[Portfolio] Blake Guyan- jr environment artist
polycounter lvl 9
hey guys I need some help i realise that you guys in here can be very blunt so im ready to take the hits. I need to know what you think on the work on my portfolio.
im looking to get my first full time job (in the UK) and Im hoping to get some feedback. I have to say a big thankyou to isaac oster for A the crits on my reel and the actual code for the site.
In the end it would also be good if people had an idea of weather this is worthy of an entry level job or not... especially if anyone knows of one going?!? :P
thanks for the time you guys give to help the little people.. it means alot.
ANYhow the site is at http://www.blakeart.co.uk
im looking to get my first full time job (in the UK) and Im hoping to get some feedback. I have to say a big thankyou to isaac oster for A the crits on my reel and the actual code for the site.
In the end it would also be good if people had an idea of weather this is worthy of an entry level job or not... especially if anyone knows of one going?!? :P
thanks for the time you guys give to help the little people.. it means alot.
ANYhow the site is at http://www.blakeart.co.uk
Replies
1) Looking at each asset should be like one stop shopping. For example, I should be able to see the finished asset of the shield, the wireframe, and the texture flats all with the clock of one button. You're artificially expanding the size/amount of work you have by making them separate.
2) The red wireframes are terrible. A) Red makes it very hard to look at.
3) There should be a space between your first and last name to make it more readable.
4) The presentation of the images is sloppy. I shouldn't be seeing Maya widgets, listings of perspective view, the lines that are apparent behind the shields (indicating that you pasted the images together), the frames in the shot from unreal, etc. Clean it up and make it look professional.
5) The quality of the images seems kind of low. You can save them for web, but save them at a higher image quality level. Since you don't have that much on your site, what you are showing should look better. The last image with the red roof is terribly grainy and unappealing to look at.
You should spend some time looking at professional portfolios, and see the differences between their site and yours and do as much as you can to copy the little quality things they do to make their work stand out well.
You must make yours stand out, make it easy to navigate. One of my pet peeves is having thumbnails simply a cropped section of the final full image. I don't want to have to guess what I am about to click, it doesn't heighten the anticipation, it simply makes me annoyed!
Agree about all the gizmos and backgrounds; I didn't notice them at first but it does kinda let your work down. They are all easy photoshop fixes and leaving them in there gives an impression you don't know how to use photoshop - which obviously isn't the case.
In Unreal you can show wireframe in the main window, and not bother with the model viewer (which does give slightly ugly results and the downside of having no control over lighting. I'd encourage you to drop it into a test scene with some nice lights set up. Or try rendering ALL your work in marmoset or cryengine - something to really make it look great!
Your work itself is not at all bad for entry level, I know mine was a lot worse
DNS: good points
about the one stop thing.. i can put the finnished asset and the wireframe into 1 image ok.. then i suppose next to it i could have the flats... as its kinda hard to fit them all on at once :P
Yeh i know the red wireframes are a pain in the rear. im working on those atm hence the crate has a much nicer wireframe
Ha! i totally didnt clock the no space thing
i didnt realise the widgets and stuff was a no no.. ill get on to that now
yeh this is something that i have had problems with. the origional jpeg images were taking a while to load.. its a compromise i suppose what quality level do you guys save your JPGs at?
Rick haha. i tend to find that if i downscale the images it makes them unreadable? ill try it and see how it looks
yes defo about the easy fixes. i can do that now
something i suppose needs to be asked is.. i have gotten a hlsl shader which is what im outputting in the viewports.. is that still less brownie points than an unreal shot?
obviously i have unreal and marmoset so getting shots out of it is easy enough
thanks loads for taking the time to help guys
anyone have any hints on actually GETTING a job? atm i managed to get a load of company sites and just email them, im not sure if thats likely to be a highly successful approach....
Honestly most of your work isn't up to that caliber yet. That organic looking ship looks pretty good, and your crate is ok, but could use some polish, but I don't think anything else is your portfolio is really good enough. There's nothing wrong with the shield, it just isn't complex enough to make an impact. If it was just one element in an armory scene, or something like that, it would make more sense.
There is a pretty simple benchmark for if your stuff is good enough. If you could take your prop and stick it in a current AAA game and it matches or exceeds that quality, then it is good enough. Once your work is good enough, you'll start getting art tests from companies, and that is the sign that you're on the right track.
Your site design is also hurting you. For one thing, it looks amateurish. Presentation is important. Your images also take a long time to load and the site takes a long time to navigate. I'm guessing that you're using flash.
A recruiter is going to go to your site, and they want to be able to see within 15 seconds if you are worth taking a second look at. That means you need to be able to show them all your art in 15 seconds.
