Calling all Industry Professionals - Advice/Critique Needed

brettmarshalltucker

Hey, guys!

I'm fairly new to 3D. I've been at it for about nine months now and have taken on some unpaid freelance work in order to learn about the industry and bolster my portfolio. I intend to apply to game jobs as soon as I finish a few things with this game and rework my portfolio a bit more. I am seeking advice from professionals concerning the quality of my work, the state of my portfolio and my appeal to game studios as someone new to the game.

I did not go to school for game design but I have a Fine Arts degree and I believe that it helps me quite a bit in this field. My portfolio shows my work from every medium that I've worked with with clear sections and focus on game design. My resume and an about me is available on my portfolio as well as some examples of the work I've done as a freelance game artist.

Please give me some harsh and honest feedback!

P.S.: I live in NYC and intend to apply to Avalanche and Rockstar as well as any other studios I can find. I am lucky enough to have an awesome job as an artist assistant, playing with Lego all day but I really want to start my career as an entry level environment artist. If you have any experience with studios in New York specifically, I would be very interested to hear from you.

Here is my portfolio; thanks in advance!

www.brettmarshalltucker.com

slosh

Ok, here we go.  First off, if you want to do env art, that's all you want on your folio and it should be front and center.  If you are applying to for an env gig, don't even force someone to look at your splash page and accidentally go to your sculpture or digital page cuz it's not going to help you.  Second, don't call your 3d models page "game design" as the term "design" refers to a discipline that is completely separate from "env art."  It's confusing.  Also, if you want to do env art, you need more process shots.  I mean like hires shots, wireframe shots, multiple angles, texture sheets.  Now to the assets themselves on your game design page.  I assume you did everything in those screenshots?  Some of it is ok but starting at about the barrel and car door down, I would cut it.  Everything below that looks completely unfinished.  Never put anything WIP in your folio.  Your modeling isn't bad but your models show a fundamental lack of knowledge of UVing, baking, and texturing.  I think you really need to study this further and possibly re-texture your assets or better yet, just make new ones.  Honestly, I probably wouldn't hire you as a junior artist with what you have now.  The sofa chair thing is probably the strongest to me along with the room with light streaming in through the window.  Most of the other props aren't bad but they are boring and the wooden assets are textured poorly.  The tree and the motor home aren't bad either but neither really impress me in any way.  I would also not link a blog to show your process.  Like I mentioned earlier, do breakdown shots that show wireframe, polycount, etc to show your process quickly and concisely.  Don't make someone go searching for any info you want them to know about your work.  As for quality, compare your stuff to other young folks just breaking into the industry.  This is the folio of an env artist who just got his first gig at Insomniac Studios (https://www.artstation.com/artist/coreyhill)...do you feel you are hitting this quality bar?  You don't have to have that much stuff in your folio to get a job but that's the quality bar of people getting AAA jr artist gigs.  Anyways, you have a solid base...you just need to make higher fidelity stuff.  good luck!

brettmarshalltucker

slosh said:

Ok, here we go.  First off, if you want to do env art, that's all you want on your folio and it should be front and center.  If you are applying to for an env gig, don't even force someone to look at your splash page and accidentally go to your sculpture or digital page cuz it's not going to help you.  Second, don't call your 3d models page "game design" as the term "design" refers to a discipline that is completely separate from "env art."  It's confusing.  Also, if you want to do env art, you need more process shots.  I mean like hires shots, wireframe shots, multiple angles, texture sheets.  Now to the assets themselves on your game design page.  I assume you did everything in those screenshots?  Some of it is ok but starting at about the barrel and car door down, I would cut it.  Everything below that looks completely unfinished.  Never put anything WIP in your folio.  Your modeling isn't bad but your models show a fundamental lack of knowledge of UVing, baking, and texturing.  I think you really need to study this further and possibly re-texture your assets or better yet, just make new ones.  Honestly, I probably wouldn't hire you as a junior artist with what you have now.  The sofa chair thing is probably the strongest to me along with the room with light streaming in through the window.  Most of the other props aren't bad but they are boring and the wooden assets are textured poorly.  The tree and the motor home aren't bad either but neither really impress me in any way.  I would also not link a blog to show your process.  Like I mentioned earlier, do breakdown shots that show wireframe, polycount, etc to show your process quickly and concisely.  Don't make someone go searching for any info you want them to know about your work.  As for quality, compare your stuff to other young folks just breaking into the industry.  This is the folio of an env artist who just got his first gig at Insomniac Studios (https://www.artstation.com/artist/coreyhill)...do you feel you are hitting this quality bar?  You don't have to have that much stuff in your folio to get a job but that's the quality bar of people getting AAA jr artist gigs.  Anyways, you have a solid base...you just need to make higher fidelity stuff.  good luck!

