Environment / Prop Artist portfolio; Looking for my first job
polycounter lvl 2
I've come to a point where I consider my portfolio complete enough to land me a job in the industry. What do you all think?
https://www.artstation.com/ethanrichards01
GROB-06 is my most recent project that is supposed to showcase a proficiency in environment creation within UE5. Honestly this was my least favorite project to work on. I don't really like creating environments with no gameplay aspects to take into consideration. I got burned out working on this late into development and just decided to skip a few of the assets. I'm not super happy with the result, but the feedback has been pretty positive. I hope it's good enough to impress hiring managers. I think for future environments I'll go back to my roots and create Counter Strike 2 maps in Source 2 with custom assets. Or maybe just smaller dioramas in UE5.
The vegetation thumbnail was really fun to work on. I had a blast learning the new engine and this kind of workflow. Sculpting the rocks was a lot of fun and I was very pleased with the result. I know it's not that crazy of a project, but it's there to reflect a capacity for creating vegetation and some basic shaders.
The MPX project is the one I think looks the best. This was made a long time ago when I just had fun creating props. Eventually I had to move on to environments, but I enjoyed my time trying to push myself as far as possible with this project. It felt good to just work on something without having to follow a tutorial or learn something new, although maybe my time could've been better spent.
Last project is just the first thing I made that I consider a professional attempt at 3D art. I was still new to PBR texturing and baking meshes, so I was blown away with the result when I finished this. It was probably one of my favorite experiences seeing how well it turned out back then. I know it's not the greatest piece in the world, but my expectations were pretty low at the time as I was still pretty new to the whole thing.
In the end I feel like my portfolio shows off all the necessary skills a hiring manager would want to see for an environment artist. Whether those items are quality enough is up to you. My last project was a little annoying to work on. I think I prefer a more natural environment compared to a hard surface environment, but I'm not sure. My next portfolio piece will be a small Counter Strike 2 deathmatch map. Creating maps for CS:GO was what got me started with design and 3D art, and is what I really enjoy. This time I can create an environment that looks great because of Source 2 and it can be a real professional attempt at a CS2 map. I'd also like to try and replicate Valve's art style to make my assets mix well with the prefabs that are already included with Source 2. It just feels so much better to engage with an environment you created rather than just looking at an image.
Please tell me what you think!
https://www.artstation.com/ethanrichards01
GROB-06 is my most recent project that is supposed to showcase a proficiency in environment creation within UE5. Honestly this was my least favorite project to work on. I don't really like creating environments with no gameplay aspects to take into consideration. I got burned out working on this late into development and just decided to skip a few of the assets. I'm not super happy with the result, but the feedback has been pretty positive. I hope it's good enough to impress hiring managers. I think for future environments I'll go back to my roots and create Counter Strike 2 maps in Source 2 with custom assets. Or maybe just smaller dioramas in UE5.
The vegetation thumbnail was really fun to work on. I had a blast learning the new engine and this kind of workflow. Sculpting the rocks was a lot of fun and I was very pleased with the result. I know it's not that crazy of a project, but it's there to reflect a capacity for creating vegetation and some basic shaders.
The MPX project is the one I think looks the best. This was made a long time ago when I just had fun creating props. Eventually I had to move on to environments, but I enjoyed my time trying to push myself as far as possible with this project. It felt good to just work on something without having to follow a tutorial or learn something new, although maybe my time could've been better spent.
Last project is just the first thing I made that I consider a professional attempt at 3D art. I was still new to PBR texturing and baking meshes, so I was blown away with the result when I finished this. It was probably one of my favorite experiences seeing how well it turned out back then. I know it's not the greatest piece in the world, but my expectations were pretty low at the time as I was still pretty new to the whole thing.
In the end I feel like my portfolio shows off all the necessary skills a hiring manager would want to see for an environment artist. Whether those items are quality enough is up to you. My last project was a little annoying to work on. I think I prefer a more natural environment compared to a hard surface environment, but I'm not sure. My next portfolio piece will be a small Counter Strike 2 deathmatch map. Creating maps for CS:GO was what got me started with design and 3D art, and is what I really enjoy. This time I can create an environment that looks great because of Source 2 and it can be a real professional attempt at a CS2 map. I'd also like to try and replicate Valve's art style to make my assets mix well with the prefabs that are already included with Source 2. It just feels so much better to engage with an environment you created rather than just looking at an image.
Please tell me what you think!
Replies
I am neither a hiring manager nor an experienced environment artist, but from a Tech Art point of view I would like to see your Wireframe, UV's, Textures, and sadly, you don't have any of that in your portfolio. I know it probably wasn't intentional, but it can be a red flag when looking for new artists.
The GROB-06 scene that you build in UE5 for real-time applications. Maybe you could show some walkthrough so we can see the performance on that?
All those things would be a great addition in your portfolio and help impress anyone who would be looking at it. Because yes, we want to have nice art in games, but we also need the game to run.
Hope this helps!
Have a good one
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/49xeb2
don't forget to check out UE5 more, there's new stuff like lumen and nanite, but also take advantage of the asset store, as well as quixel assets, height-based textures, speedtree, landmass creation, terrain masking, terrain blend brushes, tilesets & modular buildings, there's a lot of really cool stuff to learn as an environment artist now that I think about it