DataDay's Portfolio Development [Environment Art]
polycounter lvl 8
Greetings Polycounters!
Since this community is so amazingly talented and helpful, I decided to bite the bullet and create a thread detailing the progress as well as transition I am making into the field of game art.
Here's the back story:
So about 2 years ago I decided to attempt changing industries (previously in film) into the world of game development. I figured it made sense since well, I didnt like the movie industry much and I wasnt on the art side of things... in addition to that, I grew up on games and pretty much spent most of my free time following the industry, design mechanics and generally critiquing the games I played, always wondering how it could be better.
I went ahead and did something I never thought I would do... enroll in a trade school. I had previously had a bachelors in film production from a major university here in California.
The trade school created a "game production program", so I got a loan spent 8 out of 14 months in one of the worst academic programs imaginable. Ok maybe I am exaggerating a bit, but their instructors were clueless. The guy in charge was some fired pencil pusher from Sony's QA department, mainly in the area of localization.
The school had another program director who was a former game developer and character artist. He pretty much said "forget that and look into game art". I switched programs and went through another year of CG work. Everything from compositing with nuke to particles and animation in maya. We had about 1 month to play around with making game assets.
The first attempt at a real time environment resulted in this:
I wasnt too happy with the results, mainly due to the fact I know it could have been better. I was learning UDK at the same time.
So now that I am done with the academic program, and with pretty much nothing to show in my demo reel for work other than this level and a few things from other projects (character sculpt in zbrush, a textured room from a cg challenge and a rock formation which looks like a skull), I am beginning to create a portfolio and demo reel which can hopefully get me some employment.
I figured it would be beneficial to have to community join in, critique and or help with the creation of the said portfolio. I will no doubt have questions and or will be doing something that could always be done a better way.
This thread will be a good place to post the progress and get feedback!
The TLDR version is: "This my stuff and I need more stuff to get job!"
Since this community is so amazingly talented and helpful, I decided to bite the bullet and create a thread detailing the progress as well as transition I am making into the field of game art.
Here's the back story:
So about 2 years ago I decided to attempt changing industries (previously in film) into the world of game development. I figured it made sense since well, I didnt like the movie industry much and I wasnt on the art side of things... in addition to that, I grew up on games and pretty much spent most of my free time following the industry, design mechanics and generally critiquing the games I played, always wondering how it could be better.
I went ahead and did something I never thought I would do... enroll in a trade school. I had previously had a bachelors in film production from a major university here in California.
The trade school created a "game production program", so I got a loan spent 8 out of 14 months in one of the worst academic programs imaginable. Ok maybe I am exaggerating a bit, but their instructors were clueless. The guy in charge was some fired pencil pusher from Sony's QA department, mainly in the area of localization.
The school had another program director who was a former game developer and character artist. He pretty much said "forget that and look into game art". I switched programs and went through another year of CG work. Everything from compositing with nuke to particles and animation in maya. We had about 1 month to play around with making game assets.
The first attempt at a real time environment resulted in this:
I wasnt too happy with the results, mainly due to the fact I know it could have been better. I was learning UDK at the same time.
So now that I am done with the academic program, and with pretty much nothing to show in my demo reel for work other than this level and a few things from other projects (character sculpt in zbrush, a textured room from a cg challenge and a rock formation which looks like a skull), I am beginning to create a portfolio and demo reel which can hopefully get me some employment.
I figured it would be beneficial to have to community join in, critique and or help with the creation of the said portfolio. I will no doubt have questions and or will be doing something that could always be done a better way.
This thread will be a good place to post the progress and get feedback!
The TLDR version is: "This my stuff and I need more stuff to get job!"
Replies
I suppose the focus should really be to sell the fact I can model, uv and texture a low poly environment with next gen graphics and a high poly feel to it.
The options so far is this house and surrounding environment from Diablo 3's concept art:
and this interior scene from Guild Wars 2.
Im open to something else if anyone has any recommendations. I am not afraid of complex scenes.
I always find it helps just to potter around in the polycount wiki for a while, you get a lot of great information, or at least some good links to get more info about the games industry. Could be a place to start?
*edit* Oh and it would be cool if you could show us some breakdowns of the rock/overgrown area.
Looking forward to seeing your WIP
@Jimmy, thanks. I agree with you regarding the break downs. I did all that on a laptop when I was at the school, if If I can find the project files, ill go ahead and post a break down. Everything is pretty much low poly, and combined into different sets of groups which were duplicated and manipulated in which to create the scene.
@ Chazzur. I'm leaning more towards the diablo 3 concept art more at the moment. I wonder if it would be a good idea to show the same scene with both a hand painted (blizzard style) look and with it morphing into a more dark and gritty texture style, thereby showing the ability to do both.
The studios that are near by range from Naughty Dog/Sony Santa Monica to Blizzard and Obsidian down in Irvine. I'm thinking ill have to gear the portfolio to showcase the ability to fit within each studio's art style...but then again that might be doing too much.