New Environment Art Portfolio Site

lamar McHaney

Hey guys, I want to share my new portfolio site with the polycount community. I decided to make it straight to the point. There is no flashy background or crazy drop down menus, it's straight to point site with no distraction from my work. I would love to here what you guys think.



http://lamarmchaney.tumblr.com/index.html

zanzindorf

Your environments look beautiful. Your gallery of individual props looks good too, but I feel like they're not interesting enough on their own to be on the front page. Maybe you could make some small dioramas to showcase groups of props at a time?

Alternately, you could do what this guy did: http://nathanielflower.carbonmade.com/

This guy showed just his environments on the front page, but when you click on an image, it shows you beauty shots of the environment and the individual props he made for the scene.

RobeOmega

"Kentucky Fried Chicken, San Francisco, CA 7/12-present
Cook
Prepare food for the consumer"

Your employable has raised by 1000% well done

On a serious note I would remove this and other things that are not related to the job you want (environment art)

EDIT: I would recommend you also read this
http://halo.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=werk4usplz

lamar McHaney

@zanzindorf: That is actually a good idea, I liked that guys site.

@Robeomega: Yeah me and my roommate was just talking about. I am going to remove it thanks for the advice.

dschmidt3d

In your last scene, the basement, at the bottom of the stairs the pipe on the wall doesn't have a texture. Still has the white/blue default texture from UDK. Might want to fix that. Also I would either rotate or zoom in more on the second picture of the basement so you don't see the corner of the scene. The bowls in your windmill scene seem to bright in color. Kind of like they are fluorescent in color. That pop out way to much. Try toning the color down or dulling it.

lamar McHaney

@dschmidt3d: Awesome point about the basement scene. I'll see what the problem is with the material and get another camera shot. I know about the glass bottles, at the time I was not able to fix them. I left them as a mistake/inspiration to learn how to produce better glass and liquid materials.

lamar McHaney

I realized some people that decide to post their portfolio website on polycount are not able to deal with the pressures of critique.

slosh

Your stuff is pretty decent. I think the props are weak though. My biggest crit is your materials. They don't really pop in any of your scenes. Everything feels very dull. That gun in your props sections should really pop and feel real. I would also redo them in PBR. Rework the spec on most of your stuff to get some more interest. The subject matter on all of your scenes is kind of boring too which sort of hurts your pieces. Improving the lighting and the materials, as well as detailing some of the textures, will help a lot.

lamar McHaney

Yeah Slosh my material definition and lighting is something I have been struggling with since college. I have improved greatly but I still need to work on my stuff. This is why I haven't move on to UE 4. I want to completely grasp material production before going into software which allows materials to be done easier without understanding. Most of my scene are based on concept art from the monthly noob challenge. When participating in those challenges I choose to nail the concept art as much as possible. But Yes you are right I will continue to work on my stuff.

slosh

I would highly recommend at least learning the PBR process. that gun would be perfect for it. Marmoset 2 would be a great engine to help you do that as well.

lamar McHaney

Definitely Slosh. I studied the PBR theory for an art test, it was easy to grasp. I just need more practice in material production. I haven't produced anything in Marmoset 2 yet. Just waiting to produce the right asset for it. I choose to not use my old stuff because I like to move on and learn from my mistakes. I'll probably make a new gun to show in Marmoset 2.

slosh

While I agree with that assessment, if you can make something folio worthy with a couple days work, I think it's well worth it. You can still do a new gun right after you make that old one worthy of being in your portfolio. 2 awesome looking guns will be better than one IMO.

lamar McHaney

I agree with you on that slosh. Its not like re-working the gun will take me long and 2 is always better than one. So I will do that, Thanks a lot for the suggestion.

DWalker

The pistol's barrel - especially the bore - is odd. Gun barrels - whether the more common round or the older octagonal/hexagonal - are symmetrical. The bore is always basically cylindrical, and it's always centered in the barrel. Even an old black-powder pistol will be under a great deal of pressure - more than 10,000 psi.

The cylinder is a separate piece, and there's usually a small but noticeable gap between the front of the cylinder and the frame.

The grip looks rather wide, almost as though it has a circular cross section. Some pistols had circular grips, but these tend to be very old - 18th century. The distance to the trigger looks too long; you might want to measure it with a reference hand to see if everything fits.

On your resume page, there should be a space between 3ds and Max. I'm not certain about your arrangement in the skills section; it's more common to split tools & experience into separate columns rather than assigning skills to tools. Your experience section could use some editing; some verbs are in the present tense, some tasks are missing a verb, and some are in passive voice ("Chosen to...").

Your "About" section has some grammatical errors. Try to get people to proofread for you; even if they aren't English majors, they might spot things which you missed. For example, it should be "my friends and I" rather than "me and my friends". You've also used commas in a few spots instead of periods (or my personal trademark, semi-colons); in general, if you've got two verbs, you have two sentences, and need a conjunction or a period. Minor details, I suppose, and many - or even most - readers won't consciously know what is wrong.

lamar McHaney

Wow DWalker. I am definitely going to fix all of those errors. I do try my best to proof read my stuff but things just slip by. My friends didn't catch anything when they proof read the about me section. I thought that was odd.

In regards to the pistol, that's Hellboy's Revolver. I tried my best to research where Mike Mignola drew his inspiration for the pistol. I do understand it was Hellboy's left which is his normal size hand, however, he is a very big creature. I also did some research on old revolvers just to get an idea for the revolver in general. What can I say, I still have some work to do. Thank for your input, I really do appreciate it.

lamar McHaney

I just added my new shotgun to my site.

Bartalon

Excellent work throughout! A minor nitpick about your Website: you have horizontal scroll bars that I almost missed (I thought they were dividers at first glance), which hides like half of your content.

I think the briefcase, heater, and signs sign are pretty bland compared to your guns and other whole environments. You could easily replace these with some bulk shots of props from your environments, sort of like how Jessica Dinh did it:

lamar McHaney

lol you know what Bartalon, you are the first person to say that about the scroll bars and I can definitely see what you mean. I think I can increase the spacing between the sections and scroll bars or add a background color to the scroll bar.

That's good idea for some of the props, I've seen jesseica's site before and I like how she displays her props. However, I'm already in the process of getting rid of most of those props as they are a weak part of my site. I'll be uploading new props that are at the quality of my other work.

I also subscribed to your PBR evvironment post, I already like your take on the concept. When I participated in the challenge, I wanted to capture more of a Jim Lee, Scott Williams, Alex Sinclairs comic book style. I was really aiming for it to look like Superman Earth One comic when it came to the textures.

Bartalon

Oh cool, thanks! What's funny is I prefer stylized stuff over PBR so your version is more appealing to me