Advice for becoming an environment artist
polycounter lvl 3
Hi guys, this is my first post here. I'm currently in the process of building my portfolio: https://www.ahadafzaal.ca/ Obviously I will be posting more work soon (Wireframe and texture maps to come). However, I wanted to know if I was doing the right thing? Like, is it necessary for environment/prop artists to have complete sceneries or is showing off your assets and texture maps etc perfectly okay? Also, as someone who's just starting to get into the art industry, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how an environment artist should approach their website. Like, things that are necessary for environment artists to have on their portfolios and things they shouldn't. Last thing but not least, is there a difference between a prop artist and an environment artist?
Replies
Environment Artist = does everything involved in the creation of an environment (models/textures/materials/world building/lighting/etc).
Lots of environment artists get their foot in the door as a prop artist, however. Learning to model, unwrap, bake, and texture is definitely the first step on the road to becoming an environment artist.
When you're just starting out, probably looking for work as a prop artist or a junior level position, having just props in your portfolio is fine. If you're looking for work as an environment artist then yeah you will absolutely need to have environments in your portfolio.
I would say move your portfolio to Artstation first off. This is a really good article written by @PixelMasher that covers all the reasons this is a good idea https://www.polygon-academy.com/why-your-portfolio-needs-to-be-on-artstation/
Things I think an environment artist should have in their portfolio:
Environments - Doesn't need to be anything epic in scale, small scenes are probably going to be easier to finish anyway. Something that you've modeled and textured, put together in a game engine, and lit by you. You want to demonstrate that you can execute on all of the skills that would potentially be needed to build a complete environment
Props/complex assets - Show us that you are capable of modeling a complex asset and that you know the full asset creation pipeline. High poly model, low poly model+wireframe, texture flats, + final asset lit and rendered in a realtime environment (marmoset toolbag/UE4/Unity/whatever)
Tiling textures/materials - probably a good idea to show that you understand how to create and use tiling textures and trim sheets.
Things I would avoid putting in your portfolio:
Unfinished assets - save it for your blog. Don't give off the impression that you're unable to follow a project through to completion
Non-realtime renders - If you're looking for a job working in games you need to show that you can create optimized art that will run in realtime. No one cares about your fancy Vray renders.
Concept art or character art - unless you're a wicked amazing concept/character artist, this stuff is just going to distract from the goal of your portfolio, which is to show off your skills as an environment artist.
https://ahad.artstation.com/
Here's what I will do from this point:
Should I get rid of other random artwork that I made from previous years that are not relevant to props/ environment assets?