reposting feedback as comment, itch doesn't respect formatting and makes it super hard to read.
Submission title: Hellhound
Student name: Zahra Tilling
Challenge tier: Rising Star
Assessor: Caleb O’Brien - Senior Character Artist @Firesprite
Research & Development
Great work here. I love that you’ve chosen to focus on an area of improvement in creature art, and the concept chosen is wicked. Supporting reference gathered is relevant, concise and supports each element of the design.
My producer colleagues will be happy to see you creating a schedule! Nice job breaking down the project into stages and blocking out suitable time for each. I love that you’ve chosen to focus on your passion, prioritising projects that lead towards your goals and continued improvement. Of course, Uni projects are important, but ultimately it’s your portfolio and knowledge of character art that will weigh most towards landing a role in games so any choice you can make to support this is the way to go.
Something you could try is having a target platform in mind, mobile/ps5 etc. and the style influence or target for the quality you hope to achieve with the character. Look at existing games to give yourself a rough quality bar to aim for whilst working. For example, Elden Ring, Spider Man 2, Death Claws from Fallout etc. In doing so you can establish constraints and help you make informed decisions throughout development.
You clearly understand your strengths and areas of improvement which is a great skill. It’s awesome to see you investigating existing techniques and workflows through tutorial’s, taking the time to upskill to feed into the success of your project.
Technical Art
Overall, an incredible technical proficiency has been demonstrated here. Your game mesh is approaching industry quality with clean and consistent distribution of polys across the character.
Perhaps you could push the game mesh further, by selectively capturing more details from the high res to push the silhouette, such as the ridges/profile of the head horns and edges of metal armour. Having a target platform in mind can help when making technical decisions on the game mesh. As you know it’s a balance of quality vs budget, so any chance to demonstrate your eye for optimisation goes a long way.
UV’s are unwrapped and packed well, with consideration taken leaving enough room for texture padding. Where possible, try and lay your UV cuts in the most sensible areas, such as under overlapping elements or across natural seams in the mesh.
I love how you’ve packed the UVs into sensible texture sets, this technique is often used in games especially on large scale creatures to maintain resolution. Texel density looks solid, but it would be great to get an idea of the texture resolution for each set to further demonstrate your knowledge of creating an optimised game ready asset.
Such a bonus seeing you create an idle animation for the character! It totally brings it to life and pushing things to that next level. Also, I LOVE the subtle pulsing glow in the mouth this is such a great touch.
Creative Art
Incredible work. Your sculpt is impressive and I love the interesting variation between elements such as armour, muscle, horns etc. You’ve created a tonne of visual appeal with this character.
I feel there may be some room for improvement on the proportions across the model. The torso, traps and neck feel slightly compressed and short in comparison to the concept. Perhaps the lower legs and feet could be beefed up to build a stronger and believable foundation for the mass of the upper body. This may help balance out the proportions as currently it’s feeling quite top heavy. The ribcage is so awesome, but perhaps some lengthening to the torso would create more room for the lower trunk area, allowing the abdominus and obliques to sit above that waistline.
I can’t put my finger on it, but your creature feels slightly more nimble and agile than the creature in the concept. Perhaps this is due to the sense of scale we get from the stick salesman as opposed to your isolated creature. It’s a tough one but consider ways you can push the sense of scale in the sculpt, study existing creatures such as Godzilla and dragons to understand what makes them feel BIG. Your composition in the final renders could further support scale with choice of lens, DoF and where the character sits within the frame. This could also be down to your pose which gives me the impression the character will be jumping between skyscrapers as opposed to stomping and looming over its enemies.
You may have considered all the above and made your own creative choices to move away from the concept which is totally cool too! But maybe this is an area you can take that step further, consider the mobility and personality of the creature which may influence its design and proportions. Just something to keep in mind going forward but overall, you’ve smashed it with the sculpt.
To push the torn cloth that little bit further, some frayed alpha cards on the edges could help break up that silhouette.
Impressive work on the textures, I love the result you’ve achieved and the fact you critiqued yourself along the way. Substance painter stack looks well organised and easy for someone else picking up the file to understand. Consider using roughness variation to push your textures further, creating zones of interest from the specular response. For example, the chest/rib cage of the creature appears extremely tough and impenetrable, perhaps the roughness here could support that by being slightly rougher/less shiny in contrasty to the skin.
The teeth don't feel grounded within the character causing a bit of disconnect. Texture around the base of these could be pushed to help embed them in the jaw/gums. A subtle darker gradient around the bottom of each tooth could further support this. I would apply the same approach to the horns and the fingernails, they feel slightly flat in their diffuse causing them to pop out from the skin colour. A dark to light gradient starting from skin connection to tip would help ground these.
So awesome to see you requesting feedback and acting upon it. Being open to feedback and ablet to receive it well is a massive skill you’ll use daily working in the games industry. It’s clear you’re willing to learn and push yourself and I encourage you to keep this up going forward! Seek feedback whenever you can, but make sure you maintain a few select ‘mentor’ figures as you say and remember you don’t need to apply all and every piece of feedback, be selective to those which serve your projects goals and personal grown/development.
Documentation
Excellent documentation. Thank you for giving such a clear and comprehensive look at the development of this character! You’ve clearly got a solid understanding of the character workflow which would give any employer confidence into your ability. If possible, I’d suggest finding ways to inject this into your final portfolio piece in a concise and summarised way. For example, showing your reference, some progress shots, breakdowns, and final summary etc. It’s difficult to get this stuff across in a way that’s easily digestible for people viewing your project, but when done right it can tell someone exactly what they need to know about your skills and experience, leaving no room for guessing.
I think a final round up/project summary would help tie this project out. I’d have loved to hear a few final thoughts touching on lessons learned and goals going forward. Awesome work overall.
Final Presentation
Final renders and presentation is highly successful. This stage is arguably one of the most crucial as it's how the majority of people will see your work. Good presentation will make or break a project and you’ve nailed it here. The lighting and atmosphere feel cohesive with the characters theme, and the range of wide/close shots really highlights the hard work you’ve put in.
Perhaps the backdrop is slightly too dark as the character is getting lost in a few renders, especially the turnaround shots. Maybe a subtle gradient and a drop shadow would help here. I think the renders are most successful where you’ve got fog/mist effects in the background plus the rock pedestal. This creates depth and helps ground the character in the scene, amazing job.
Overall, Zahra this is project is incredible and you’re clearly going to be a successful character artist and make a positive impact on the industry. I have no doubt about that. You’re already working at such a high-level and my hope for you is that you continue being awesome and land a junior role in the industry amongst a supportive and inspiring team where you’ll be able to grow exponentially.
It's only up from here! Your key strengths are creativity, artistic ability, technical knowledge, and an incredibly strong understanding of industry standard practice for character art. I feel the rest of your skills will continue to grow naturally as you gain more experience working from personal project to project, seeking feedback/ looking for areas to improve. I think the biggest area of improvement for you right now from this project and looking at your portfolio, is the overall balance of proportions across a character. This skill will come with time, but there are ways you can push this going forward. Consider performing self-critic of your work, especially in the early stages of the sculpt/block out. Taking screenshots of your character into photoshop to paint over, looking for ways to improve the silhouette, forms, proportions and overall read. When seeking feedback, you could also approach concept artists as they have a great eye for this stuff and could help you nudge a sculpt that little bit further through paint overs.
My main advice for you is just to keep going! Keep creating character projects that are fun and interesting for you, exploring new areas and techniques which you feel you’d like to improve. I look forward to seeing what you work on next and wish you the best with everything going forward.