Thanks for the feedback! I will definitely add more process shots. I thought that the blog route could be good to show what knowledge I have and maybe help someone out who is searching for the answer to a particular problem. I have struggled with most aspects of UVs and baking until very recently and I am aware that there is a ton of stuff that I have to learn still. I will make sure that my portfolio is arranged in such a way to more easily show what I can do!

Also, would you recommend that I start rendering in Unreal or another engine? I have knowledge of Unreal and Unity and seems that a lot of really nice looking renders come from there. I think it could help me learn about lighting too.

Thanks for the great criticism, its just what I needed!

slosh

Yea, if you do it in Unreal, that's a bonus.  Marmoset TB3 is a great engine just for showing off pretty models as well.

brettmarshalltucker

Thanks, slosh, I will get busy. I appreciate it!

JordanN

slosh said:

The sofa chair thing is probably the strongest to me along with the room with light streaming in through the window.  Most of the other props aren't bad but they are boring and the wooden assets are textured poorly.  The tree and the motor home aren't bad either but neither really impress me in any way. 

Out of a curiosity, could you go more in depth with your motor home critique?

You were more impressed by his chair and his dishpit, even though both are smaller in scale. After looking at the Insomniac guy's art, is it his materials or how he laid out his textures/lighting that's holding the scene back? Or do you find the scene itself has a thematic problem? 

I'm guessing the closest example I can think of are those Horror/Survival stories that take place in the woods. When looking at references, they tend to describe a scene that has liveliness or shows isolation from the rest of the world. 

brettmarshalltucker

I forgot to enable the part of my site that showcases some work for a game in development. That's live now!

Bedrock

Not bad for 9 months!

http://brettmarshalltucker.com/scenes-and-models <- this needs to be the homepage.

That page also doesn't have a great layout. Generally every thumbnail is dedicated to a separate project and if I click on it I expect to see 2-10 screenshots in a column showing the main scene, assets, wireframes, shader breakdowns, etc. much like Corey's work linked above. When it comes to your portfolio and navigation, less is more. Your website is fancy but having a homepage and far too much clicking to see your stuff  is working against you. tl;dr I would just migrate over to the free artstation thing

If you want a job you might need a couple extra projects before you are ready. I would focus on smaller scenes and aim for a few, high quality assets. There's a lot of aspects to environment modeling so you might need to pick a direction. It's usually down to substance designer node wizard, general props, vehicle artist, weapon artist, vegetation, modular stuff (sci fi, buildings...) etc. The more you spread out the more of a general artist you become but companies generally look for specialists. Early on you will be fine, this is more of 2-4 year plan to that you want to keep in mind.

I would consider seeking out a start-to-finish tutorial on one high AAA quality piece. 

brettmarshalltucker

Bedrock said:

Not bad for 9 months!

http://brettmarshalltucker.com/scenes-and-models <- this needs to be the homepage.

That page also doesn't have a great layout. Generally every thumbnail is dedicated to a separate project and if I click on it I expect to see 2-10 screenshots in a column showing the main scene, assets, wireframes, shader breakdowns, etc. much like Corey's work linked above. When it comes to your portfolio and navigation, less is more. Your website is fancy but having a homepage and far too much clicking to see your stuff  is working against you. tl;dr I would just migrate over to the free artstation thing

If you want a job you might need a couple extra projects before you are ready. I would focus on smaller scenes and aim for a few, high quality assets. There's a lot of aspects to environment modeling so you might need to pick a direction. It's usually down to substance designer node wizard, general props, vehicle artist, weapon artist, vegetation, modular stuff (sci fi, buildings...) etc. The more you spread out the more of a general artist you become but companies generally look for specialists. Early on you will be fine, this is more of 2-4 year plan to that you want to keep in mind.

I would consider seeking out a start-to-finish tutorial on one high AAA quality piece. 

Thanks for the feedback! The website is still in progress for sure. Strange to transition from physical media art to this stuff but it's getting there. I'll definitely do those breakdown shots! 

As far as specializing, I'm not really sure what I want to go for, I'd like to do it all but I know that's not always possible. I will keep that in mind. Last night, I started laying out a small apartment to model in full as a finished piece that can have multiple beauty shots as well as some camera panning through it in Unreal. It would be helpful to make some high quality single assets through tutorials first so I should do that. Thanks again!