I am a character artist. I do poly modeling, zbrush sculpting and texturing mostly of creatures or characters.

Please take a few minutes to watch my demo reel or poke around through my other work. I also try to keep my blog updated as I work on new things.
Any critiques or comments large or small would be really helpful!

Thank you for your time!

www.AndrewCQ.com

Great work in there and interesting facemorphing in the reel! Made it even a little more fun to watch.

I will be graduating from the Art Institute of Atlanta with honors and most likely best in show.

Want a cookie?

Anywho, you have some really solid work mate. The morphs were the best. The site is pretty clunky cause of all the flash. Loads slow and is bothersome at times. Your work is in a jumble of different places to. Clean up the navigation by putting everything in one place so I dont have to search for your stuff. Heck, getting rid of 3/4ths of your flash would help a lot.

modeling is best shown in still images
a reel is up to you, but i would make it a side note on your page, not a front loading piece to your portfolio
remove every last one of those turntables or make them optional links
a turntable for most of your models with little still images is a big NO, NO, NO
the site is damn cool shit man... click, bing, beep, click... i dig it from a "cool beans" type of thing, but remember that this is your portfolio for showing your work that best represents the position you would like to achieve in the industry. are you applying for a web development position? if not, then remove the flashy lights and sounds.

reasons for all this bash smash trash? there's really only one large encompassing reason....

you are not the one who will be sifting through apps, typing in urls, critiquing skills and qualifications based on resumés. nor will you be the one who has five billion other tasks to complete on a daily basis, employees to attend to, or a deadline at 2pm. the person that will look at your portfolio will be the one with all those tasks resting at their feet. so they will not only have "0" time to look at your flashy website that i'm sure a lot of hard work and effort was put into, but they most definitely will not have time to wait for all your turntables to load OR watch your reel.

this is why fast loading still images work best for this type of work. your navigation is okay, but you need to show all your work upfront in large meaningful thumbnails, or have all the work load on one page so it is a neverending gallery of awesome. plus, on some of the pages, like the organic models... i didn't realize there were multiple pages of thumbnails until way after i sifted through stuff... another big no no, because no one will ever stay on your site that long... sounds harsh and rude, but HR and Art Directors just don't have the time man... put all thumbnails for each category visible at all times. (i.e. all organic character thumbs show at the front of the organic character index, same for hard surface, etc.)

Games Industry Mentor <- excellent podcast and a super duper episode on folios.

Hey Andrew, I'm going to have to second Firebert's advice about the website. I know it’s spiffy and cool and may impress your instructors the academic director and the school president but its not too quick and there's too many sub sections. There's beauty in simplicity man. Listen to that podcast it’s a good one.

If you’re going for a character artist position at a game development studio read on. If not you can ignore the rest of my post.

As for your work you have some nice high poly modeling going on there but where's the game ready stuff? You are looking to work on games right? It just doesn't feel like you have a finished game asset in sight man. The busts are cool as is, in my opinion. Here we go for the rest.

Bare vs Monki- I wouldn’t start with this for your organic characters section maybe even remove it because it’s not as interesting or impressive as the rest of your work.

Demon Steed- Cool texture it render it real time, not sure about the Tri count for your base mesh, is that what we’re seeing normal mapped or are we just seeing the high poly zbrush sculpt?

Goya's Saturn- Cool texture it render it real time, not sure about the Tri count for your base mesh, is that what we’re seeing normal mapped or are we just seeing the high poly zbrush sculpt?

*I'm feeling like a broken record here man I’m sure you get the point by now*

Rhino- Um... are we seeing a model that’s 4,322 tris man or the wires of your base mesh overlaid on your zbrush sculpt.

Wraith- Whoa textures really can we see the flats how big are they 1024's 2048's? WTF 14,593 tri's man you could probably get the same amount of detail with half that amount of tri’s. That’s why you make a normal map man.

Your hard surface stuff is cool but where are the textures man. You got to at least texture the tanks and vehicles and get real time renders. The axe and shield could be made into game assets too. Not sure how you feel about the other pieces they're nice but not game art yet.

