Newb needs critique!

Brownstone

Hello Polycounters!

I'm Darryl Brownstone, aspiring game artist with a focus in Environments and props! I have been floating around polycount for quite some time now and I think it is about time to make an official greeting!

About me:
Over the past six months or so, I have set myself on a total crash course. I've been absorbing as much information as I possibly can including all the things involved with game art and workflows. I can not say I am completely 100% self taught, given that I have learned a great deal from folks like Xoliul and his work on Eat3D, the talent from 3D Motive and not to mention, all of the wonderful work from all of you polycounters!

Samples
I have some samples of some of my work (not much as of yet) on my portfolio site. all of which are in need of critique along with the site itself. I would much appreciated and encourage the most bluntest of comments!

Thank you all!

dpaynter26

Hey man it looks alright I think you should work on your textures a bit but if you do that it'll look really good

DInusty

looks pretty good if your saying your a newb hehe. pay attention to scale. thats huge and seems that things are defiantly slightly larger then "normal" keep it up i want to see more!

Brownstone

Thank you for the replies, Would any of you mind pointing out the areas that need reworking? the textures and the scale.

Also too, I need a couple of thoughts on the portfolio site if anyone minds.

Aga22

looks very nice. only thing that bothered me was the dark bricks on the wall, i think you should have more variation to the bricks instead of all light and a few dark. they look like tetris bricks.

Quack!

Remove all the overlays you have on your texture, what are you left with?

I think your reliance on those grunge overlays to define your textures makes your work fall flat.

You need to manually give the wear and tear purpose, give each area a story and your textures will start to shine.

On top of that, the scene you have created, is uninteresting in itself. There really isn't much of a visual hook and you lose alot of value from that.

I would find a great piece of concept art that is achievable, and choose to focus that. Focus on giving each texture it's story and placing details by hand, rather then en masse.

Christian Nordgren

This scene reminds me of Batman arkham games! Though I think you should make the bricks better. It feels like the bricks are just slapped on.
I checked out your portfolio and I think you should have bigger and some more pictures who show throughout the whole scene!

Brownstone

Cool! Thank you guys very much for the input. General consensus suggests to rework the brick textures mostly. I'll be sure to adjust some other details that I'm noticing now as well.

Will post more soon!

Brownstone

Ok, quick update.

Been tweaking some lighting as well as toning down some of the grunge overlays within the textures, I also re-arranged some of the bricks to get rid of the "tetris" effect.

I'll get some other screens soon :-)

Brownstone

Not sure if the warmer look makes much of a difference? Any suggestions?

AlexCatMasterSupreme

It's not bad, but it's distracting. It needs a focal point, it needs to have some softer, less busy textures, try and make the business be a focal point, and soften the rest if you know what I mean. Try warming the lighting a bit too.
It all depends the mood you want. If you want a more detailed and thought out crit PM me.

keep it up.

Brownstone

AlexCatMasterSupreme wrote: »

It's not bad, but it's distracting. It needs a focal point, it needs to have some softer, less busy textures, try and make the business be a focal point, and soften the rest if you know what I mean. Try warming the lighting a bit too.
It all depends the mood you want. If you want a more detailed and thought out crit PM me.

keep it up.

Sent a PM :-)

Brownstone

Here are a few more adjustments.

cisherwood

the grime on your walls it doesn't look like you have followed that through into your normals so it looks flat almost like an alpha placed over the wall. easy fix is do a height to normal pass on your diffuse then overlay that onto your normals in Photoshop then run down the opacity so it doesn't look to harsh.

Abrvpt

Hey man, nice scene you have here, but yes, the wall texture needs quite a bit of love. As Quack said, you got a lot of layers on your bricks but behind this you have a very regular brick tile. If you are familiar with ZBrush, try this: http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/lesson/environments-with-tate-mosesian/
Obviously it's a bit too much for an interior corridor, but I think you'll get the necessity of having quite a lot of variation in your bricks.

About the scale, the most shocking thing are the metal girders, they are 1.5 to 2 times too big at the moment.

Keep going !