[Portfolio] - Jesse West
Hello everyone, I have been a member of polycount since I started the dominance war challenge at the beginning of the year. I haven't been very active since then though because I have been hard at work trying to finish school.
Anyways I'm just about to graduate and have just finished my portfolio website. So I wanted to show you guys hoping to kind of introduce myself a little bit better and become a more active member.
Comments and critiques are more then welcome, thanks!
http://www.jessewestart.com
Anyways I'm just about to graduate and have just finished my portfolio website. So I wanted to show you guys hoping to kind of introduce myself a little bit better and become a more active member.
Comments and critiques are more then welcome, thanks!
http://www.jessewestart.com
Replies
the reel drags on far too long, the environments are solid but I don't think you need three minutes of each (at least that's what it felt like)
your 3d gallery needs some refining, the actual work in it is good, but the presentation could use work, more views of the models, wireframe and tri counts for all of them, texture sheets, etc. same with the environment stills, there's only one per location! have a lot more of those vs. having the reel so long.
otherwise it looks great so far, better than 95% Ai grads that I've encountered.
Overall the reel can be trimmed all the way down to roughly half and just even showing some beauty shots with wire frames would do the trick.
How did you light the second Gothic scene btw?
Lighting overall was decent, though not particulary interesting. In the hospital, really push the lighting so you have strong pools of light / color and dark areas and use the lights to showcase your material work. The lighting somewhat killed yourspecular and normal. Be carefaul of this.
Cheers - Tyler
Bounchfx: thanks for the suggestions will definitely work on presentation and more screens for my environments.
Pliang: good suggestion on the construction of my level, I really wanna include that a little better. For my Gothic Scene I used a sky light and a series of different colored directional lights to get the bounce lighting that I needed, very similar to how epic uses them for their outdoor environments. And then I placed point lights around each of the lamp posts and lanterns, as well as in front of the windows on the buildings.
GameDev: Wow thanks no one has pointed that out yet, I see what you mean though and I think another size door seems like the perfect solution. I understand what your saying about the lighting and I totally agree and will definitely work on that.
Your Sister of Battle is the first thing in your gallery, and it has alot of problems, which may keep people from going further.
-8,650 Tris? That's a bit extreme, especially considering the Sisters of Battle are from an RTS universe with, what I imagine, would have much stricter poly limitations. Even still, there are alot of wasted polys.
-Take the time to rig and pose the character. Nothing kills a character more than a stiff pose. If you did rig it, it doesn't show: it looks like you just rotated the hand to fit over the gun, but not actually hold it.
-If you're going to use a 2048 texture, really use it to the fullest extent, not just because Unreal Engine 3 is doing it.
-Alot of your diffuse information could be overlapped (the characters hair is something that screams out for overlap, since they're isn't enough difference.
-The decal on her shoulder pad could be one alpha tri: it looks like you have almost 10 for that little detail.
-Your normal map doesn't have all of the pieces in it: is there a reason why?
Your golem character: sooo much better.
-Your diffuse is working very well for you
-The unwrap space could probably be better used:The under part of its head could be scaled down, same with the bottom of his feet. When doing anything for a game, the part that is seen the most gets the most texture space.
-It looks like you could optimize the head quite a bit too.
Coming from one Ai student to another, keep it up: you have the ability to get much better, just keep getting your clock cleaned on the Count.
www.jessewestart.com
1. My screen is 1280x800 resolution, and I see 2/3rds of your site vertically, and there's a sliver of stuff to the right. The average screen resolution is still 1024x768, and recruiters with those resolutions are going to barely going to fit the whole demo reel video onto the screen at once, let alone the navigation (!).
2. Show some change in the navigation. I don't mean change up the order or size of it page by page, but if I'm on the Demo Reel page, have the Demo Reel button darkened or highlighted compared to the other buttons to indicate I'm there.
3. Giving the buttons rollover effects would also help, just to give extra feedback telling your user that it should be clicked.
4. First thing I thought when I saw the Environment Artist subtitle in your header image was that it's a clickable button. I think the reason is that not only is it a similar font face to the buttons, but also it's aligned similarly to the navigation buttons. If you bring it closer to your name and maybe crook it sideways a bit, it will address that.
5. Already been said, but PAGE TITLES. What page am I on right now? Nothing to indicate where I am in the site besides the page contents. The window title should be something like "JESSE WEST'S PORTFOLIO - Demo Reel" or "JESSE WEST'S PORTFOLIO - Environment Art" to tell you who's site you're on and what page of it you're viewing.
6. Perhaps when you click on a thumbnail, it could open up the image in a new tab. I feel I could accidentally close the tab and then realize that I just closed your site entirely.
lol ouch... harsh to us AI grads but unfortunately true.
i like the idea of the buttons being darkened for whatever page you're on. also the resolution, i would change it because i have a large resolution and i still have to scroll down a little bit. maybe you could change it to be a vertically scrolling site though? just throwing out ideas. update it soon, i'd like to see the changes.
The reel is bothering me too, these short weird little romps through the hospital are confusing. Can you not do a single walthrough and then repeat as wireframe?
The outdoor scene is great. Did yiou do it all or just the buildings you highlighted? Keep up the great work.
Nice job with the portfolio.
So here is the new design, I went for something more simple and clean because I just couldn't get the results with the old website I was looking for.
Codeman: I tried a single fly through with the hospital level but it didn't seem to go over so well with most people and it felt to long. The out door scene was done completely by me.
www.jessewestart.com
Ok now that that's out of the way, screenshots/renders first then if that's not enough videos. I refuse to watch videos if i don't know if there worth watching.
As for your art, its great that you have finished scenes, but you don't show any (god i hate calling it this as its been current gen for 3 years) "next gen" art. You might know how to make "next gen" art but i wouldn't know from looking at your site. Some of the props in the scenes you have look like they were made for the ps2 era but just ended up in the scene. What you need is consistent quality and specs for each object in the scene. Either make everything diffuse only or full on "next gen".
Overall, you show good color sense and lighting. The envio in your header image looks promising and I'd like to see more - how come it's not in your Environment set? If it's in your video - 90% chance that it won't be seen (I didn't watch it)
The Gothic Environment looks good but little dated - I'd updated it and render it with strong light/shadow definition. Kind of like environment in your header. Some cast shadows, ambient occlussion or even burnt in color verts would help such vast area feel more real and less like a game level.
If you are showing off your textures - don't have black background, but instead use the most used pixel that appears or general color fill - anything but black! When your textures will mip in any game engine - the black will bleed right in... Watch the wasted pixel space - you could stretch more resolution out of most of those textures.
Your textures are good - but only for companies that look for that painted feel. That cuts your getting hired chances by a large margin - try to have some pieces that show you can do photo-real stuff or pseudo-real. Little dithered for 1024x - should be sharper with more detail. Experiment with specular, normal and ambient occlusion - they make the models pop.
Have your environments tell a story - how come abandoned hospital has running electricity and bulbs that outlive concrete walls (it only works in Silent Hill)? Windowless catacombs worked for Quake - try adding some boarded up windows to let in some natural light and truly give abandoned feel.