[Portfolio] Robert Thomas, Environment Artist

tehrobster2

Hey Guys, I just finished working on my portfolio website and I have it online now, and I would love to hear what you guys think! Please let me know anything I can do to make it better! www.robertthomas3d.com

tehrobster2

I hate to bump myself, But I really would like to hear what you guys think! Anything I should change or even take down, any feed back would be great!

biofrost

hmmm in The Abode a lot of the walls seem rather bare.The main wall with the fireplace looks fine but the rest of the room just looks empty.

Really like the bridge though. it has a nice atmosphere.

tekmatic

Hey tehrobster2, nice work so far. I agree with biofrost about your scene being empty....needs more stuff to make it messy.

As for your site, I like it being simple and to the point. Just from a technical point of view, check your html source because I am able to see a "<" sign at the bottom right corner where your "resume" link is at the end of the image pages. Also you can see tiny dashes "-" between the various map images of the books. It's probably quotes missing in your html. Those dashes are also seen in the main page between the different portfolio pieces.

Also I would change the thumbnail images such that the text does not seem stretched and distorted. It's jaggy and not clear.

Hope that helps.

tehrobster2

Hey Guys thanks for the comments, and yes it helps a lot! I will go through my HTML code and start fixing things, and I will fix the stretching. And I will go through the abode scene and add some more stuff so it doesn't seem so empty.

superdenny707

This may be a problem on my end only, but you're site loaded really slow for me (actually didn't load at all the first time I went to it).

GOBEE

For the Bridge, each screenshot you have are all pretty similar. Try picking 3-5 angles of what you want to show off the most... your best work, and post those. Right now I feel like I'm looking at the same thing in each screen and neither of them are telling me what's going on here. Is that a giant robo-arm or something? Hard to tell. What is the large platform in the 3rd screenshot doing? How is it holding onto the edge like that? Maybe something else should be placed there to show the player how its sitting at that angle. Also, you can tell the walls directly to the right of the arm are just planes. They just end and the player can see through between the wall and the door. And right next to that, your door. Rotate the handle 180 degrees. It's backwards. The fire extinguisher is too high as well. Bring that down closer to where the door handle is and where a person would realistically have access to one. It looks like you'd have to reach high up for that. Scrolling down you have this tent rendered in marmoset.. buuuttt.. where is it in your scene? I don't see it. This is a very confusing scene to me.

Hope you don't mind me disecting your work here. You asked for it. I know it sucks being told you have a lot of things to work on, but it sucks even more when no one says anything at all. Just trying to help.

Now that I just went through the rest of your work, I'm thinking you should take down the Bridge until you do more to it. Because seeing the Abode, and especially your high poly and props, it's like you're a totally different artist. I know it says 'environment artist' but your weapons are your best work. I would create some new renders and show them off front and center. The shotgun, MP5 and the battle axe. Bad. Ass. But I had to dig to find them. Don't make a recruiter or hiring manager dig for them. Front and center man. Texture that shotty and get it in there with the MP5.

tehrobster2

Hey thanks for the great Crits, and if there are things to fix and then I need to fix them, so I dont mind having to go back and fix them, they only make my work better, and I am going to continue to work on the bridge, and work on the Abode and getting the Shotty textured. Keep them coming guys!

tehrobster2

Hey Guys, I have worked on both scenes some more, and I have fixed the html errors. So as always please let me know what you guys think! http://www.robertthomas3d.com/

IchII3D

I would recommend going back to basics, your core skills are still not strong enough to execute a full scene effectively.

Lighting and Composotion
If you don't have an eye for composition you really need to get it, without it things will be very difficult if you hope to work professionally. Your lighting and layout of your scene don't show any sense visual aesthetic. I recommend going back to basics, focus on blocking out and lighting a naked scene. Get Crysis1 or Crysis2 SDK and try make a level using the assets that exist. Anything you can do to work with basic shapes, lighting and colours quickly.

Technical Ability
Your technical ability needs a lot of work, your ability to represent objects with correct proportions needs a lot of work. You need to question the sizes of your objects, much like a character artist would make there human form anatomically correct the same expectation is true for an environment that tries to represent realism. Doors need to be the size of doors and cars need to be the size of cars. Once you get those basics in place you need to look at how you fundamentally texture and model, I recommend the Eat3d texture tutorials are a good foundation to move forward. Instead of texturing a whole scene see how far you can push a simple metal barrel, get feedback on it and continue to rework it until it looks good to those with a critical eye.

This is a thread I made a long time ago when I started to learn how to texture, look at how the model started to how it finished. The feedback I got and how I reacted to it. It could be useful. I personally learned a lot through the whole process. Although just a note, the barrel is still crap. It was just less crap by the end :P

http://www.game-artist.net/forums/work-progress/8048-i-made-barrel.html

Snader

It seems to load rather slow. Am I the only one with that?

schoenrock

i agree with IchII3D, but i also have something you might want to work on. as much as your art is very important when trying to get work, so is your resume. i would remove the experience that does not relate to the career path you are pushing. If you have to have it, make sure that what does relate is higher up.

Bertmac

+1 on IchII3D
and
+1 on Snader

also you might want to fill up the other side of the Deadpool uzi to its kinda empty compared to the left side

enjoy

@ IchII3D you came a long way dude. cool . and its funny that the barrel is stil in your portfolio hehe

tehrobster2

Thanks for the info guys, I will work on trying to increase the website speed, and I will start on a simple asset and work on texturing it.

chrisradsby

The problem is that you're rendering a full-resolution image and then use html to resize it. In the end you'll end get a bad results and a long loadtime.

Take your full-res shots into photoshop make them true 300x300 or whatever, so that you have proper thumbnails for every picture in your portfolio. And then when people click on them they get to see the full-resolution shot.

achillesian

It loaded slow, and then brought Chrome to a halt. My compy's kind of dated (2.5ghz quad, 8 gig ram, shit video card) but it plays modern games easily and shouldn't be chugging on a website...