re-posting feedback with spacing, hopefully this is a bit easier to read through!
Submission title: Queequeg
Student name: Colin Daniel
Challenge tier: SFAS
Assessor name: Caleb O’Brien - Junior Character Artist @Firesprite
Research & Development
I really like the fact that you made time for research and collected strong reference, especially for your character's pose. I can certainly see the influence of this research in the final result. Really strong concept. Love the research and reference. Your influences and inspiration have really come through strong in the final result which makes for a unique piece. I absolutely love the fact you took the time to explore different colour palettes for the character. I can tell you put real thought and conscious decision making into each palette and clearly the final result has benefited greatly from this experimentation. It’s great to see you trying out more extreme ideas such as the clown fish variant in order to help boil down to most successful outcome.
Technical Art / Workflow
Game mesh
Really solid result from your baking. The high-res sculpted details have translated really well onto your game mesh and you’ve done a good job of supporting important forms with geometry. Nice choice of marmoset for the baking too as it has clearly given you a solid result, especially using the grouping feature you’ve created a clean result with no visible artifacts.
Rig
Really nice work on the rig it’s fantastic that you’re demonstrating a good understanding of rigging and skinning as this can feed back into your decision making when laying out polys for game res meshes. The rig seems to have supported some very successful poses and a brilliant idle animation which is the icing on the cake. This will really help your portfolio stand out to employers as it’s much easier for them to picture your work in a game setting.
Unreal Engine
The character is supported by a successful material set up in engine, with some extra features explored in the skin shader such as subsurface and a really nice use of Fresnel plugged into the diffuse/metallic giving the scales a lovely effect. It would be great to see you working with packed textures in future in order to optimise the material set up, but overall, really solid work here.
Creative Art
Sculpt
Very strong sculpt. High fidelity details such as the scales are supported by areas of rest creating really nice balance of details across the model. Texturing Texturing is extremely successful. The scales are a highlight for me. I love all the different varied materials and elements which create lots of visual interest but still achieving a cohesive result. Lots of nice information in the roughness too that helps sell the idea that this is a seafairing creature.
Documentation
Pre-production
During pre-production and throughout the development it’s clear that you’ve took time to gather reference in order to better inform your creative and technical decision making.
Production
Documentation is very strong and each step of the character's production is clearly laid out and easy to follow. Key stages of production are evident with a nice level of detail, supported by notes on interesting design and workflow choices throughout. I really like how you jumped between ZBrush and 2D paint overs to quickly iterate the design of the character. Artistic methods are thoroughly documented, specifically during the sculpting phase showing a solid understanding of various tools and techniques to create complex details such as the rope and scales.
Post-production
I’d have loved to see your final thoughts on the project as a whole, touching on areas that you feel we’re successful and areas that you feel you could improve in. If you haven’t already, I’d highly suggest taking a step back and evaluating your project in order to determine what worked well for you and how you could improve going forward into your next character. After completing a large project like this it can be really illuminating as to what your strengths and weaknesses are.
Final Presentation
Final lighting is well thought out and creates a strong mood and feels consistent with the theme of the character. Really nice use of rim lighting to highlight the strong silhouette. Final renders feature an extremely strong composition which reinforces the interesting elements of the character and shows off all the hard work which has gone into creating the final piece. Not only are the static poses really strong but you’ve even took the time to create a simple idle animation which is a lovely bonus. Overall you’ve created a fantastic piece of character art that demonstrates creative skill and a solid understanding of the pipeline. Queequeg is extremely visually pleasing and has a tonne of personality which is an epic feat in itself! Really great work I'm very impressed with this project.
Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or would like any further feedback.