Brampton Scary School. Physically stylized environment.
interpolator
Want to give a biiiiiiig thanks to Autocon 
for inspiring me to become a better artist. And of course, everyone else on Polycount who have been there to guide me all these years.
I've completely rethought how I make my portfolio over the past 5 weeks. From now on, I'm going stop being too focused on polygons. Now, I only want to create game environments that only tell the best stories ever. Which leads me to my first environment.
Brampton Scary School
Students reported something horrifying showed up on the front boards. What could it be?
Could the computers be haunted? It doesn't matter, they could play an important role in the investigation.
Venture outside The Classroom and investigate the halls. Some lockers may be open and are quite messy which means finding valuable items to fight ghosts.
The Vending Machine costs money to use. But it's said to contain an item that can help fight ghosts and other paranormal creatures.
Hmmm, the exits. Could you venture outside and find freedom? Nope, too bad. You signed up for the mission which means you are stuck inside until all the ghosts are gone. But hey, another vending machine!
Security Cameras? Could there be any caught ghost footage? It might be of help later in the game...
Water fountains? I guess it's good for getting water... which is very important for a weapon you'll have to build to fight some monsters...
for inspiring me to become a better artist. And of course, everyone else on Polycount who have been there to guide me all these years.I've completely rethought how I make my portfolio over the past 5 weeks. From now on, I'm going stop being too focused on polygons. Now, I only want to create game environments that only tell the best stories ever. Which leads me to my first environment.
Brampton Scary School
First up, the Classroom. It doesn't look like much right now, but it will be made scary very soon.A normal day of school, was later turned into a day of nightmares. Reported sightings of paranormal activity and mutant monsters, forced entire classrooms and faculty personnel to drop what they're doing and leave. In addition, a janitor has been reported gone missing in the school. Having now been abandoned, a general inquiry has been put forward to find out what the cause behind all these events. The only volunteers are three girls. They now set out at night to investigate this haunted establishment.
Students reported something horrifying showed up on the front boards. What could it be?
Could the computers be haunted? It doesn't matter, they could play an important role in the investigation.
Venture outside The Classroom and investigate the halls. Some lockers may be open and are quite messy which means finding valuable items to fight ghosts.
The Vending Machine costs money to use. But it's said to contain an item that can help fight ghosts and other paranormal creatures.
Hmmm, the exits. Could you venture outside and find freedom? Nope, too bad. You signed up for the mission which means you are stuck inside until all the ghosts are gone. But hey, another vending machine!
Security Cameras? Could there be any caught ghost footage? It might be of help later in the game...
Water fountains? I guess it's good for getting water... which is very important for a weapon you'll have to build to fight some monsters...
Replies
http://jordannelson2.blogspot.ca/2015/03/taking-my-own-advice.html
As well as, in the background, I've been thinking of ways how to refine the story, by doing some of my own drawings to go with it.
I also imagine you're wondering about the specs or what does "physically stylized mean".
Well, I'm being very conservative right now. The environment was originally suppose to be a mobile piece which means low poly. However, I wanted to branch it out more so that it actually targets Virtual Reality or Project Morpheus.
This means it's meant to run at a very high frame rate (60 to 120fps) so I'm only using the polygons I need and textures are somewhat small.
Also, I'm being more careful with ambition this time. What you see right now is the entire level. I'm not going to do more than just this floor. I'm also looking into modular methods. So reusing things in lots of interesting ways.
Lastly, physically stylized.
I'll admit though, the keyboard is rushed. Everything will get a second revision anyway.
Consider adding variance to the way the object is placed and looks. Subtle things like a mouse placed differently or a chair nudged slightly to the left can contribute to storytelling.
Onto variance, a ghost told me something. "I will devour anyone who enters this class!"
Kaboom! The whole classroom has been transformed! All the desks and chairs are being sucked into another dimension! He also told me "the lighting is too bright. A ghost would never scare in full luminescence". Well now the school has lost a lot of its electricity. You're going to need a flashlight.
Finally, stay tuned. The ghost told me something is "going to happen to the walls" very soon.
Can you guess which website is that?
