Portfolio review

stefa

Hey guys, I am a third-year game student and prospective environment artist. 
I have built my portfolio and I'm looking for some feedback on it as I'm about to venture into the unknown world of internship hunting. 
here's a view of my thumbnails and if you'd like to look at the projects I leave my Artstation account.
ANY feedback is more than welcome 
https://gabrielestefanellimatteo.artstation.com/albums/8121867

Mark Dygert

It definitely looks impressive on the first glance, you have some really great looking assets and there is obviously a lot of hard work put into all of it. So you have some skills, dedication and some good looking portfolio shots, especially for a student. So nice job!

BUT (there is always a but) you have some things that throw up yellow and red flags. I apologize if this comes off as a little rough, don't be disheartened, I really do like your stuff.

PROOFREAD!

9 spelling mistakes in the Fjord project description, that's a lot of red ink. I have no idea what "regrrdi optimization" is. I googled it, google doesn't know either. Written communication skills are critical when interacting with everyone, writing documentation, and communicating in chat. Also the last line "All comments are well accepted, I hope you like it!" This comes across as "a little needy and starved for attention". Managing those types of people can be draining. 

Hiring managers tend to focus on two things:

1) Does it look good.
2) Is it well built.
You not really answering that last question very well. Lets see some more topology, lets see some uv layouts, tri counts, texture sheets. Material graphs in unreal. All of these things give me confidence that you can build assets correctly and I'm not seeing them.

Sanctuary Ruins

First impression:  The slowly panning beauty shots are great, its a good looking scene 
Second impression: The description gutted me.  This could absolutely be worded in a better way. 

"Concept: Jose Vega..." "...It was really fun exploring the assets from Quixel..."

Cool, you credited the person, but the concept isn't yours, bummer. That's ok we often work off of concept art, but which assets are Quixel and what work is yours? Maybe hide the Quixel assets, or turn off textures so it's clear what work is yours. Was this a level layout exercise, lighting, composition, camera work? What was the point if not asset creation?

Maybe say something like  "This project focused on using pre-made quixel assets so we could focus on composition, level design and rendering. I created several assets myself and here are the break downs..." and then show breakdowns, topology, uv layouts, material graphs ect...

Dremel

First impression: This looks good, especially the materials!
Second impression: A lot of the reference matches your textures. So again I wonder "what work is yours?" Can you sit down with Substance and generate textures like this without photos? I don't know your portfolio doesn't tell me. This is a bad place to be.

The tri count and wireframe worry me a little. it seems excessive for a prop. The 5k cord looks like a auto-crunched spline that probably won't LOD well because each loop is it's own geo. Having a more solid mass of wires with one or two loops sticking up would probably be lower in tri count and LOD better.

Omni Scatter

First impression: It looks good but its a tool, it doesn't need to look good, it needs to fill a need. 
Second impression: I need a bit more info about how you created and used it. Are you building randomly generated biomes in Unreal? Scattering in Houdini and importing the whole thing? How did you create this tool, how might it benefit others? What skills did you use to build it? Code? C++? Python? Node Editor? Does it have a user interface that you created? 

Site N-8

First impression: Looks good
Second impression: That topology on the cloth tubes, looks auto crunched and is still excessive. I could probably get that exact same look with half or a quarter of the polygons. The chains are probably insanely high poly, like the rope bundles?

At this point I stopped, I would pass. It looks good on the surface but the answers I'm getting from your portfolio about "how was it made" either aren't there or are red flags. 

Keep working on new projects, keep flushing out your student work with new things. For a student, you have a really good start, but you're not quite there yet and unfortunately the industry is full of very talented people who are all looking for work, and a lot of them have a lot of experience. 

Focus less on pretty shots and more on the nuts and bolts of building assets.

Those are my thoughts, feel free to completely ignore them if you disagree, hopefully this is helpful and nudges you in the right direction, good luck and I look forward to seeing more from you in the future.

stefa

Mark Dygert said:

It definitely looks impressive on the first glance, you have some really great looking assets and there is obviously a lot of hard work put into all of it. So you have some skills, dedication and some good looking portfolio shots, especially for a student. So nice job!

BUT (there is always a but) you have some things that throw up yellow and red flags. I apologize if this comes off as a little rough, don't be disheartened, I really do like your stuff.

PROOFREAD!

9 spelling mistakes in the Fjord project description, that's a lot of red ink. I have no idea what "regrrdi optimization" is. I googled it, google doesn't know either. Written communication skills are critical when interacting with everyone, writing documentation, and communicating in chat. Also the last line "All comments are well accepted, I hope you like it!" This comes across as "a little needy and starved for attention". Managing those types of people can be draining. 

