[Portfolio] - Jamie Murphy, 3D Environment Artist

jamiemurphy

Hello,

I am new to Polycount and this is my first post although i've been browsing daily for the past few weeks.

I studied Interactive Media with Animation at Sheffield Hallam University and i am now looking to enter the game industry as a environment artist.

I've been putting together a porfolio over the last few months while applying for jobs but havn't had much luck yet, it would be interesting to know what people think of my work so far.

I would really appreciate any critiques/comments or input on my models/presentation/website/anything. Thanks in advance!

jamiemurphy.co.uk

cholden

A big problem I see is the initial page is a big picture of your face and a wall of text. Which continues to the portfolio where the thumbnails are just a little bigger than the picture of your face.

I'm all for seeing a resume/CV early, but we need content AND fast.

Modular church beauty shot is a weird stack of filters. Really damaging to the final render. The individial pieces look nice and clean. Downside is, all put together it's flat, silly and rendering in max (realtime: UDK, CE3, Unity). Five hours? Really? How about spending ten and making a good looking portfolio piece instead of crapping something out quick?

Modular building. Same thing. Listed as a 3 hour piece, it looks like a wip. Covered in UV erors since it's got depth but planar mapped. Textuer is just some blurry photos slapped together. Spend some time on something.

Football Pitch looks like the first real portfolio piece. But this piece doesn't show breakdowns. You may want to take a closer look at image quality too. Some of these JPGs seem too compressed.

Underground Bunker. Don't really "get" this scene. To me it's an inverted box with grimy textures on it. And again, I'm totally going to get on your ass about how HEAVILY you're painting over your renders. Your brush strokes are so sloppy, adding fake shading and AO. Want to do realtime art? You need make realtime scenes.

The drawing section seems to be a dump of everything you've drawn. No need in it being here besides reducing opportunities.

Seriously, take a step back and make some UDK, CE3 or Unity scenes. Spend some serious time on some good, full scenes.

BARDLER

Going to have to agree with cholden on everything.

Especially the wall of text your portfolio opens up to instead of just letting your work stand on it own. Also not a fan of touching up screens in photoshop at all, everything in your screenshots should be 100% what is rendered. Some of your drawings are OK but some of them show a lack of anatomy knowledge especially in the facial areas. None of the drawings have a completed finish look to them where I would put them into your portfolio.

Just to add to what he already said. You need to make a real time environment running in an engine.

Shogun3d

Chris provided a good critique of your work. I'm just going to point out some stuff about your portfolio itself.

1. Remove the giant photo of you and that sidebar, and move all of that info as well as shorten it to a condensed summary to a separate page (about, info, etc). Keep it simple and professional.

2. Place all of your work in the front page, a potential employer wants to see your work immediately, with your best work on top, and if you have breakdowns, provide them nicely categorized in props, etc. If you have a lot of props pertaining to an individual scene, include them in the breakdown page of your scene.

3. Your resume/cv is very solid and professional, and overall the portfolio site is well done but what you need is more focus on your skillset, your work and pipeline as an environment artist. Keep up with the work, and no doubt your quality will get up there in time. Take a look and start saving portfolios as reference, and create yourself an identity, and business card that all ties into your portfolio.

Good luck!

jamiemurphy

Thanks for taking a look, i appreciate it. I’ve got Unity and UDK installed, I definitely want to learn how to use them, which is the easier one to pick up? I’ve played with Unity before, I found a template game and tried to add my files to it but I didn’t have much luck.

I’ve tried to get a portfolio together quickly but I probably should focus on one really good scene and sell myself using that to start with.

I tried to paint over scenes because I knew they weren’t at a good enough level, rendering in Max with just one light is probably the main reason for this.

The website will get a revamp when I’ve got some new pieces that are of better quality and rendered in realtime, thanks for layout advice, I’ll make the portfolio->index page and change the home page->info page.

Most of the drawings were done 6-7 years ago but when starting the site I thought more the merrier but looking back that’s not the case it seems.

Thanks again, Cholden, Bardler and Shogun3D.

superdenny707

Unity is far easier to pick up, but UDK gives models far better appearance out of the box. There's great documentation for either one you decide to use.

BARDLER

I like UDK because I think it lends its self better to artists compared to Unity. The material editor can do some cool stuff and is fairly easy to learn, and I like lighting/post processing a lot more.

jamiemurphy

Over the past few months I’ve been learning UDK and trying to improve my portfolio, I’d like some C&C on what I’ve done so far, as well as some advice on what kind of thing i should consider doing next to help my chances of getting a job(i live in the UK). Focus on single assets to show i can work to a higher detail or keep making new environments?

I’ve only just finished my first character which is on my portfolio; I enjoyed doing it and learnt from it so the next will be better. I still don’t know for sure which part of the games industry I’d like to work in most, so would it be advisable to do some portfolio pieces relating to animation, lighting focused environments, or even other fields?

I changed the layout of my website by using the advice I got from this topic, when I have done more work I will remove some of the older stuff I’ve done since it is mediocre/poor.

www.jamiemurphy.co.uk

Any advice would be great, thank you

Selaznog

Whatever you do, don't put characters on your portfolio if you are going for an environment artist position, and vice versa. From what I've heard, studios want to hire people that are confident in their abilities. People that won't get bored working on one subject matter.

Try and figure out which path to choose. I'd advise going for environments, as generally there are more positions open. Either way, your projects need a lot of work.

Look at some current gen or next gen game screens. Can you match / beat that quality? That's what you should aim for.

Right now it seems like you're just taking textures and slapping them on. Try working on hipoly models and baking them down instead.

jamiemurphy

thanks for the advice, you are right a lot of the time i've not been using zbrush for the bulk of the work and just used it for the focal point assets.

I will work on a next gen scene and really focus on getting a few pieces to a really high standard.