Game Art Portfolio Review

MSchloeder

Hopefully this is the right place to put this, if not I can remove it. It's been about a year and a half since graduating college with a focus on game art and design. I have yet to get a job interview, and I'm wondering if you guys could critique my portfolio. Is there anything that's particularly deal-breaking in there or anything that I should focus on? For context I've been applying for environment and prop artist positions.

Potfolio: https://www.artstation.com/mschloeder

Thanks in advance! 

Taylor Brown

To put it simply, the quality bar is higher than what you are showing in your work. Since you're in Austin, I assume you're like me and applying to the bazillion studios around town. Take a look at Junior Artists at Certain Affinity or Arkane. Take one of their projects and examine every single inch of it. Look at the material definition and texture work, look at the modeling skill, look at the quality of their bakes, look at their lighting etc etc. Then take a hard look at your own and ask if you are hitting that quality level. If the honest answer is no then focus in on that area, learn it and apply it to a new project. I know my own work isn't there and probably won't be for another year or more.

Is there a particular project of yours you'd like more attention paid to? I noticed a few things that need love across the lot of them but I don't want to tear you down unless you're really looking for a full critique of your work.

Something I've come to learn is that art is subjective right up until you get to the technical aspects.

Ashervisalis

I'd focus on props/texturing for a while to bump up your quality before moving onto environments.

Taylor Brown

I have a bit of free time so I can point out some things. Only going to focus on the more recent works. 

Kuwagata Shrine. The rocks look like blobs of grey clay dropped on top of each other. It makes me think you weren't looking at reference for shape or color. For the stone walls of the buildings, either you have baked in shadows in your albedo and you've put the texture in upside down or your normals are inverted. Either way, it makes no sense for shadows to be on the TOP when the lighting is coming from above (with no visible overhang to create the shadow). Overall, color in the scene is very samey across all the surfaces. Grey / Brown / Purplish. So I'd look into adjusting your lighting.

Crystal Keepers Airship. It's hard to tell what you're going for here with the modeling. So there's smooth high poly areas with nice bevels next to unbeveled cubes. There needs to be a consistency there. The cloth for the sails needs thickness and add some waviness to the plane itself rather than relying solely on a texture. Again, find reference for this stuff and stick to it. Also theres a lot of texture stretching on the wood which is kind of unacceptable considering youre using a tiling texture for that area.

I'd drop the sword and sci fi corridor. They need quite a bit of reworking in modeling and texturing and it's probably better just to move on. The SD materials can also go because they are very basic ones you could watch a single YouTube tutorial and make. I'd also recommend leaving out WIP pieces and keeping those in a blogpost. Not only is it nearly impossible to gauge a person's quality level from a WIP... it also doesn't look very good if you have one up from nearly a year ago. It just says you don't finish what you start to a future employer. Don't feel precious about what's in your portfolio. Quality over quantity is the advice youll see and hear EVERYWHERE. My personal approach is to keep it to a solid handful of things and as soon as I finish something new that is better than the last project in the row, I dump it. Unless whatever skill was highlighted in that project isn't shown elsewhere.

School is great for streamlining education but it's also a business that needs people to believe they will be hireable upon exit. Keep on grinding and start posting projects on here for critiques. It will cut out a lot of bullshit for you down the line.

MSchloeder

Thanks Taylor, that's a lot of great feedback. Gotta be honest with myself there. The WIP was part of an game I was working on with friends that folded right after so I haven't gotten back to it. I can see why that would hurt the portfolio. Would you recommend scrapping what I've got and starting on smaller projects, props, and textures or does anything look salvageable?

I guess another way of looking at it is should I just push on and stop thinking about ways to 'fix' my old projects?

Taylor Brown

I think your Shrine is the strongest thing in there and that if you took that and made a checklist of everything you need to learn and apply it you could have something pretty cool. Will it be enough to land a job? Probably not. Will 5 more projects of that scale and with consistent quality throughout get you a job? Maybe.

Take a loot at the work Dekogon Studios pump out as a quality bar to reach for a prop as far as pushing baking and texturing. As far as environments go, this is something I came across recently and it's just about the best "How-To" I've seen - https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/modular-concepts-for-game-and-virtual-reality-assets

Good luck man and props to you for opening yourself up to feedback. It's a critical skill.

MSchloeder

Thanks so much. I just opened up that article and It looks like a great asset. I'll keep pushing and start posting here more often. Also, thanks for the reminder of the bar it takes to get a job in this industry, I think I downplayed that a bit in my head.

Taylor Brown

It happens man. Feel free to hit me up if you ever want to chat about your work

MSchloeder

Will do!