[Portfolio] Alex Kam, Environment Artist
polycounter lvl 12
Hey guys, I'm putting up my portfolio for review. I'm open to all critiques and suggestions. I'm feeling more confident with how my skills are developing and officially putting myself up as "looking for work" 
http://www.alexkam.com
EDIT: Added an update, see post below
http://www.alexkam.com
EDIT: Added an update, see post below
Replies
When using very few, tiling textures, give some shading to your meshes with vertex colors. You can easily get better looking gradients on your walls (they look a bit flat atm) and some nice Ambient Occlusion effects by adding a few more triangles...
Why are the brick on top of the plaster? , you'd be better off using somekind of blend material, hardalpha overlay or decal for this effect. Or just simple incorporate the plaster into the brick texture. Right now it doesn't really come off as worn or degraded.
Lighting is very uniform doesn't really expose the normal map details that should be in the blue tarp. Som kind of distressed torn edge on the tarp and maybe some metal rings or a hemned edge would make it look less like a tiling texture applied to plane.
The buildings as a whole does not tie that well into the ground, some decals or dirt build up in the corners and along the edges of the building would ground it a lot more.
Distribution of polygons is weird, why model the ridges on the roof to the left when those polygons could be spent on details that are not replacable by a normal map.
The alley scene:
It rarely if ever makes any sense to go below 200 tris (on current consoles) on a draw call, so whenever you have a new material on like the air conditioner in the alley scene you might as well spend a few more poly's on a wire, some stuff holding it onto the wall etc, to sort of get that medium to small detail that the scene is currently lacking.
The brick textures have way too many bricks even for a 1024x1024 texture resolution would not be great up close, you'd be better off putting a lower density of bricks in a 512x512 texture and spicing it up with decals.
The door prop:
UV layout is suboptimal, why put an object like the door itself in the middle of the layout, it would be much more efficient to put it in a corner.
Wood like this should not have a bumpy uneven surface unless it is made by the worlds worst carpenter, use the specular and diffuse to give wear to to lacquer instead if you want it to catch the light.
The tarp seems to come up alot and the reason why it looks like the way it is right now was because I wanted to use a tiling texture on it instead of making it unique.
The bricks on top of the concrete was suppose to look like someone is in the process of putting them there. It was not meant to be as if it was a brick house and the bricks are falling off. I modeled it instead of using decal or blend material because I felt it gave it more weight and I liked the look of it.
Outdoor lighting is something I still struggle with. Currently, only the sun is the light source. I may experiment with adding some very low intensity point lights.
I modeled the ridges on the roof on the side because when I had it as flat, it looked too flat.
The weakest piece, and i'm sorry to say is your latest one. I just don't believe that icebox. It needs more polish. Mainly I think it's the icebox doors, I think they need wear in tear in the right areas (along the corners) and I can tell that the texture is being mirrored for both doors. They just need some more love put into them and the entire box as well.
I feel your lighting (as it was stated by someone else in this thread before) is all too uniform. You're not selling the normals on the tarp. I realize it's a roof item and perhaps you are thinking that the player would never end up on the roof and to save polies. Due to the view that you're prividing polycounters (showing us the tarp and roof) you might as well sell it more. Add some more polies in the tarp to give a few large wrinkles or perhaps have one of the sides of the tarp lifted up and over itself (folding the tarp over) to show the underside of it. Also consider putting a ladder and a toolbox in the scene to add to the idea of someone working up top on the roof. I like the oil drum and tires next to the house, and you obviously have "filled out" your scenes in the past (with your garbage/debris/pipe scene) so do so with this one. Also consider changing your lighting to something like late afternoon where the sun is coming down, or early evening and have some interior emissive lights showing through the windows etc.
I also don't like or agree with the bricks being in progress by the doorway to the left. Rather than having that, add smaller props (tackle, fishing line, tool boxes, odds and ends, milk crates) to busy that area up and not have it a bare wall/2 windows/and a door.
Instead of giving us a dead on shot of the scene, try a few various angles (play with the viewer camera a bit to make the shot more dynamic).
Hope that helps a bit
If the bricks are in progress then you should tell that story by putting a pallet with unused bricks, a bucket with dried up mortar, a used trowel etc. That would go a lot further to convey a story and add some life to the scene.
The ridges on the roof do not add to the silhouette of the roof, and so it really should be doable in the texture, are you sure you made the bump strength strong enough when you tried?
For the tarp i would suggest making part of its texture tile-able and then making some unique details in the same texture for the edges. Then just tile it in the center using polygons. Even if you don't go that way a tarp is a pretty ideal candidate for a detail map tiling at a higher frequency to add the smaller detail if your main map becomes too blurry.
My chinatown screens are larger than I usually post, so please let me know if it causes you to scroll horizontally to view it
Folio -- > http://www.alexkam.com
Direct to Chinatown scene --> http://members.shaw.ca/alexkam/gallery/chinatown/