Looking for a job soon, need advice, portfolio critique

The Rizzler

Hi people, I’m going to be looking for a job soon (aiming for an Indie company) and I don’t feel prepared at all (then again who would with their first job) so I’d really (really) appreciate some general advice, wall of text ahead.

Here’s my portfolio: http://artbyadam.carbonmade.com/

Not everything is done, but I’m actually deciding whether Carbonmade is the right site to use – the biggest issue I see is that you can’t zoom the images (they’re 1920 x 1080) or embed video and stuff, is there another premade portfolio service that is more geared towards game art? (maybe Wordpress and I use a template?)

Anyway I like to believe I’m good at receiving critique but don’t pull them punches. For the M1911 the screens aren’t final, I’m trying out some different backgrounds and I’m thinking the blurred one is the best looking. The first image’s background I’ve tried to make similar to some MGS3 promotional material with some green tinted snakeskin in the back (I know it doesn’t look that great, but would it be worth pursuing to make my portfolio look more unique?) As for the model itself I could probably make the diffuse a bit more interesting. The last few pictures are cluttered but i'll redo them as individual shots

The Claymore – the screenshots are old and it’s still a WIP, I started to do PBR textures for it a while ago but I’m thinking I’ll go back and texture it traditional style as my photo sourced texturing skills are probably not advanced enough yet - PBR would be a struggle. I’m currently modelling a cloth wrap for the grip to make it look more like actual leather, should be done soon.

The game – to me I feel it doesn’t reach my standards from an art perspective. When I started it dawned on me that creating a game from scratch from a design point of view let alone the art, programming, sound, level design, UI and even the story in a way was no frolic in the meadow (read: It was fucking hard). I’ve realised since then that most 3D artists take an already existing concept and create a model based on it, and end up with a decent model based on a decent concept (like in a conventional game development workflow). It doesn't work so well and takes much longer if you aren’t working from a concept and can’t concept super well yourself (and it’s a sci-fi game), but regardless I’ve learnt plenty and should have done things more modularly, and am now trying to work on my traditional art skills – but I digress, I should just post it on the Unity forums and get feedback there. I’d appreciate some feedback on the screenshots though. Is it acceptable to have a 400mb+ download? Should I make a trailer for the game so that the gameplay can be seen easily?

This part is more about where I’m coming from; I’ve felt creative since I was young but never really harnessed that by taking an art course or lessons. I took an interactive media course at university (which was super general, we touched on websites, mobile apps, design and games) and it was in the second year of this course two years ago, when we got introduced to Unity, that I fully decided that game art was what I wanted to do with my life. I’ve never really had a mentor or talked much to other artists (even though there was this huge talented community right here, what an idiot) so everything so far has been self-taught without guidance apart from me reading things.

I feel like I’m about a year behind the game, and wished I could have realised how awesome doing game art is earlier, but it’s probably best to accept the past and just push on I guess. I feel okay with the amount of progress I’ve made in two years despite having to complete a not-entirely-game-art-focused degree alongside learning, and have gained a bunch of generalist skills like animation, rigging and C# programming which I like to think would make me more useful to an Indie team.

As for the job I’ll be applying soon to a few indies in the UK that I’ve been following for a bit, if that doesn’t work I’ll be looking at freelancing I suppose (I’ve picked up on how hard this can be), but regardless my aim for this year is to spend every day with at least one hour traditional or digital art practise in an attempt to improve in art generally, and make up for not having several years worth of a traditional art background. I’ve labelled myself as a ‘Game Artist’ on the portfolio as I’m not shooting for the bigger games companies, is this fine? Should I make it clear that I’m self taught or avoid that?

I’m starting to think a progress thread would be a good idea just to have that added pressure to make and post something regularly (after all this is done)

Sorry if I rambled, it’s the first time I’ve talked about what I’m doing
Thanks for any advice in advance

Kel-Shaded

The Rizzler wrote: »

I’d appreciate some feedback on the screenshots though. Is it acceptable to have a 400mb+ download? Should I make a trailer for the game so that the gameplay can be seen easily?

The images are a nice size, I don't feel any need to zoom in or to download them, And they load very quickly so not an issue, Don't waste time making another.

Also I wouldn't mind a youtube link on the right if it was necessary either, could browse the page while the vid buffers, Think I'd like to see the game in action but I auto closed the link as soon as I saw how big it was.

Popol

The layout of the site is good and easy to navigate through.

The gun could be a good portfolio piece if you pushed a lot more the texturing.

The claymore is not very interesting as a portfolio piece. It's too simple to be presented just by itself, plus the texturing needs a lot more work too.

So make new assets, more impressive stuff. Making a small but very polished environement would be a good idea too.

Hope that helps.

sushi

The Rizzler wrote: »

The game – to me I feel it doesn’t reach my standards from an art perspective. When I started it dawned on me that creating a game from scratch from a design point of view let alone the art, programming, sound, level design, UI and even the story in a way was no frolic in the meadow (read: It was fucking hard)

You're right! Making a good game is hard. I didn't download your game, but it looked quite impressive from the images on your website. Keeping this as a portfolio piece on your website shows your passion for games and discipline to continue working on a project until it's done.

