Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Assessor Name: Caleb O’Brien – Character Artist @ Firesprite Absolutely incredible piece, great job. You’ve created a really unique character with a strong personality whilst demonstrating a solid understanding of the pipeline. This is a highly ambitious project utilising various techniques, you’ve done a lot of work here from the pre-production/concept stage all the way to shader set up and final renders, nice job! Awesome effort at creating the hair using hair cards and xgen to bake hair textures. One tip for the hair cards is to focus on clumps, your layering technique is great, but you could also consider layering up a few cards into a sandwich and placing it as a whole clump, this can give some really successful results, especially in unreal where dithering can be a problem. You’ll be surprised by how quickly you can build out the hair using cards in this way. Remember that reference is so important especially when working on hair, try and find some solid reference of the same hair from every angle, preferably of the same person. Red carpet shoots of celebs can be a great way of gathering high quality hair ref from multiple angles! Consider breaking down your hair reference too and studying it with paint overs highlighting clumps and flow etc. This will help inform your final card placement. It's great that you’re taking the time to do some self-evaluation along the way, making notes on areas you could improve. You could consider working within some set limitations in future to emulate working on an industry game project, such as setting yourself some texture and triangle budgets. Make sure to keep an eye on your distribution of polys, some areas feel slightly dense and could be better spent elsewhere such as near upper torso and shoulders for example. Try saving on polys where possible such as on hard surface elements that won’t deform during animation, such as the prosthetic leg and metal buckles. It’s lovely to see your own personal style coming through in this one, it echoes a similar essence to your Fencer character, great to see how much you’ve developed since that one too. You’ve got a bright future ahead of you and it’s clear you’re really passionate about character art. Keep making awesome characters, remember to have fun and you’re bound to succeed! There’s so much to dive into and I wish I had more time for feedback here, just keeping it high level right now so please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or would like some further feedback on anything in particular!
• Contestant: Mihai Andru Sandu / @Andru Assessor: Tristan McGuire / @Draconic_Cowboy Tier: Search For A Star Congrats on completing your project! A really stunning project! So much personality, as well as great demonstration of technical skills. I hope you are very proud of what you have achieved with this project. Things that went well: ✧ Overall, such a professionally presented project, with great really great research, planning and documentation. ✧ Great showcase of high level technical skills in Zbrush like zmodeller, dynamic subdiv and blend shapes, as well as really great artistic skill. ✧ Stunning groom art, with excellent attention to detail in adding facial and body hair. ✧Topology and UVs are pretty much perfect. Things to consider next time: ✧ A small presentation tip - avoid showing the packed AO/R/M maps, as these are hard to read. Showing the greyscale maps better shows off your work. ✧ Try adding a hair cap to further smooth out the transitional areas between the hair and scalp. ✧ Keep up the your enthusiasm for making art! Keep on experimenting and learning and building your portfolio. Great work :) I hope this feedback proves useful and will help you with future projects and building your portfolio. You can find me on the social medias in the link below. Feel free to reach out in the future. All the best! https://draconic-cowboy.carrd.co/ - Tristan, Character Artist at Airship Interactive.