Traditional stuff is cool the level design link doesn't seem to go anywhere.

You’re a pretty good artist all around Andrew your sculpting is sweet but I don't know if you can get by on zbrush sculpting alone man. I think most character artists at game studios create the textures for their characters as well. Landing a character artist position is pretty difficult and doing it right out of school in this economy might be harder I’m not sure if its ever considered an entry level position. So you really need to take some of this work the extra few yards and make them into finished game assets.

Hopefully you've heard of Dominance War you should check it out if you haven't there's a lot you can learn just by looking at the entries and reading the judge’s comments.

Best of luck with landing a job just keep working hard and you'll get there.

The others tagged the issues with interface, images, etc.

I'm not sure why you would include basemesh tri counts. (a) basemeshes shouldnt be in tris (b) what significance does your basemesh or it's tri count have to the finished product from everyone else's standpoint?

Honestly it just kind of comes off feeling like you are lacking real-time models and you needed a number to include with the sculpts. Just show them as sculpts and if you are lacking real-time models, do some more.

I'd like to share some really good advice I was given last week by my buddy in HR at Codemasters.

The department gets around 250 applications every month, just for artists. They hardly bother clicking on links as half of the stuff is crap, amateur work. Applying straight to the company by post and maybe spending some time on your packaging will make you stand out from the crowd.

Honestly, your website content takes ages to load. It's so nicely designed, but I don't think employers really care about this as they're too busy to look at them.

Hope this helps!

yeah terribly unpractical website, i cant save the images for some reason ( big nono ) and also you seem to show too many images of the same thing, that wont make you seem to have more stuff.

i think you seem to be better at hard surface, nice one !

Thirty seconds to load the page in the first place, and another seventeen seconds of titles to show us....your name.

Your work is good, but your first post seems to indicate that you know it, which is a separate topic in itself, and I only bothered to wait through the overindulgent title sequence because previous posts said your work was decent.

One of the bust morphs looked very much like Nixon, which I'm hoping was intentional - great piece. Also, if you must have turntable animations to satisfy your tutors, at least make sure that the speed is uniform - the white mage seemed to take much longer than the wraith, even though I thought the wraith was the stronger piece. Stills would have been nice to show off all that detail.

Cut all the fluff from your site, and focus on your work.

Seriously, what is it with the Art Institutes and turntables?

Dude! u got a cool site! And work work is pretty good. I especially like the statue that was eating that person. really good work!

thirded on the site speed and use of flash...

also.. at 1440x900 on my secondary screen..in firefox

this is what it looks like couldn't even see your name.

i'm missing some finished assets, the fast majority is just started sculpts, is this just a personal showroom or are you going to apply with that portfolio?

Thanks for the comments! I really appreciate that someone actually took the time to look at my stuff. I'm not gonna make excuses, and I WILL make as many of the changes you guys suggested as possible. Now to reply to some of the stuff you guys said.

The website:

I know basically nothing about flash, html, or web design in general. So I grabbed a gallery template thing and started posting stuff. I will be removing the majority of the turntables and dropping in more stills to make it less clunky. I thought it was maybe just my schools slow internet, but if you guys are having trouble loading it, then something must be done. Fixed the thing where my name gets cut off and figured out how to turned off sound effects.

The reel:

Most of the stuff is low poly model from maya and then sculpted in zbrush, obviously. Most of the pieces didn't really have any end goal, or purpose outside of practicing my knowledge of anatomy and sculpting. So, I agree, retopologizing some stuff and having finished pieces would definitely be the next things I do. Textures as well.

I also realize the basemesh poly counts are pretty pointless. I was kind of made to put them in there, and to list the tris. Again, when I re-topo stuff this will be a total non issue.

Squashed and stretched some of the turnarounds to get same speed.



After I posted this thread, I checked back about a day later and assumed no one really had any feedback, lack of interest. So, I kinda forgot about it. I'm glad I came back and checked. Really great feedback, seems pretty honest and didn't sugar coat it. Since I'm done with school, I will be working full time on finding an entry level position, and making an entirely new reel. OR maybe just stick with stills.

