interview

Ruz

well just had an interview at a games company, went ok, but the fact that i have not really

worked in games for  quite a  while and have not got many totally finished pieces from recent times

was a bit of a minus for them.

i think in your own mind you tend to assume they know you have done certain things,

but in reality it's what yuo have in you folio that counts.

I have started getting back in to getting my work in to games engines now( unreal and Unity) so hopefully that will  be a bonus

in the future.

I have had 1 art test and 2 interviews in the last few months, so getting better

Eric Chadwick

Go get em cowboy. It'll happen. I know it was a long slog at times for me, can be hard having to always be your own cheerleader haha.

Ruz

certianly is. I will have to bite the bullet and fully learn substance painter/designer. yeah trying to maintain an air of positivity can be tough at times, but i don't give in easy

poopipe

Every interview teaches you something whether you win or not - get as much feedback from them as possible and attempt to address it in your portfolio. 

If I can offer some steam of consciousness thoughts on the environment work... 

Your stuff is technically good but a bit sterile - kind of like a blank canvas. What I'm not really seeing is history.
 If we take a street scene as an example .. maybe a van hit a safety barrier a few years ago and bent it, maybe someone smashed a window, maybe a shop went out of business and it's boarded up. Invent some little narratives - we're looking for that when we review

What happened to that retro scene you were working on a while back?  That sounded like the perfect portfolio piece to me.

A quick way to jazz up your artstation would be to work up your door assets so they look like they've been exposed to different experiences. It'd be a quick way to learn painter and if you think about it there's a whole world of stories that happen in doorways - no idea where you live but I imagine Friday/Saturday nights are as traumatic for a shop doorway there as they are anywhere else in the country 😁

Ruz

good advice poopipe. what it is I am not confident enough with the whole process of making environments, so it's hard to add any narrative , just panic a bit and hoping I am doing it right.

I did notice little things with the environments in just cause 3 where the rooves/roofs? are not quite straight edges, things that you might not normally notice . lots of extra detail in window  frames etc  so yeah will try to address that next

re the korean scene, I want to go further , but at the moment, I am unsure how to prcoceed as quite  a few of the materials are still procedural. obviously converting all that so it  works in a game engine, is a whole other ball game

it's the process that i am struggling with, too many choices available, like substance or photoshop, unreal or unity , tiled textures or unique,  just bogs me down a bit.

even the road decals which are alpha overlays, is that wise or not, performance wise

The medieval scene, is coming out ok, but since I started using , the OSM route, it will need a lot of fixing now ;(

i did start out doing environment work back in 2002, but the techniques were simpler then

re the door assets, yes i can totally work them up some more, add more grunge, split wood etc, broken tiles maybe

edit , yeah the doorways could have old kebabs or pizza puke

carvuliero

I wont worry too much if I ware you .You are very hard working lol more like content machine half of "what are you working on" is your stuff

Just pick few that you like and have potential and push them to whats consider professional quality

If you need help with specific asset or comp just make a wip topic , plenty of environment artist on polycount ready to help

Ruz

cheers carvuliero, maybe I was over thinking it a bit.:) will post some more updates soon

poopipe

 worry less about the technical aspects than getting the aesthetics sorted.  In a studio you have people like me to tell you whether you're taking the piss or not - performance is about priorities and context, nobody can answer any questions with full confidence until it's been profiled. 

There's no single  right way to execute any of this stuff( there's lots of wrong ways tbf) and really the question left in my mind by your portfolio is around whether you can channel an artistic vision, rather than whether you can execute it or not. 

I don't just mean add a kebab packet and some puke stains, more like  this door is opposite a nightclub, what's happened to it over the last 5 years and how do you explain that through surfacing and decoration? Give every mark a story. 

It might be worth doing a version for each season or a version after a big fire,  zombie apocalypse, robbery - whatever, just pick a theme/event and squeeze everything out of it.

Ruz

I see what you are saying, but maybe I am not 'that' kind of creative artist. I have ideas for sure, but I worry more about how nice it looks TBH

and i do worry about the tech side, but that's just me .

The context of this piece is that it was a test for  VR and it has other characters/stuff waiting to be dropped in to it. It's really a fun piece for me because a lot of the posters/signage are made from scratch and they are kind of silly on the whole ( if you can read Korean:)  and there is a  vague idea about what to do with it .

Having said that i will be doing a few focused pieces in the future, but for me really it was just dipping my toes in to environments after a long break, so we will see how it goes.

If I can get it in to unity or unreal and have it look goodish, then i think thats my short term goal really.

Trying to unify a color scheme for a whole town is quite tricky and I have learned a lot from doing it, so maybe the next piece will be a bit more themed/idea driven

I think the seasons idea would work well, ie winter, spring etc

Ruz

didn't get the job , wasn't surprised, just applied for another got another phone interview tomorrow

Ruz

I am actually working on a film poject now, goood to be back in the groove

neilberard

Good to hear!