Handgun - the first render is not pleasing. Actually it's the background that's just weird and distracting. Employers will want to see your high poly and textures.

Sword - it needs work. In particular, the textures need a lot of love. The detail bar needs to be raised. It looks like you baked normals from a high poly which is great, but other than that it just looks like flat diffuse colors. I'd also swap out the render background for something more pleasing, or even create a small scene or a case for your sword as a backdrop. Maybe a quick blurb on the piece would be nice, like the one you wrote for your handgun.

Make your contact information more accessible so that no one has to download your resume to get in touch.

BradMyers82

Looks like you have a good foundation, here's some advice moving forward.

-The sword doesn't look like the same level of quality as your other work. You need to drop it as it makes you look a lot less professional in its current state (or re-work it to bring up the quality)

-The gun looks pretty cool. The only glaring issue I see is how low poly the silencer is. It really doesn't make sense seeing that so faceted when the rest of the gun looks pretty dense. Also, you need to break things down further, wireframe and texture maps. The write up you did at the bottom is pretty much useless, its simply too much text. I would just give the states on the image itself, so if someone downloads the image everything is right there and extremely concise. Lastly it would be good if you had a weapon there that was a bit more challenging to make.

-The level looks cool although a bit simplistic in places and doesn't give a good sense for what the game actually looks like. It almost seems like you are hiding stuff, by poorly lit areas. Again, Id like to see break downs on specific things you created. If you made the main character, break him down similar to how I did on my portfolio or something.

-You need more content. It looks like you haven't done much from your website and its probably true. I'd grind out some more content to show that you have a larger body of work and experience.

-The portfolio doesn't really translate to specific job in the industry. What I mean by this is your work is sorta all over the place. You need to make it clear what you are going for. Do you want to be a level designer, animator, prop artist, character artist, environment artist? Showing you can do a lot of different things isn't a bad thing, but you need to focus on one area or another. Otherwise its sorta like, "here's a bunch of stuff I did, now you figure out what role I fall into". People hiring are likely going to try to fill a very specific role and if you make it clear that you can fill that role you will have a lot more success.

Hope this helps man, I think you are on the right track, but its very competitive and you need to now really focus and crank out some more content.

The Rizzler

Huge thanks for the feedback guys, it's reassuring to know i'm on the right path
I'll go with the blurred backgrounds and a trailer is in the pipeline.
I'm reworking the sword to be higher quality (it was heavy WIP anyway), especially the grip (it's quite a simple asset because I wanted to push PBR texturing but as I said that was jumping the gun) Not sure what to do about making it more interesting overall as a piece however. A sheathe? Some barrels and crates to rest it on?
A small environment sounds good as something to work on for my next piece.

sushi wrote: »

Keeping this as a portfolio piece on your website shows your passion for games and discipline to continue working on a project until it's done.

Thanks! The last few months was totally worth it then haha, that's exactly the impression I wanted to make.

@BradMyers82
I've added more polys to the silencer, the M1911 was basically my first model outside of uni work and my first high to low baked piece so I was learning as I was doing, so one of my mistakes was not using enough polys to fill out the silhouette. I haven't changed the low poly much (which was months ago) so if I show wireframes people will probably lynch me, same with the UV mapping (separate islands where there isn't separate smoothing groups etc) - I'm alright at UV mapping now but still not perfect at creating a decent low poly mesh so I should just practise baking down some speedy pieces, hard surface challenge or something.
I'll work on the templates so that the tricount is on the image, 'states' - do you mean statements?

The level/character - the level is indeed quite simplistic since I'm completely new to level design and coming up with my own concepts, and in general none of the props I made are particularly impressive on their own as I built everything very fast without spending a lot of time on any single asset; the character I made in about 3 days also at speed, and is similarly not that exceptional when put under scrutiny. Right now I find working from reference to be a hundred times easier like with the gun and sword but am working on my ability to design in detail, greebling and kitbash and the like.

Content - you're right, I should have a few more quality pieces but i'm being pressured to find a job so i'll have to do them alongside whatever else (being an artist is a constant improvement process anyway right? I'll just have to make time). In the last two years I've tried to shoot high and produce good pieces but sort of neglected doing general stuff like speed modelling, sketching or producing lots of small assets for a bigger environment just to get a large volume of practise work done (busy writing a thesis and learning to program, but i'm free to do just art stuff now)

Specific job - so even if I'm going for indie studios I should narrow down my title? From what I've read indies value generalists more but I reckon i'm closest to environment artist anyway. I'll go with that
It does help. I need to be constantly reminded that there's someone else out there spending every hour that I don't spend responsibly improving faster than me

BradMyers82

Hey man, sounds good!

I meant "stats", tri count, texture size, maps used. Sorry for that typo.