You state the reason is that it's supposed to run at 120fps because you're targeting VR. Since people are going to be immersed and up close with the objects in your environment, I really think it would be a mistake to not at least bump up the detail to a more current gen level. It doesn't need to be 4k normal maps or anything close to that. But right now it just looks a bit, erm, outdated.
You can't invent a word, put it everywhere but don't do what you said you're doing.
Agree with this completely. I don't understand what you are trying to do here.
But I'll put this out though. Despite the conservative geometry, I am still using enough polygons to cover the silhouette. My most detailed prop has up to 800 triangles and my highest texture is 1024 x 1024. The high res textures are only used on large surfaces that are inspected up close. This is on top of having having 5 textures for PBR (i.e diffuse/rough/metal/normals/AO).
I know this all sounds bizarre. But my aim with this is putting good story and gameplay above graphics.
As for the stylized, I know it's not something that looks like Pixar or Warcraft so it's very different. It's just something I personally liked, where I recreate textures that are not using photos. My idea of this comes from using different brushes to paint them (i.e the desk was made entirely with crayon and the soft brush).
Please don't take this post as an attack. I've always listened to criticism and used the input to improve.
Exactly. Also, the monitor and the chair is suffering from horrible shading because of the lack of geo/normalmaps
But... I think the more important thing is that you still didn't follow the other's advice (from your another thread in the GD), and you are trying to make a large scale environment, when actually you still can't make at least one properly made asset.
You're doing it again, this time you focus on people who ask you "Why are you doing that ? what's the story ?" yes it's important but it's a 5min thinking design important, not the main focus. You're a 3D ARTIST, not a game writter, not a game designer. Your story could be awesome but if it's ugly no one would want to employ you as an artist. Your job is to produce AMAZING BEAUTIFUL portfolio peace.
In Engine:
I thought about it. I realized I'm not happy if I don't get to do this.
I'm still working on individual props/small environments people asked for. I'm also spending more time with each asset in this level as well.
I'm gonna throw this out there, you have the wrong mentality, if you want to improve you need to accept criticism. The geniuses that make up this forum are fantastic for feedback and advice. They will take up there own time and invest into making you better at what you want to achieve!
I'm also not feeling this cartoonish style in the textures at all?
Stop making excuses buddy!
I've been told before "Jordan. You are a robot. You don't do things for yourself. Just make art". I accepted this and began thinking of this environment and its artstyle.
Now when I'm told thinking for myself is wrong, what do I do?
I know typing long posts are not good on Polycount so I wont jump into that. All I can say is, please. Let me finish this environment first under this direction.
These are my references. They're not super detailed either so I'm finding ways of stylizing them without losing the identity.
The Locker texture I posted above is an example. I painted in my own scuff marks and the roughness is one I imagined. But it's still suppose to look like the above locker.
Even when looking at cartoons, not all of them are chalk full of detail. Some are meant to have little detail where it's seen as appropriate.
But remember originality is difficult and taking other ideas, pipelines, or styles can help improve ones own!
You sucks at designing. You don't have what's needed to do a great piece by yourself. THAT'S FINE, it's not a requirement, you have concept artist and game design for that. Now put your pants and accept that even if you have 10 millions ideas, they sucks and you can't put them together to do something nice. You're really far from being about to do that, because you absolutely show no knowledge at all.
Now cut the crap about inventing story, doing 6 environments. Take a goddamn concept art made by someone else AND DO IT. Not a picture, not a mockup of 10 thousand cool thing, 1 concept art AND DO IT, pick and follow the style, don't invent one, Cartoon or realistic, if you wanna go for pbr go for it but do pbr not weird nonexisting style.
You wanna do a school. Here you go a class room
This one as a personality, an atmosphere, a story. Things are coherent, it look nice. Now do it. so it look LIKE THAT. Cut the goddamn crap you told everyone, everytime.
Also don't do your thing for a game or whatever, you're building a portfolio piece, make it as beautiful as possible. don't need to be 360°, no need for 256x256 textures, or limit yourself to 30 triangle by desk.
A lot of the artists giving you criticism have very good points and I recommend considering them too. It will really help you push this further.
However, ultimately you are the artist. If your gut feeling pushes you a certain direction then go for it man.