[Environment art portfolio] Vladimir Holopov

3DVlad

Hi everyone, wanted to share my current portfolio, I'm applying for jobs now, so I was hoping to get some feedback. If you guys think I am good enough for the industry, what is good about it and what might be lacking. I've been having a hard time finding a job not sure if it's a quality issue, or I am simply not sending out enough applications. Feel free to critique anything that comes to mind that you think might bother a potential employer. Thanks for looking!

http://vladimirholopov.blogspot.ca/

silver_hoodlum

I think you have a really good portfolio to find a job, the only thing I will recommend is to choose your 4-5 five best pieces and put them together. Putting too much might not be helpful for employers

3DVlad

Thanks a lot for the input. I've been thinking of taking down my rocks, I think its my lowest quality piece at the moment, and later posting up a complete scene with some better ones, (the scene I am talking about has a high poly in my WIPs page).

DWalker

For a nighttime scene, the stylized fantasy scene seems much too brightly and uniformly lit. I'd greatly reduce (or even eliminate) the ambient light, and have a distant omni lightrepresenting the moon giving a faint light. The primary light for the scene should be the bluish glow from the crystals and the yellowish glow from the lanterns.

It's always tempting to over light a scene to ensure that everything can be seen, but the contrast between dark and light areas is important, and sometimes merely implying a shape can be more effective than actually showing it.

I personally prefer a two-tier set-up for portfolios, with a preview image on the main page linking to a more detailed presentation. I just find that this makes my navigation easier, letting me focus on the projects as I wish. Of course, this is a matter of personal taste; many of the artists on this site seem to prefer putting everything on one giant page.

You might cull some of the images, and consider an order other than chronological. I think your modular apartment building is your strongest piece, yet it appears at the very bottom of the site.

Shrike

The stuff you have is looking good, no worries on that, but your presentation ..

You could drive OCD people insane with your page. What is up with the layout of your maps and images? You definitely need to clean that up and make proper alignments. Im serious, If OCD timmy goes to hell, he will see your image alignment

Maybe check out some layouting basics, that will help you a lot understand

Also, when you show a video of a door, I expect that it atleast opens. A 30° angle is not worth a video, I did not see anything I couldnt get from the pic. Also its not nice that the videos touch the sides of your background, maybe just make it wider. Also consider splitting up your work into seperate parts, I think most people dont really enjoy the blog portfolio format

3DVlad

Thank you so much for the input guys, exactly what I was hoping to get

I did some tweaks to the lighting and some post processing voodoo to get more contrast out of the scene . Here is the result:




The scene does have more contrast now, but what bothers me is that I get black shadows, I guess that is why I had blown out the lighting in the first place, here is an image of what I am talking about:




I significantly reduced the AO and those areas are not that dark in my diffuse or spec. Any Ideas on how to address that or is that kind of thing normal in night scenes?

I will work on making a nice layout next. Any tipps on best way of presenting textures? I know a some companies want to see textures upclose ( a ubisoft art recruiter I talked to in the past mentioned that to me)

3DVlad

Improved website layout and lighting on the fantasy scene as per your suggestions, and got rid of those pesky rocks they were not up to standard anyways, I like my site much better now :
http://vladimirholopov.blogspot.ca

Let me know if you think there is anything else I could improve.

Thanks a lot for your help everyone, it is much appreciated. I hope I'll have better luck job hunting this time around.

Shrike

Thats a lot better already

Now the thing bugging the most is your super big header image with the stone, its not really nice, just put something more simple. Get some basic shapes as a logo if you have nothing, or just something small aside your name. Also you have to stop mixing sans serif and serif fonts on your portfolio, that makes it look really cheesy.
Stay with sans serif, change all serif fonts and stay with similar fonts at best.
Also do not use grunge fonts, they look like a easy "make nice" button, but theyre not, they look bad in 97% of the cases.

Also make your background just flat grey (similar to polycount background, or darker but not lighter) so you dont have that gradient, it makes it look really cheap and reminds of editor screenshots. (very light colored grey tone is best, green per example)

+ For your concept art, dont make this subpage. It is not good enough to be presented that way to be honest here, (and it dosnt matter for your 3d job anyways) but if you look it the other way around, seeing the car from you and you presenting that you made your own concept for that as a bonus (even tho its not on industrial level) I was very positively surprised , just dont put them as single pieces for your future job to see, it just does more harm than good. But dont give up on concepting!