3D Environment Artist - Portfolio critique

mitroi

Hey guys! I hope this is the right channel for this.
I'd love to get some feedback on my portfolio, if there's anyone nice enough to take a few minutes out of their time :)
I'm switching projects at the moment and I'd like to hear some input on how my work looks like to an objective eye.

Personally I'm conflicted between two ways of thinking. On one hand I believe my portfolio doesn't showcase everything I can do in the perfect way. As in, I don't have many breakdowns in my portfolio showing exactly what I've done for the project and how.
I also have skills that perhaps some people won't even know because it is not clearly stated in there. For instance I'm also a mid Houdini artist, mainly developing custom procedural tools for environment art and level designers. At my last work place I developed an entire procedural forest generator for an open-world game, but if I didn't tell you that you would have no indication of it from my portfolio.

On the other hand, I also believe it should be pretty clear what I can do even without all the breakdown stuff - everything you see in there I can do, it's pretty straight forward. As in, do you like what you see and you'd want your video game to look similar to those graphics? Then it means I can do it.

I've worked on a lot of projects throughout the years, but most of them were not really things I'd feel be impressive for a portfolio place., hence why I choose to have more personal projects than commercial ones.
I always chose to work in the small start-up companies instead of the big video game companies (Ubisoft, EA, etc) because I don't enjoy the corporate work-place these later companies offer.

Portfolio

nexussim

I quite like your work. To me it certainly seems to be good enough for work if that's what you are asking. While you may not have breakdown videos, you do have some videos of walking through the environments which to me shows your work. Also, your newest project does have some breakdowns. Also, I'd say always post your best work, so if that is your personal work and not your commercial work, who cares. Companies can see what what other companies you have worked for on your resume.

Fabi_G

Some cool projects there!
In my opinion the portfolio doesn't focus on any specific aspect and instead seems more generalist. That might make it of lower interest for people looking to fill a specific position, like a level or technical artist for games. For games, it would also find it interesting to see concepts/references your working off, to see how it translates. Keep it up!

mitroi

@Fabi_G thanks for your input! Yes, I'm kind of all over the place, and that's due to the fact that I enjoy a lot of things and I don't really wanna be doing one thing only. I like having projects from completely different industries & genres, and because of that I feel posting only a very specific skill will take that away from me.

I mainly do environments for video games, at least that's my specialty, but I get bored working on the same kind of stuff for too long, and I need to switch it up so I don't lose my interest completely. For instance the majority of my work is in video games, but I've done plenty of VFX & animation work for different agencies. I'm not really the type of person to see myself doing the same thing over & over again, for long periods of time - however I do feel like maybe that impacts the interest of the very big studios out there - cause they don't see me as a long-term solution for a specific position they might have (which is not entirely a false thing, if I'm being honest ).

You guys have any ideas on what the best practice would be to combine both? I was thinking having different demo reels for specific skill sets of mine: a demo reel for 3D environments, one for technical art, and one for VFX work.

Fabi_G

I grouped artworks by categories with the intention to make the Artstation easier to read and navigate. Maybe that's an option for you too.