Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Submission Title:                                  Lonely George

  Submission Tier:                                   Search for a Star             

  Assessor: Anthony O’Donnell          Lead Artist           Firesprite

   

  Concept design & Development:

  I really like the left field character choice. The addition of the painted variant and the relevant research carried out makes a stand out piece of work.

   Technical Art:

  Polycount is very reasonable and the majority of the geometry contributes to the models silhouette.

  The use of blueprints to produce the final “playable” scene shows a deeper understanding of UE4.

  Channel packed textures were used and correctly set to no sRGB.

  As an optimisation I would have used the empty blue channel of the data textures to mask the “painted” variant and pack the “painted roughness”. The normal map could have been shared between both meaning you’d only need a new albedo texture memory wise instead of a full set. This makes a big difference at 4k resolution saving approx. 30MB

  The base could have used tiling textures using a masked vertex blend to get variation as opposed to a 4k bake.

  Use of material instancing is good. Materials generally were simple. UV layout is good utilising mirroring / stacked shells to maintain a high resolution. Texel density across the model is also good.

  Material definition is good with suitable roughness variation across the harder areas of the turtle contrasted against the softer skin. The base values match what’s seen in the reference closely.

  No seams were visible which is a good achievement on such a complex shape.

   Creative Art:

  The model is really well sculpted. Strong observational skills are evident. The variation in definition across the sculpt are well handled. The alphas are less intense than the better defined wrinkles / skin resulting in a clear and easy read of the details from macro to micro. A lot of restraint, control and respect to the reference is on display here.

  The painted variant is a nice creative touch and turns a well-made tortoise model into something else.

   Written Documentation:

  The written documentation is well presented and goes into some detail of the overall pipeline followed. Some early modelling /sculpting evidence would have been good to see.

   Final Presentation:

  The “playable” presentation scene was really good and a great way to quickly view the model closely. The individual renders were simple but clear and showed the texture detail off. George being posed is a bonus.

  Overall the artist has done a great job of adding some visual interest to what could have been just a good tortoise model.

   

   

• Excellent piece , well researched and observed. Good technique and good job on both sculpting and texturing. Well done.

• Very nice renders. Subject matter with turtle maybe slightly easier relative to human characters but still very well executed. Great job of getting it into Unreal with the shaders setup.

• You took a simple idea and executed it to a very high standard. I like the ZBrush sculpt it is very clean and has a good level of detail. Also like the texturing a nice twist combining the west world references, I do love the natural version too. 

  Documentation is a little light I would have been interested to see what brushes you used in a step by step breakdown of your process. 

  Presentation nice renders maybe all could add a few props a log or some grass to make the base a bit more visually interesting. 

  
  

  Dave Art Director,  Microsoft.

• Love it! Final renders look great, not entirely sold on the concept but the execution is spot on.  Only thing i can really pick fault with would be some of the skin folds and details around the neck area as the seem a little weightless. In the reference you can really see where the skin is sagging down, i think some larger forms in that area would really help sell it!

  Awesome model! Well Done! :) 

• This is certainly a unique choice of character - I don't think I've ever seen a Native American inspired giant tortoise in all my years of making art! Great execution and some lovely work in Substance Painter. Maybe your next stage should be to rig and animate it? Well done! :)