https://polycount.com/discussion/189005/30-heads-in-30-days Great job on separating your character into multiple texture sets with efficient UVs, you have several quite small islands which you want to avoid (if possible). On future projects, I’d recommend dividing these material sets with more intention and keeping the same asset within one UV space (there are exceptions but this is the case most of the time). For example, all skin elements are on one material set, all clothing is another and so on. This will also help with your naming conventions so it’s exactly clear what will be on each material, so instead of “M_Set1”, we’d use “M_Clothing” or “M_Skin” etc. Make sure your naming conventions also carry over to your final fbx models too. Lastly, I love that you went for a variety of poses for this character, it really adds loads of personality! Unfortunately, I think the emissive is a little overkill and it drowns out the detail across the rest of the character. This could be emphasised by the lack of lighting in the scene surrounding the character too. Take a look at the metahuman base scene on how a backdrop and great 3-point lighting setup can help to make a character shine! Overall, you’ve done a stellar job on this character Kade, I look forward to seeing what you create next! Best of luck, please reach out if you have any questions. :)
• First of all, I want to thank you for the work you've done; you've done well with the task. I found it very interesting to evaluate your character. Thank you for your effort and diligence. I want to wish you good luck in the challenge and creative success! Denis Beletskii. 3D Concept Character Artist. Wargaming. Also, I would like to add some useful materials on working with characters and more. I hope they will be helpful to you when working on new excellent characters. Good breakdowns in my opinion: • Sin Nombre—Valerious by Kristina Perinska https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YBQrOX • Frostpunk Explorer: Character Design for Cinematics by Claudiu Tanasie https://80.lv/articles/001agt-frostpunk-explorer-character-design-for-cinematics/ • Game Res character by William Paré-Jobin https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oAonE4 • Yokai Breakdown by Anastasia Fomina https://www.artstation.com/artwork/OGOn06 • Creating a Strong Male Character by Annina Weber https://80.lv/articles/creating-a-strong-male-character-in-maya-zbrush-substance/ • Marilyn Monroe by Alexander Lyan https://gamesartist.co.uk/marilyn-monroe/ Useful literature: • Excellent anatomy books for sculptors. https://anatomy4sculptors.com/ • A book explaining the use of lighting for artists. https://www.laurenceking.com/products/light-for-visual-artists-second-edition • Anatomy for 3D artists. https://www.brownsbfs.co.uk/Product/Legaspi-Chris/Anatomy-for-3D-artists---the-essential-guide-for-CG-professionals/9781909414242 • Character design. https://store.3dtotal.com/products/fundamentals-of-character-design • Another book on lighting, but this time for portraits. https://www.ammonitepress.com/mastering-lighting-flash-photography/