Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• It’s a lovely piece with a unusual yet enjoyable theme. I found it quite lovely to read through the document describing the effort you took in creating the piece. You have a real creative flair but know where your faults are. Don’t over panic about rigging if you want to specify as a character artist, sometimes it is enough to pose them using zbrush if planning to be a character artist. However, sticking to a generalist the first few years does open up more possibilities if you can also rig. I have rigged in studios before, yet at home I still prefer the ease of use of posing a model in zbrush. And the more control you can have of the final static view. I would spend some time researching facial creation, anatomy, maybe a bit of hard surface also. But only so you can develop more, since the piece is already quite good.
• Hi, and congratulations on finishing your project! The good: General know-how, technical knowledge, understanding of technical and creative processes. Good rigor in preliminary research and documentation. Areas of focus: If your goal is to pursue a character art career, the area to focus on from here on would be artistic skill mastery. Talking in games terms - all of the right skills are unlocked, but the ones which have large potential gradations of expertise still need some leveling up before I would consider them to be at a general studio standard. The more specific areas in question would be the general feel for shapes, flow, gesture, and ability to control them, i.e. mastery that is more akin to training a muscle than it is to explicit knowledge. Getting there is a matter of pure mileage of work-hours applied to practicing things such as life-drawing, reference studies, sculpting, anatomy. It will take some time, but I don’t think there is a shortcut for this. That aside, I think you are on the right track with your processes and approach, all that’s left is a matter of sinking more hours into the more experience-demanding areas of the craft. Good job and good luck! thanks, Pavel artstation.com/sobakuchiuchiu
• Really loved all your research and development! A really excellent amount of research was done into the design of the outfit. It's a massive shame time constraints meant you couldn't complete the dog, I thought he was great! Your concept work shows excellent promise. In the end I think I prefer concept number 1 the best, as I feel it matches your brief better, I can see how you ended up with the final concept and it is still very strong. Your sculpt turned out very clean which was great to see. I appreciate that you made your own brushes alongside using pr-existing ones. It's also good to see you modelling some of the elements in Maya. I think you could have worked on your basemesh further, as there are some anatomical errors. The hands are quite small and flat, and also his lower legs feel quite swollen. I understand you had time constraints due to the competition and used a pre-existing basemesh, however it would be great for you to reconsider the overall anatomy rather than just making the character shorter. The feet are quite narrow also. The main thing that sticks out to me is that it's difficult to tell what material the suit is based on your sculpt. There's lots of folds around the boots, however it's very structured everywhere else. It would have been great to see the level of detail in other areas of the suit, such as around the waist. The retop came out quite nicely, the edge flow on the face is quite nice. The body could have been improved as it gets a little messy around the back. Be wary of the amount of poles (places where 5 quads converge into one vert) you have and where they are. You have some in key animation areas (such as near the armpits) which could cause issues. The UV map is packed well with not a ton of free space. For ease of texturing it helps to make sure your uv shells are aligned straight. I think your top two left most shells are the boots, and I can see you've rotated them to pack them in but it does make texturing difficult. Really nice job on the facial texturing. There's a good amount of colour variation going on. As it's a male character, it'd be good to see some focus on the blue and yellow areas of the face. He also would have benefitted from some eyelashes! They cast a shadow over the eyes which helps negate the 'wide-eyed' look. I also wish you'd put as much time into texturing the cllothes as you had with the face, paying attention to colour variation. I would also stray away from using the bright white on the clothes as it looks a bit unnatural. I like the inclusion of the dust on the suit, however I think the normals on it are a bit strong. Really great final renders! I love the inclusion of the cell-shaded render, it really shows your initial influence well. I like the expectation vs reality concept as well, it helps to show a story which is very nice. This was a really nice project and an enjoyable read through your documentation. Your 2D skills are excellent and there's a lot of promise in your 3D characters. Great job!