[Portfolio] Luke Pham - 3D Environment Artist

lukepham101

Hey Polycount crew,

http://bugfush.com/

I just wanted to ask for some comments and critique about my portfolio. First a little bit of background about myself for anyone interested. I've got 3 years of experience working for mobile games companies, military sim places, & modding teams. Additionally I've done some arch viz stuff in my career as well. The work climate in Australia has made me work on a variety of things so I believe I'm pretty generalist in term of environment art, meaning low poly, pre-rendered and next-gen stuff. I've got a list of things I mean to work with my portfolio in the following months which I'll list below but I wanted your guys opinion of what direction I should head. Here are the things I'm going to be working on in the website in coming months.

- Fixing website header to scroll sideways and not be fixed (My bad web design skills, need to get on that.)
- Getting rid of post dates at bottom of art sections, looks sloppy
- Remove search bar field, its redundant, poor web skills.
- Adding next-gen fantasy environment, haven't really proven I can do that.
- Replace my oldest/worst scenes, in order Praetorian Defiance, Japanese Arch Viz scene, Construction Yard.

Let me know what your thoughts are peeps! I sometimes worry that I should be doing more hand painted characters and environments because of the mobile oriented studios and virtually no large AAA productions here in Australia. On the flip side, I eventually plan to try and work overseas which means I should be doing next-gen stuff so I can work over at big studios. Anyway, comments and critiques are always welcome, don't be shy to say my work is shit!

marcobar

I've been taking a hard look at my own portfolio lately - it's tough to look at your work and decide that a bunch of it 'has to go', and I can say from experience that you've already fought half the battle by making the decision to change!

You're more experienced than I am, so feel free to take what I say with a grain of salt: my first impression of the portfolio was that not all of the work has the same level of polish, and I can see that you're already addressing that with your list of old work to replace. I looked at the portfolio before I read your bullet points, and the Construction Yard and Arch Viz scene were my two least favourites, so I suppose we're on the same page about what needs to be replaced.

One critique people had of my portfolio was that I needed to show more of the construction process, and I think the same applies to yours. You show the high-poly of a couple objects, but some more shots of wires, normal maps, etc, might let people know a little more about how you work.

UX-wise I think you have a decent thing going: a single click to get a detailed look at a project, single click to get back home.

Anwyays, just a couple of points to get the thread going. Hope this helps

lukepham101

Thanks Marco! I appreciate the feedback, you're absolutely right in that I should show my breakdowns more. Its good to have your opinion so it can validate my suspicions about what sucks most about my folio haha. Thanks again man!

marcobar

No problem!

Forgot to mention this before: as far as the web design/header goes, I think you'd be much better off to use actual typography as opposed to an image header. I'm not sure how you're managing the website (FTP'ing your own html/css, or using a template, etc.), but if you have some control over it, you could easily slip in a Google font, or a Typekit font, and style it. It would be much more responsive, and you wouldn't have to worry about resolution issues for tablet/Retina users. I'm on a Retina-MBP, and it currently shows up quite blurry on my end.

lukepham101

Thanks man, I'll look into using font as opposed to having it as an image. I'm managing the website through Wordpress, the Minimatica template specifically so I'll have to work within that framework. Blurriness is not good!