Hiring managers tend to focus on two things:

1) Does it look good.
2) Is it well built.
You not really answering that last question very well. Lets see some more topology, lets see some uv layouts, tri counts, texture sheets. Material graphs in unreal. All of these things give me confidence that you can build assets correctly and I'm not seeing them.

Sanctuary Ruins

First impression:  The slowly panning beauty shots are great, its a good looking scene 
Second impression: The description gutted me.  This could absolutely be worded in a better way. 

"Concept: Jose Vega..." "...It was really fun exploring the assets from Quixel..."

Cool, you credited the person, but the concept isn't yours, bummer. That's ok we often work off of concept art, but which assets are Quixel and what work is yours? Maybe hide the Quixel assets, or turn off textures so it's clear what work is yours. Was this a level layout exercise, lighting, composition, camera work? What was the point if not asset creation?

Maybe say something like  "This project focused on using pre-made quixel assets so we could focus on composition, level design and rendering. I created several assets myself and here are the break downs..." and then show breakdowns, topology, uv layouts, material graphs ect...

Dremel

First impression: This looks good, especially the materials!
Second impression: A lot of the reference matches your textures. So again I wonder "what work is yours?" Can you sit down with Substance and generate textures like this without photos? I don't know your portfolio doesn't tell me. This is a bad place to be.

The tri count and wireframe worry me a little. it seems excessive for a prop. The 5k cord looks like a auto-crunched spline that probably won't LOD well because each loop is it's own geo. Having a more solid mass of wires with one or two loops sticking up would probably be lower in tri count and LOD better.

Omni Scatter

First impression: It looks good but its a tool, it doesn't need to look good, it needs to fill a need. 
Second impression: I need a bit more info about how you created and used it. Are you building randomly generated biomes in Unreal? Scattering in Houdini and importing the whole thing? How did you create this tool, how might it benefit others? What skills did you use to build it? Code? C++? Python? Node Editor? Does it have a user interface that you created? 

Site N-8

First impression: Looks good
Second impression: That topology on the cloth tubes, looks auto crunched and is still excessive. I could probably get that exact same look with half or a quarter of the polygons. The chains are probably insanely high poly, like the rope bundles?

At this point I stopped, I would pass. It looks good on the surface but the answers I'm getting from your portfolio about "how was it made" either aren't there or are red flags. 

Keep working on new projects, keep flushing out your student work with new things. For a student, you have a really good start, but you're not quite there yet and unfortunately the industry is full of very talented people who are all looking for work, and a lot of them have a lot of experience. 

Focus less on pretty shots and more on the nuts and bolts of building assets.

Those are my thoughts, feel free to completely ignore them if you disagree, hopefully this is helpful and nudges you in the right direction, good luck and I look forward to seeing more from you in the future.

Thanks a lot! This is the best feedback I have gotten! I agree with most of your pointers and I will try to keep an eye on what you wrote
The only question I have is: as a student looking for an internship, I feel like I match my level of experience (this is not to say that I should not strive to grow) but isn't the point of an internship to refine my skills?
Anyway thanks for the feedback I appreciate the time you took to go through my work 

Alemja

The only question I have is: as a student looking for an internship, I feel like I match my level of experience (this is not to say that I should not strive to grow) but isn't the point of an internship to refine my skills?

I have to unfortunately be very real here for a second: the pandemic was a great time for internships, juniors and associates. However with the mass number of layoffs and people looking for work, lower level job positions are going to be a rarity to borderline-non-existent. It's worse that pre-pandemic. I'm not saying this to discourage you, I want you to keep working on your craft but you're going to have to be in this for the long haul as your current competition for jobs are people who just got let go and have years of experience, that is the unfortunate reality right now. This may start sorting itself out over the next couple of years but none of us know the future, things are very uncertain in the industry at the moment.

Internships, Junior and Associate roles can also be kind of a "you get what you put in" the idea is to help people grow sure, but with the state of things right now even when people want to help their attention might be elsewhere. So you're going to have to be proactive, and I think being proactive is a good skill to have no matter what level you are.

iam717

I'd say(to anyone) join a group of like minded people who want to create a "game", and build a portfolio with that while you wait, strive to become competition to companies instead of waiting around.

Sure it is hit or miss with "groups", but some games coming out seem nice in the indy scene and people are warming up to them more as long as the stories are there.  Doesn't have to look tripA.