This guy's site gets linked to all the time, but this is pretty much the perfect portfolio site. I would recommend copying his layout. In addition to being incredibly easy to navigate, it is easy to update and maintain without knowing much about website coding. http://www.ilyanedyal.com/index.html
In regards to applying to companies, it isn't very complicated. If you don't have contacts at the company, (and since you're starting out, you don't), if your work is good enough, and they are hiring at the time, you're in a good position. Subscribe to the Gamasutra and Creative Heads job feeds, most companies post job openings on there.
Hope that helps.
the portfolio is designed by isaac from bioware.. he kindly let me use his code as i lack the software to build the site myself. so im affraid the site is staying as it is layout wise.
thanks for the heads up about the sites man ill definately take a look
Thanks again guys for the help
Try looking for junior 3d art jobs on google. I think the most recent post I have seen for such a position was in 2007.
Simply put, there are a lot of really talented 3d artists out of work now, so companies have no reason to seek junior artists. You will have to go for a regular environment art job I am afraid.
So it's good in a way that you know you're at the junior level currently, but unfortunately you will have to up your game a bit if you want to land an industry job. But honestly, I think everyone now a days has a bit of a struggle getting in at first, and it's becoming almost a right of passage to make it into the games industry.
One environment artist that I was really impressed with that was able to get a job rather quickly (if I remember correctly) is this guy (alex underhill)
http://www.medicinal-waste.co.uk/chillalex/
I suggest you study his work and try to get up to this caliber.
Please don't be discouraged. Work hard and get in man!
this guy know his shit!
not that im totally disheartened.. i live in the UK and i have seen a fair number of jr jobs bouncing about.. more so in the last couple of months..
but like you say every job i have applied for i have been pipped by people with expiriance.. damned timing :P
Continue life, and work when you can...That is what I am doing now. I have a 40 hr week job, and am trying to move my Maya skills into max. When I can. Not griping or anything, just doing what I have to do. I got a baby coming!
Edit: And I feel your pain about not being up to that caliber. Just keep chugging away.
Also, find a font that has an @ symbol. Not a square.
-The goal is to sell yourself. "jr environment artist"/"3D Environment/Prop Artist (Junior)" - Using "Jr." isn't selling yourself. You don't write "mediocre computer skills" you write "computer skills", eh? It's fine to know that you recognize your work to be at that level, but I feel that "Environment Artist" would be suitable enough, from a selling-yourself point-of-view.
- Site is super bland. At first loading your site, there is nothing to see but small thumbnails on the left side. I have a wide screen monitor, so it looked even more devoid of content. Making some kind of logo or even using a more interesting font wouldn't hurt...
- Bad image presentation.
There is a black line in the background of the first shield image. The thumbnail of this looks better than the image due to sharpening or contrast adjustments or something... the shield also looks unfinished, the edge looks like a flat brown color with black guidelines. The wireframe image is bad. It shows a needless center gizmo, red wireframe? Most the edges are not being rendered; are they even there? There must be a better solution to present the work you've worked so hard on... remove the Heads-up display info in your maya screen-grabs... make it as clean as possible. shield texture-flats image has a white line on the left border that looks gross, strange they are separated from the first. Wireframe of box in Maya viewpoert has small white artifacts on the right side of the box that are not being displayed correctly due to the background. You could have Photoshop'd most this crap out. Two empty thumbnails at the bottom. This shows a lack of attention to detail to me. I think that is a very important characteristic to have as an environment artist.
It's a good start. Time to take your work to the next level. A lot of your designs are very bland and boring.
You need to work on your basic design principles (which includes presentation) and texturing work.
Good luck, thanks for sharing.
regarding the site. does anyone know where i can get a decent folio design from. as i cant afford a copy of flash. so while i can do all the bits i just dont own a copy... otherwise i would edit this design.
yeh the images are getting redone ill post here when they are updated...
Thanks for all your help guys. it makes a big difference
http://www.adambromell.com/
thats directly to the point.
the only reason i want flash is because its alot easyer to create a nice well organised looking site that way.. at least for me it is
:::PS::: i want to thank everyone for posting.. its been really informative, the changes to the site will be updated about 2 in the afternoon GMT::
Don't just copy their code, that's just rude, but look at my portfolio and its html, http://zacdonald.com/ my site isn't finished and needs more content, but hopefully it give ya some ideas.
And yea, just to reinforce the point that others made. All you need is a column of images and a link to your resume. Flash only is a bad idea for a portfolio site for lots of reasons.
that im modelling from atm, would it be worth putting that up? once the assets are done?