Hello there, everyone. I have just posted my portfolio on ArtStation here.
I’d love for someone to give me some input. Thank you very much in advance.
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A lot of the effects are really noisy. It’s ok to soften things up and reduce the frequency.
You also have some style coherence issues, especially in those longer sequences it feels like you’re cycling though multiple styles with every beat.
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Do yo also reckon the lighting blows things out too much?
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There are moments, but I’ve seen worse 
Just be careful with how much you’re flashing, could be dangerous to people with photo sensitivity issues
Do you think these effects are worth salvaging or should I just move on to some new ones? 
I think you’d be perfectly capable of salvaging them, but it’s probably better from a learning point of view to start building new effects.
You’ll also be able to start telling the difference between your current work and previous work better that way.
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Bouncing off of this and the rest of the feedback so far, the first step is likely just to be more concise and cut out the bloat, but I also think really focusing on value hierarchy will be a huge step to reducing that feeling of disharmony and noise.
Many of your elements live within the same extremely bright or saturated range of colors, but not every element is that important.
Both allowing some particles and shapes to sit in the back and blend into the environment, and also allowing the elements to fade in/out more naturally instead off appearing at nearly full strength can make it less overwhelming. Don’t be afraid of people missing or not seeing certain elements, people will notice the effect’s impact as a whole.
For example, for the entirety of this effect, color picking will show nearly the same value the whole way through. This causes silhouettes and movement to be lost and everything to sit on the same plane:
You seem to have some great ideas and skills and I see the intent to make things look really cool, I just think just having a bit of restraint can make your vfx more disciplined and nice to look at! Hope this helps, keep going and don’t be discouraged, you’re closer than you think 
Thank you for the advice. So I should aim for more simplicity and consistency of style and be more mindful of color saturation and intensity?
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Do you think this simple healing spell is solid? At least compared to my previous effects.
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Yeah, looks cute, and a lot less busy!
I dont mean to pester you but say if I wanted to make a portfolio piece out of it, how could I improve it? Pretending you were an art director. The general advice I got on creating a portfolio is to make my effects as rich as possible. But then I made them too chaotic. If I added more to this effect I feel like I would incur into the same problem. Is it safe to say that less is more in this case?
I think rich doesn’t necessarily mean you need to add a lot of elements. Instead I think it could be good to think how to polish this.
I’ll try and give some examples.
Right now the effect feels very monochrome green, it can be nice to add little hints of other colors, some dark cyan works well to add depth, and reds can give a feeling of lens chromatic aberration.
Bokeh elements also work well with this kind of effect
These elements are too thin and flimsy compared to the rest of the effects, try to add a bit of body and reduce the count.
This sigil on the ground can feel more interesting, maybe have a few particles drift up, make it glow a bit in some spots, add a subtle inner ring, add some darker tones under it.
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My personal opinion is that in such matters, quality>quantity, anyone can stuff thousands of layers and highlights, but making it look harmonious using only the right tools for this is a true indicator of skill, I think for a portfolio this is the main priority
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