[Portfolio] Lucas 'Darbeenbo' Annunziata, Environment Artist
polycounter lvl 13
Hello there everyone! So I'm in the process of applying for junior environment artist positions, so I'm looking for some comments and critique on my site, every last bit of it from the work to the formatting of text.
I'll be graduating at the beginning of May with some experience, as I was an Assistant Artist at Codename Games for 4 months over this past summer, and I have been doing some contract work for Tale of Tales and Berserk Entertainment since around Christmas while I finish up school. I've had a few interviews so far, but nothing is set in stone.
I've also got my Demo reel hidden at the bottom of the page, as I need to have it online to graduate, but I am not done with intro scene to it, the Cyberpunk Hotel. I'd appreciate some feedback on that as well.
www.Annunziation.com
Demo Reel
I'll be graduating at the beginning of May with some experience, as I was an Assistant Artist at Codename Games for 4 months over this past summer, and I have been doing some contract work for Tale of Tales and Berserk Entertainment since around Christmas while I finish up school. I've had a few interviews so far, but nothing is set in stone.
I've also got my Demo reel hidden at the bottom of the page, as I need to have it online to graduate, but I am not done with intro scene to it, the Cyberpunk Hotel. I'd appreciate some feedback on that as well.
www.Annunziation.com
Demo Reel
Replies
i like the fantasy cave overall but there's a few things letting it down - firstly your particles for the waterfall are all the same rotation and the repitition is very obvious - try giving them a random rotation and maybe more randomness in the alpha value too so there's some variation in the intensity. The god ray lighting is quite nice but it's just a solid beam - i'd try and break it up with streaks of lights and darks and maybe a few floating bits of dust or something in there to create some visual interest. Also the environment is a little bare - it'd be nice if you had a few little details like flowers or glowing mushrooms or something to create little areas of interest. The axe centrepiece is a little small too - it's the focal point of the whole scene but it doesnt really stand out, i'd recommend scaling it up and blowing out the proportions and maybe creating a magic aura effect around it or something? some jewels or something with very bright specular highlights would be cool to draw the viewers attention. lastly the vines around the central pillar are pretty uniform - having them all the same length and all the way around is pretty boring, be much more interesting to just have them at certain points and vary the length.
the autopsy room is pretty cool, it's quite dark though which makes some of the detail hard to see and if any thing it's a bit too dirty. i'm guessing you're going for a run down abandonded look which is nice but the room doesnt quite tell that story imo, maybe break up some of the chairs and railings and crack a light or two. i think i can see a broken chair in the wireframe but it's in a dark part of the room so isnt easy to see in the main images. also think about the history of the objects when you're texturing - the big metal object hanging from the ceiling has a lot of streaky rust marks on but where have they come from? is there a leak there, maybe there should be a puddle on the floor then. i'd expect that kind of rust marks on something by the sea or something but not sure they work on the object in this scene. lastly the two walls behind the table in the last image are identical - that sort of thing is fine in games but i'd expect closer attention to detail from a portfolio - doesnt take much to just rotate the wall or move the uv's and you dont have the same texture/memory budgets as a proper game.
the building facades are fine, they were made for a client who had a specific brief so without knowing the details of that it's hard to judge. i'd have probably expected to see slightly more polys so that you could reuse textures better - ie repeating the same brick texture for all 3 stripes of the second building in etc. but if that's what the client wanted then fine. i would say that where you have obvious repeats in your texture you should probably add some variation - for example the red brick building has the same brick pattern in the first and second storey - i'd expect to see that if you'd reused the same texture space obviously but as you havent there should be some variation there to justify it.
the vehicles are all pretty cool - nothing amazing but no real crits either. i'd make it very clear that you just did the texturing for them though as it's easy to miss that models and uvs were by someone else. also i'd get rid of the squared 2 on the texture sizes - it's not in the right place for any font for a start (the centre of the 2 should be in line with the top of the letter imo) so looks wrong and everyone knows if you say 512 you mean 512 x 512.
the wip hotel looks nice, definitely captures the bioshock feel you're going for. hard to crit when it's still wip but i'd say the lights need some dirt adding so they're not just bright white and the bloom on the television? (5th picture) is a little ridiculous. again i would probably expect to see more texture space reuse for a proper game but i can see why you'd want to use unique uv's for a portfolio piece to maximise detail. i hope you're going to finish this scene as it's really coming along nicely and imo wip work in a portfolio that you actually apply for work with always seems a little lazy.
the return stuff is nice, good to see a complete project rather than just scenes as it shows that you've almost certainly encounted the kind of problems you get working on a proper game. not 100% convinced on the handpainted art style and lighting but it has some charm so that might just be my opinion.
pretty sure i agree with macattack about the ion cannon - the modelling looks fine but it doesnt really look textured. compared to your other work it looks very basic so i'd either cut it or spend the time bringing it up to the same standard as you've shown in the hotel piece. Could be a nice scene if you work it up but obviously that takes time.
the character stuff is quite nice too, not as high quality as the environment stuff for sure but still good to see some breadth of skills. the glow texture that's mostly black stands out to me as being very wasteful - i'm not even sure i can see where it's used on the model? i'd probably just recommend not showing that texture but just fyi for a real game you'd probably want to have the bit that needs glow as a seperate texture sheet or a second set of uv's with a much smaller texture, depending on your engine.
overall i'd say thats a pretty nice portfolio for someone just graduating from university. good luck with the job hunting!
cheers
Having WIPs in a portfolio is kinda silly, even more silly when you call an art deco inspired env cyberpunk
Ion Cannon scene looks like a WIP because there are no textures.
Miscellaneous section I'd drop, it's just yucky. Kills your portfolio since it's the last piece, which is all anyone is going to remember is that pink blob of bad color choices. (I'd update that avatar too, I think it devalues you as an artist because your other work is leaps and bounds better)
Tharle - Spot on with what I'm looking for. Thanks. I'll see what I can do to address what you have presented. For the vehicles, you don't think it is enough that I put "models and uvs - Louis Strongin" at the top of each image, and "textures - Lucas Annunziata" at the bottom? I thought it was pretty clear, but if not I could have a blurb before those vehicles.
Edit: Also, new avatar.
I would axe the miscellaneous stuff completely. I would also cut the building facades. The building facades use a very inefficient way of texturing and I'd be afraid that any game artist recruiter looking at it would be baffled of your texture usage there. I read the description about the client (which is another thing, a recruiter might not read that and go straight to the art), and there are other more efficient ways to add unique detail without wasting so much UV space, like decals. IMO to avoid confusion just get rid of it.
I like the ships, but I'm a sucker for colorful low poly stuff so that's just bias right there. :P
The Ion cannon I would either cut out or just showcase the model itself. The scene feels incomplete and lacks any texture, it sort of feels thrown together.
Like tarle mentioned the fantasy cave is a nice piece but suffers from the hero prop (I didn't even know it was an axe because I couldn't make it out) being completely dwarfed in the scene. You can exaggerate the proportions to sell it better. The water is the weakest point of the piece, I think the scene would look better without it, or address the obvious tiling of the particles and the water being too opaque and solid looking.
Instead of showcasing the WIP scene maybe you could just showcase the props that you've finished for the scene for now, they're pretty awesome looking by themselves.
You've got some great gems on there but employers are going to have a hard time digging through the sheer amount of less awesome content to get to it. Don't be afraid to have a slim 'folio.
Edit: Dangit, posted within minutes of each other. Hate when that happens. :B Good call on cutting the Misc section
http://annunziation.com/portfolio/
And P.S. we are still looking for another environment artist to join us at Torn Banner.
Love that Chiv env too, great to see it finished.