Either way you guys have really given me some work to do!

THANK YOU!!

Please! DONT throw me into loading a video first thing! My internet is slow enough! Im sure everyone else has told you that the whole website needs lots of work. I can't believe that your AI is letting you graduate without any finished pieces! I just graduated from AI Dallas and our requirements were at least 5 pieces made to next gen specs, that means base mesh, sculpt, lowpoly, normals, full textures. I don't know where you going to be applying but its going to be hard to get anyone to give you a chance when they don't even know if you can texture, and if you do get an art test I guarantee you they will ask you to do it then. I know in games if your going to be an artist you wont just be modeling and doing fun sculpts in zbrush. I dont know about other industries but your really limiting yourself by not finishing the process, its just not good enough to be a good modeler these days.

*Edit, wait..you do know how to bake normals right? Or are all these renders just of your sculpts with lights?

cool!

Very good if you want to impress your teachers. Not too effective if you are looking for a job. Ive been a web designer and graphic artist for a few years, before i got into 3d. And i think i know a thing or two about design. With that in mind, your website is super cool. However, it is too cool, too flasshy, too busy. Toss it to the side and rebuild it from the ground up. In order to present your work better everything needs to be RIGHT THERE. I went on to your site and it took me a while to find where to click. Then i ended up getting frustrated and just ended up clicking on the reel ( to kinda speed up the process)

Your work is very nice! I really liked most of it. But i too kept waiting to see game models and their wireframes. I dont think i saw any texture sheets. Maybe some stills in the unreal engine. You definitely need those!!

Also, marmoset can be used to display some really nice stuff!

Also, since you are a modeler, it will be best if you use flash movies with turn tables.
If you dont know how to make them, take your time to learn. Rather than doing a full flashsite i would recomend just doing a plain html site. Find somone who knows what their doing to give you a hand and get it done.


Pick a tune that is enjoyable by most. I had to turn down my volume because i didnt feel like it fit most of the pieces.


Try implementing things such as ligthbox or multibox. Things that will literary minimize the complexity of your site and maximize the flexibility to upload new updates.

Overall, nice porfolio! Just make your presentation better!

I'm just gonna jump in here and moan about your website too... it's slow.

You've got stuff in there with a lot of potential, just finish it! Retopo, bake etc and get some proper game art in there.

I have to say this though... and I don't mean to cause offence, but it is so sad to see yet another graduate who has clearly been given no career focused guidance at school. Just following the same old syllabus. I cringe a little every time I see posts from people fresh outta school.

I'd much sooner give tens of thousands of £ to a number of people right on this forum than ever give a penny to most of the schools/colleges offering 'Game Art / 3D Courses'.

Rant aside though, fire up those files again, retopo the sculpts and bake some normals. As I said, you've got stuff in that reel with a lot of potential for awesomeness.

not going to reiterate a lot of what has already been said, but something i was told back in the day when it comes to demo reels:

"No one likes your music."

That isn't to say its bad (i kinda like pipe-reedy & flute stuff), its just that what you think "is cool, and fits perfect!!" doesn't. There is some interesting stuff in your reel, but i had to fight to keep watching. Thankfully, in the "age of the internet" where students aren't learning how to cut their demo reels to VHS anymore, there is an easy-to-reach mute button in videos.

I'd drop the logo from the reel. I know this was probably a requirement from the instructors, but it does nothing for you man. You are selling yourself with your artwork, not marketing yourself with a memorable logo. As you start applying for jobs, you'll probably just want to use stills instead of a reel. It's just more practical. I have to echo what others have said in regards to your site's slow load time. It's just a put off to sit there and wait. Good luck though and congrats on gradu-ma-wating! ;)

I had no idea this thread was still active, found it by accident.
Just wanted to say that this site, as well as the people who commented on my reel, really helped me out a lot! Thanks for being so honest!

It helped me land a sweet gig at Tripwire that I have been working at since about oct of 2010.

Thanks again, couldn't have done it without polycount and it's awesome members!