Shooting for an indie studio might be really limiting yourself. I'm not sure that will be easier than finding a job at a larger studio, and I'm not really even sure I know what qualifies for an indie studio. lol. (I'm assuming a small up and coming studio making smaller games on a smaller budget). However, the problem here is finding a "indie" studio that will give you a fair salary when they could easily just be pulling from friends and stuff to fill the one open 3d artist position they might have. I could be totally wrong in my assumptions, so correct me if I'm wrong. Personally, I have found smaller outsourcing companies like the one I work for to be more friendly to people getting started out. Have you really looked around for jobs to actually see whats out there? And be careful of the old, "working for profit shares once the game releases" a lot of these indie companies might try to suck you into.

The Rizzler

BradMyers82 wrote: »

I'm assuming a small up and coming studio making smaller games on a smaller budget

yeah, I meant not AAA. What I mean when I say indie is small/medium sized companies, maybe it's not the best term.
My career objective is to get into a smaller company to start with, as I've been told there are certain advantages e.g. given more responsibility (doubled edged sword, you can either embrace it and become better or get overwhelmed by pressure), get up the rungs easier, less of a 'small cog' feeling among other reasons
All I really want is to make great art and actually enjoy my job
There's pros and cons to both AAA and smaller companies I guess

Here's a look at how the new grip is coming along
Manually painting wear details is so much fun, I need to find ways to incorporate using a tablet into my workflow more

Dave Jr

This thread cleared up a lot for me in regard to using Carbonmade as a folio

Keep it up looking good!

joshschmitt

I feel like most of your texturing is too clean, get some scratches, some dirt etc in your models.

Also 3 objects is sort of low for a portfolio imo.

pangaea

The design of the sword is really boring compared to the design of the gun.

Are you using any concept art for the sword?

It not really showing the best of your abilities. Also, it says environment artist, but you only have one environment that isn't that great I.e. portal style. It sort of really bland like your sword.

For example if you look at the art of portal 2
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110523031207/half-life/en/images/d/d3/Portal-2-031.jpg

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/40856156325168461/257E4D30F1FB92D82AA9799200C1F10A6F9A34C3/
Notice the detail make the level less bland. Just saying your gun looks really good compared to your other work.

gnomgrol

For a portfolio, make sure to have your most high quality pieces up for display on the top.
Most people won't bother looking at the rest if they find the first ones to be "average".
Also, 3 objects is way to little. Let it be 10+.

The Rizzler

Here's the material for the guard and pommel so far, I went with a brushed/polished look
Not really sure where to go with it next though
I'm anticipating having troubles with the blade because the texel density is so low as a result of it being so large proportionate to the grip




@pangaea I'm using a real world reference;



I agree it isn't the most out-there of designs but I started this asset with the intention of texturing it PBR style so I thought i'd go for something real-world. I would have chosen a sword with embossed detail or patterns but I haven't tried sculpting yet, I'll be more ambitious in the future

You're totally right on the game, It's set in a sort of scientific facility and I've been told by players that it reminds them of portal before actually, so I'll check out some portal concept art and perhaps go back and spruce up the textures throughout. Portal has a very minimalist style at first glance but somehow achieves a very interesting look
Maybe creating some detail pieces that I can propagate around to improve the visual interest also would be a good move
I sped through the development without spending much time on any one asset unlike the gun which is why it's so much better, I wasn't working strictly from concepts either but now since everything is in place I can do another visual pass
I'm not entirely comfortable with how to make stuff look nice in Unity either, I feel like you have to do a lot more work than in UE4 for example to have your stuff look nice

This is good though guys, keep laying on the crits

ZombieWells

Cool, your self taught; great! Start here. All the education you'll need http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Polycount

Search normal maps in the "search" tool. I am noticing errors on your gun.

now look here.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=92838

Pick one you think is awesome! use it as a guide for content, quality, and job title, (if the portfolio you like is an environment artist portfolio. then make a like minded portfolio to become an environment artist). Good luck!

The Rizzler

Cheers man, that would be a good approach. will do
I do more environment art than characters but the gun and sword aren't really environment pieces - I suppose that would make me more of a prop artist? (they're both intended as first person assets)
The wiki has been an integral part of my learning process the last two years actually haha (though maybe I haven't read all the links)
And yeah I have a love/hate relationship with normals. Hard surface challenges are on the cards

Might jump off the sword for now to work other stuff. Added a straight brush effect and some scratches/dirt to the blade. Not sure if I can make it any more interesting - a bit of rust around the contact points/joins? Might have to whip up something extra to make this piece stand out more at some point, like a few people said in this thread

The Rizzler

I think the M1911 section is pretty much done now unless things need changing (e.g. doing a better low poly if it doesn't seem up to scratch)

artbyadam.carbonmade.com

How's the format for the texture maps? I could probably make the sides look a little nicer, any more information that would be useful? I'll add the templates to the claymore section if everything is good