Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Great job on this project, you showed some really thorough development of a concept with clear annotation of design choices and reference images. Some feedback: ∘ Have a go at sculpting a base mesh yourself! It would be good to see the ability to sculpt anatomy and the face ∘ i would put the body UVs on one tile and the accessories on another. 2 texture sets in total is a good amount of resolution. Spend some time learning how to cut and layout UVs as this will allow you to get much better results in substance painter. ∘ make sure the low poly mesh has smoothed normals before baking, in maya you can do this by selecting the mesh > mesh display > smooth edges ∘ The lighting is a bit too harsh and dark in your final renders because you lose the silhouette of the character and the colour scheme. I like the pink sky HDRI you included, you could use that with a camera that blurs the background and focuses on the character to make it less prominent. ∘ a portrait orientation for the render would show off this character better Good job completing this project! I'm glad you learned a lot and got some great results. Keep up the hard work! Feel free to reach out with any questions ~ Sasha Gallie, Character Artist at Double Eleven https://www.artstation.com/sashagallie
• - In depth documentation and good referencing process. - You’ve got a good visual development process for the concept, despite the issue mentioned below. That doesn’t mean that the visual design can’t be improved though. - In terms of the engine scene, there is no level to load with your character in it and the project opens to a default scene with a landscape in it. Make sure you save your scene as a level file in the editor and you can even go to project settings and select that to be the level that will open by default when you open the project. Also, when importing the character, check the box under “Advanced” > “Combine meshes” if you are importing one character made of multiple meshes, otherwise the editor can get pretty messy with all the parts that you would have to manually combine into an actor, or even worse, manually align in the scene. - In terms of character design, having a human emotion embodied as a character doesn’t mix well with the character trait of being indifferent to humans. I feel like these two design choices are conflicting. With Fiddlesticks, one of your references, he is in a direct relationship with humans and the state of humanity at any given time. He can’t be indifferent because he is only one emotion, fear. His visual design reflects what humans from a certain time and period fear or consider frightening. This is a core design element that makes him a very clear and easy to understand character from a visual point of view. In your case, I feel you took a lot of design elements that you liked from different sources and tried to put them all together, despite some not fitting well. - In an actual production scenario you would be using a body basemesh to save time, although in this scenario it doesn’t outline your anatomy knowledge by doing so. I recommend you plan this into the schedule and get used to sculpting from scratch first, as using premade basemeshes is something you do once you are confident in your skills, not to compensate for them. One book I highly recommend is Anatomy for Sculptors (https://anatomy4sculptors.com/understanding-the-human-figure/). Also, don’t forget to practise anatomy through drawing since a lot of the observations you make in 2D can easily be transferred to 3D. For this I highly recommend drawing quick poses (1-2 min) which force you to find the main lines of action and learn how dynamic the human body is. - You should learn how to UV map properly in order to avoid the issues you mentioned in your doc. Overlapping UV shells might have been a reason why the paint didn’t show up as it should on the body. Give yourself some time to learn the process in Maya, as it has a very good UV editor. - It looks like you modelled your character in a posed state. You have to model it in a neutral, so called “A pose” , then rig it and deform it accordingly. - In terms of the final presentation, the lighting scenario you chose doesn’t do justice to the character at all. The black background with harsh pure black shadows make your work and any detail you’ve put into the character completely unreadable. Personally, I liked the first iteration with HDRIs more and you could have toned down the intensity of the HDRI and added your own lights to accentuate the subject. Overall, you have a good set of 2D fundamentals and if you want to become a character concept artist I recommend learning 3D as well, as there aren’t many 2D character specific jobs out there. Personally, I do both and managed to start a career based on 3D, where I can occasionally use my concept skills on personal projects or even on the job. If you plan to become a fully fledged concept artist on the other hand, you need to know how to concept environments and props as well, that being an industry standard. Keep practising and I look forward to see what you make next! Tip: Have a look at the following free course which outlines the common pipeline of character creation for games: Character Production by Daniel Rodrigues - https://www.artstation.com/learning/courses/xvl/research-and-blockout/chapters/GMDe/introduction Feel free to reach me at: verisof08 on Discord or via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mihaiandrusandu/