My Strengths and Weaknesses? |Portfolio Critique

Tihara Ezzo

Hello everyone. My name is Tihara and I am new to the site.

I am looking to advance in ( the early stages of) my career, but I feel as though my work has stagnated. I am hoping to get some feedback so that I may learn where I need to work on.

My work can be found at my site.

https://www.tiharaezzo.com/

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Heather Boyd

@Tihara-Ezzo

Hello and welcome! I enjoyed watching your short animations -the booty one made me laugh and I really like the map story element on that piece. Your self portrait on your Contact page is a very striking style and colour wise.

What area do you want to focus on -work wise, because you have illustration, concept art, and animation? To avoid stretching yourself too thin.

Although some of your videos made me chuckle I like more of your Illustration work. I also saw at least 2 different styles -one more favouring an emphasis on line -perhaps putting your Illustration into style categories as well -to help your audience read your work better.

Tihara Ezzo

@Heather-Boyd Thank you for the feedback! My degree is actually in Media Arts and Animation. I chose animation as my focus (since illustration wasn't an option) and although I enjoy animating, I've learned that my strengths lie with illustration.

The reason for the separation in styles is because I do concept art for a project that differs from my personal style. I had never thought of separating my work by style before and I think that's definitely something I should look into implementing.

Elizabeth Rose

Hey new person! Welcome to the forms. I like your site, you have some really good stuff there. I agree with @Heather-Boyd. You seem to have a lot of focuses. Don't worry, I have that problem too. The forms have helped me a lot on advise in that regard, and I'm sure it will help you

theprairiefox

Hello, great to have you with us. Enjoyed looking at your site. Lots of fun stuff there. Can't wait to see some of your work here!

Hello and welcome to the forum! You have a lovely website full of some really great work and so much of it
Like others have already said, you probably just need to separate your styles a little bit, there's no harm in having an illustration, concept and animation page if they're all different styles of illustration.
At the moment, you have a bit of mixture of work on your concept page, I really like your first few environments and your line of kid character (the one with the top hat etc). These are really strong in my opinion so I think more of that and maybe think about losing a few of the last images because they're quite different and not as vibrant.
Your illustrations are great too, but again you seem to have a mixture of styles going on, I think your first 16 images are the strongest. Are you wanting to get into childrens illustration or just general illustration? If you are wanting to get into children's, then you'll need some examples of stories and scenes in there - just something to show a bit of narrative. I can't really help you on any other type of illustration as I only know about children's, but your stuff is reeeeally cool
Good luck with it

I agree with @Heather-Boyd comments...what would you like to narrow in on career wise? It's something that's taken me a few years sort out myself to be honest! I like your portraits and your character designs. They are very strong. Maybe I'd like to see them in more of narrative, like a short comic or storyboard? Also if you feel your work is stagnating for you, maybe switch things up for yourself. I see you did an animal style portrait (its way down in your 'Illustration' section) maybe you could do something with animals, not humans?

Lydia M

Hi @Tihara-Ezzo welcome to the forum. Are you interested in focusing on just the childrens book market? I think a lot of the work you have on the Design/Concept page would appeal to that market, but some of the empty backgrounds look like you're going for background painter for shows or games. Is that the style that differs from your personal style though? If it's a style you prefer not to work in then I wouldn't include it in your portfolio. Someone will inevitably see it and ask for that style. (Side note: the image of the bloody skeleton woman after all the cute scenes would probably be very confusing for a kidlit art director.) So I agree with everyone here who said separating styles would help. Think about what market you're going for and then compile your portfolio from there.