UE 4 - Portfolio Review - Environment Artist

kvino006

Hi everyone,

I just finished my bachelor degree in 3d design in montreal and I would like to have your reviews and advices on my online portfolio.

I specialized myself in environment design for video games.

Thank you !

www.kevinturenne.com

Matt_Billeci

Although your models within the trolley scene are really nice, I dont really care for the composition. There are far too many grays and blacks within your scene to the point where they start to wash out everything else around them. I know that you want your focal point to be the trolley, only because how the lighting is a different color compared to everything else, however your perspective lines lead the eye towards this giant empty space by the bridges so my head is constantly fighting itself to look in two different directions. You may want to consider moving your assets around the scene, playing around with the composition and use your buildings to your advantage. Also, you should consider increasing the lighting around your trolley overall, Its really hard to see a lot of your detail because its so dark, to the point where the end of the train starts blending in with the buildings.

You also have a ton of tangents throughout your scene. Here is a good article on how tangents can affect the staging in your scene:

http://emptyeasel.com/2008/11/18/avoiding-tangents-9-visual-blunders-every-artist-should-watch-out-for/

As far as the rest of the textures go, they barely feel fleshed out. Your foreground sidewalk has no variation or history to is whatsoever. your cobblestone isnt hitting because of two reasons.
1. just like many other assets out of the focal point, it is very flat lacks the surface detail that make it cobblestone and
2. every piece of cobblestone is perfectly symmetrical. Cobblestone is very asymmetrical and should be broken up into different sizes.
As for your wood, it suffers from similar issues such as being too flat and lacking in both wood grain and knots. If i look really closely at the screen I can see some hint of it, but its just way too subtle to even notice.

Its a good start man. Overall, the rest of your scene is just lacking the same level of polish as your trolley and focus assets. Keep at it!

kvino006

@Matt_Billeci

I'll try to fix some of the issues you mentionned.

I've never heard of tangents problems but since you mention it, everything that didn't work in the scene starts to pop out.

Thanks a lot for the critics !

DireWolf

Those fancy loading animation are really unnecessary. Your site shows up empty if I don't allow cross-site scripts from parastorage.com which then tries to load ad scripts from doubleclick.net.

Seriously get rid of all those and use pure HTML for your website. Or use Artstation.

Matroskin

your S-F prop staging is beau en osti

I love the composition of story-telling around the car. But Matt_Billeci has a great point - if you present your setup as a scene, the shot composition has a big impact on picture readability.
I'd also like to add that the houses on the background could be more ruined to look closer to an earthquake disaster to support your backstory:
http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/images/lloyds/about%20lloyds/history/san%20francisco%20earthquake/what%20happened/sf_pic_fallen_down_house.jpg
http://www.city.ogaki.lg.jp/cmsfiles/contents/0000003/3130/p03.jpg

But i know, the scene is done, and it is still very cool, and I guess you'll be moving on , so those are just few point to consider for the future

As another general comment I'd say that it lacks more tech breakdowns, such as wireframes, texture sheets, maybe untextured shaded meshes, hi-res models before the bake (if used) etc. Usually fresh guys get hired as Prop Modellers if they get into a big studio, so I'd assume potential employers would like to see more "under the hood" details

Also even though there are mostly images which speak for themselves, but when your role on the project and other useful info is written only in French there will be much less people able to understand it I'd do default version in English... just don't tell PQ that I said that

kvino006

Thanks everyone for the comments !