Sean O'Toole GDC

Post date: Mar 28, 2014 11:5:10 PM

            During the time spent at GDC this year , I met a large assortment of people who gave me great feedback after reviewing my portfolio as well as conversing with students while in lines. From Riot to Insomnia, Each company brought up something different I could improve on a further helped me think of a specific skill I would be interested in further become stronger in.

            The first Critique I received at GDC was the from the Lead character Concept artist at Riot. After showing him my concept paintings of my boss and other character concepts, he told me to emphasize color and important areas of the character. Also to dive deeper in the design of the character itself and details that would define him through his story. From this crit I took a lot of advice ad have been updating certain paintings and art that I have worked on.

            Another critique I received good feedback on was from another character artist at Insomnia. When speaking with him, he gave a lot of feedback on deciding a certain area to work on and just showing the amount of work necessary for that position. He also helped me organize my portfolio to what would be appropriate to put in order of importance. He also talked a lot about zbrush and certain tools he uses to help get better rendering quicker.

            Going to the MechTek area I met another 3d character artist that talked to me about zbrush for almost an hour about using different tools and getting better sculpts our faster as well. He also gave a very positive critique when viewing my recent work in zbrush of a scifi character concept I created. I got his contact and he told me he would be talking to me soon.

            I also had a review with WB and got some more positive feedback from them. They enjoyed the style and format of my portfolio and told me they would further check it out for a possibly internship position which made me feel pretty excited at the time.

            One negative but useful feed back I received was from Obsidian who told me I needed to spend more time set dressing and thinking of spaces more realistically and adding depth and strong detail into my shots. He also told me he would keep a post on my progress if I am really interested.

            Other then talking to more people at GDC and checking out some of the cool stations it was mostly just going out with some good friends and having some fun which also included meeting some guys from Torn Banner the creators of one of my favorite games Chivalry.  It was a awesome experience so go out and meet some of the  most well known people in the industry.