Hi All, I’ve delayed posting my work because I’m nervous.
I’m making a VFX where a honey pot explodes with a splatter to leave a glob of honey/syrup on the field.
does this look good to anyone? Does anyone have any ideas to spruce it up a bit? I feel like everything I make I just hate… 
Hello! Oh no need to feel nervous, this is one of the loveliest communities around :3
I love the idea a lot! Never seen a honey VFX 
First of, it looks pretty good! You communicated honey well (which is the most important part). There are obviously things that we can do to make it look more polished, so lemme list couple of ideas I would have.
Right now I think the biggest problem is with change of states (bucket → honey bubble → honey decal), you can see that they almost instantly change into other states without blending (in nature usually everything blends between each other making it smoother). I would suggest adding between each state a rapidly glowing orange glow that would light up place where the honey explodes, that would already help with making a transition. Other thing for the second state (bubble → decal) to have decal grow from smaller size (to fit bubble size a bit more) and then after a short decal make more pubbles on the ground around that main decal. Kind of showing that there is a faling honey that didn’t reach the ground on the primary impact.
Bucket looks a bit stiff in the air. I would try making it align to velocity so that it rotates with the force it has, this would make it much more interesting imo!
For collapsing bucket I would actually try making a bit bigger particles, as I’m not sure whether it’s honey or bucket parts. I think it should help out communicating. Also I would add more velocity in other directions than up for that part, when I imagine bucket exploding I think it would have like a sphere force.
Apart of that, amazing job!
And most important… We all do hate our creations. Even if you work 30 years in the industry and create most impressive art, you still will have moments of self-doubt, but don’t let it break you! Keep on making things and improving. After 5 years I finally got to the point that I enjoy like 80% of what I do and just couple days later I doubt whether I should be a vfx artist and what I’m doing here xd It’s normal and nothing to be ashamed of as it means being an artist! There will be tons of people that will love what you are doing and keep building your self-esteem. And what’s important is that you made that first step of showing your work, it’s where you start immensely developing!
Good luck to you <3
Well I think @Manus’s great feedback covered most of the biggest things I’m noticing here, so I’ll just add a few things that I think you could improve too:
Also, just some general advice: it’s always good to think about what you’re trying to communicate to a player with your VFX. Here, I assume it is some sort of AOE attack, so think about what each phase tells us. From what I’m gathering here:
Now, I feel like 2 and 3 have the same point, which might be a bit confusing. Unless I’m wrong, in which case I think the purpose of phase 3 isn’t clear enough! The goal is to have the player understand what’s happening without even thinking, and having clearly defined phases is the best way to ensure that.
thanks for the suggestions! im currently working on it more and will post some updates soon here! 
That’s a cool idea! This totally reminded of the Sap Gun from It Takes Two (around the 1h15m mark):
You’ll see the material on the honey-like sap is really simplistic but works really well. Not sure if that’s the style you’re aiming for but maybe it gives you some ideas to play with.