[Portfolio] Jamie Murphy - Environment Artist

jamiemurphy

Hellos!

I've recently updated my portfolio and was hoping for some honest feedback. I'm currently looking for a job or internship as an environment artist.

I'm based in the UK and mainly being applying for jobs within the UK, though I am more than willing to relocate.

Are there any models I shouldn't show on my portfolio that you think lower the overall quality? The website design OK?

I'm looking at starting a new portfolio piece; do you think i would benefit from doing a certain kind of environment/prop next? Let me know if you have an opinion.

Any feedback is appreciated!

Thanks in advance!
Jamie


Portfolio : jamiemurphy.co.uk

skyline5gtr

I love the design of the site, work looks really good to me but im not a pro lol

almighty_gir

the arcade machine is labeled as a gun :P

jamiemurphy

skyline5gtr – cheers for the compliments
almighty_gir – thanks for letting me know, fixed!

BBFirefly

I'm not a pro by any means but I feel you might benefit from another outside scene. Your stuff looks great though =]

ClusterOne

I love the modelling work you did for the kitchen scene but the lighting is really boring. As it stands there really is no focal point lighting wise, everything is just uniformly illuminated. If you added some shadows to balance the scene out I think it would look amazing. Its also really clean, which seems to be intentional, but I think a little bit of grunge never hurts. Overall awesome work man, keep it up!

Meloncov

The last three pieces feel a lot weaker than the the first four. I'd drop them.

shotgun

Focus on lighting and composition

AlexCatMasterSupreme

is that a tutorial environment

DWalker

On your resume page, you can drop the "Contact Me" fields; it's really a throwback to an earlier era for personal pages - the e-mail contact serves the same purpose.

Aside from the "contact me" stuff, you have your e-mail listed and linked FOUR times on the Resume page; that's really excessive. One is usually sufficient; you should never have more than two - one at the top & the other at the bottom.

On your banner, your title and e-mail address each have a space between each character, which is quite distracting.

Most people isolate their personal site (i.e. your blog) from the professional site (portfolio & resume).

The screen on the arcade machine is blurry. Also, you really shouldn't use somebody's material as part of your project, and Street Fighter is rather well known. Most games use either a parody or a generic title; maybe "Alley Warrior"?

Many of your scenes are overly-bright, without any subtle shading or lighting effects.

Nam.Nguyen

clean layout and good stuff as well, well done!

jamiemurphy

BBFirefly – Thanks for the heads up. Your right, I should do another outside scene, thinking an urban abandoned building. Gathered some reference material here.

ClusterOne – I agree the lighting does look very flat; I mainly made this scene as a portfolio piece that could aid me in applying for various similar roles like 3d arch visualization. I have a link at the bottom of the page of pictures I took of my kitchen for reference, its [URL="[url]https://www.flickr.com/photos/125920464@N06/sets/72157645516083052[/url]"]here[/URL].
The scene is in Toolbag, would you recommend me baking some AO and doing another pass on the lighting? I’ll look into it, thanks for your advice.

Meloncov – This has been suggested to me from a few friends and i tried to just ignore them because of the amount of time that I spent on some of them pieces. Perhaps I could have a small ‘archive’ button at the bottom of the homepage, which keeps the older pieces hidden until the button is pressed. Sound OK?

HappyConscript – I’m glad you have seen something in the library scene; it was my first scene using PBR texture/materials and first time using UE4. There are quite a few things I don’t like about this environment, some of the textures I used are not right and the overall composition as way too much contrast.

Shotgun – I think they are my biggest weaknesses at the moment; it’s something I’m working on and hopefully will come in time.

AlexCatMasterSupreme – The ruined Garage? I have mentioned on the page that I used some of the methods that Tor used in these tutorial videos. I wouldn’t call it a tutorial environment as I only used what I learnt from watching his videos and applied that knowledge to a scene of my own. With that said, think I should remove it? PS: I’m a fan of your work. I enjoy seeing your improvement threads and always enjoy reading your critiques, there often on the money.

DWalker – Thanks for this, I’ll drop the content fields, change the spacing on my banner text and get rid of the excessive email addresses. I’ve been told to drop the Blog section before, I don’t really use it so I guess I could remove it/relocate it. On the Arcade Machine: I’ll change the image that’s being shown on the screen; maybe use something I've made myself.

Nam.Nguyen – Thanks a lot

AlexCatMasterSupreme

Thanks! And I mean it's up to you I just would have immediately said to myself when looking at it "oh he followed a tutorial".

Maybe name it something else so I won't associate them, or go back and add some kinda hero prop to give the scene meaning, sure it's a garage, but what's it holding, that would give you a nice high poly for your portfolio as well as a chance to make the scene more unique.

beefaroni

Hey, I'm not sure if you just updated the descriptions but..

NEVER SAY WHAT YOU THINK IS WRONG WITH YOUR PIECE!!

The person viewing it may not even notice something and then they read what you wrote and are like, "oh yea, this part isn't very good".

NEVER NEVER NEVER!!

I have made a drop ship for this scene but I am not happy with what I created, I did not use any concept for it and I feel what’s where I went wrong. I will be redoing it at a later date.
Before starting this scene I gathered a lot of reference material, I organised this reference using Pinterest.

Update: Looking back at this environment I can see quite a few things I would improve upon.
The lighting is too intense
I would use a cube map and work on some of the reflective surfaces.
There is too much noise in some of the blended grunge textures.
I want to keep moving forward with new projects rather than reworking previous scenes so i won't be going back to this project anytime soon.

A employer may view this as "I'm done with this, I don't give a shit, I will exhibit the same behavior at the company when I feel something is finished".

Obviously exaggerating but I hope you get the point.

And finally, nice portfolio!!!!!! Seriously!

Grimm_Wrecking

Personally I like the garage and the strongbox. I feel like those should be moved up.

Remove the 1911. Its not a horrible thing imo to have a gun on a portfolio outside of weapons art. However, it doesn't hold up to the rest of your work.

At a glance, there are normal, geometry and uv issues. Granted I work on and look at guns constantly, so I'm more likely to notice something. However, as its not part of the overall theme of your portfolio it also garners extra visual attention simply, because its abstract amongst the mass.

Suba

I absolutely love the arcade machine with Street Fighter X Tekken

The fact that it shows the polyframe when it hover pics is really an amazing idea. First time seeing this. It works great on your portfolio !

Overall it is really solid work and the layout is nice and simple as it should be.