[Portfolio] Christopher Schweiger - Environmental Artist

Ramza394

Hey guys,

I just finished my new website and I'm looking for any critiques or comments of the site or my artwork before I start applying for jobs. Schweiger3D

Thanks

SamCom

This is really minor and nit-picky, but "Tutorials" shouldn't have an apostrophe. With the apostrophe, it means something belongs to Tutorial, or "Tutorial is".
Everything else looks pretty good.

NoChance

Everything looks ok... I would say your portfolio is lacking some good hi poly bakes, everything seems to be pretty boring, not to be mean.

Maybe do some high poly pieces, it would really add something.

ZacD

NoChance wrote: »

pretty boring

That pretty much sums it all up.

adam

"Environment" Artist.

nfrrtycmplx

site looks good.

the scenes look very sterile. The textures look very flat and it looks like your GI is just washing out whatever bump you have on anything. If you have bump on the stuff...

It' difficult to get a true sense of scale with anything in the scenes...

I can kinda tell how big things are supposed to be by examining the props, but the proportions of things feel wrong.

could also just be the lack of depth in the atmosphere and lighting playing with my mind.

everything is very perpendicular too. There's no irregularity in the foundations of the buildings or the fences. The street doesn't have any inperfections or drainage or access to anything below them (manholes).

the road looks very flat and uninteresting.

there is no curb. just sidwalk to street. nothing deviding the street/sidewalk anywhere.

This place doesn't look lived in at all. THere's no signs taped to the buildings, no dents in the garage door.

Material properties are off. With such a low angle light, i'd expect to see some more interesting specular highlights and lower level of ambient light going on... more contrast in the lighting will help a lot.

looksl ke yur clouds have a normal map on them... is this true? or is it just a strange cloud texture?

Your props look a bit low poly in some areas ... if an object is supposed to be round, go ahead and make it round (trashcans - barrels)

The light control box thing is a good example of how not to grime something up... Use grime to add character too your assets, to use grime and metal scratches as the foundation of your texture. It just looks like a bad photoshop job with some photoref... Something this scatched up and beat to hell would have dents in it somewhere. And is the whole thing made out of one solid piece of metal? When building props like this, think about how the thing is constructed and how the different parts come together and work together. Right now it just looks and reads like a bunch of random scrap metal parts attached to the side of a large block of metal that someone took into a dark alley and beat the shit out of.

I suggest doing more of the following:

1. Model high polygon object that looks badass
2. Make low resolution model based on high resolution model topology
3. UVWMap low poly object
4. Bake normals and AO from the high poly to the low poly
5. Use AO as a guide for PAINTING your textures
6. Use overlays to help kick your assets to the next level.
7. Put renders of your badass stuff in your portfolio

Suggestion - take the tutorials section out of your portfolio.

It's filler content that tells us something we already know (you know how to get things into the game engine).

by us, i mean people looking at your portfolio

Scaffolding, barrels, building, bricks... all very useful stuff for a lot of games... but what people want to see in an environment artist's portfolio is their ability to put together a scene, light it properly, paint textures that have character and breathe life into their geometry... and above all else, creativity. All the stuff in your portfolio looks/feels very utilitarian... by this i mean, it doesn't express any real artistic style or creativity.

With the number of people who are applying for jobs these days, it's important for everyone to try to put their best foot forward and stand out from the floods of portfolios that we see on a regular basis from kids out of school.

If you've seen a barrel, you've seen them all. And unless your barrel is the best barrel on the internet, I suggest putting something else in its place.

You may be able to get an internship someplace or a very junior artist position working on the next ghost recon title.

I know you've put a lot of work into your portfolio and the stuff that has gone in it... I only want to tell you what it is I look for when deciding if I'm going to want to hire a new artist for my team. Crates and Barrels are not on the list.

I do wish you luck, and hope that my comments are helpful.

chrisradsby

Nice stuff, but I've got to agree with nfrrtycmplx , I think that the houses looks pretty good by themselves but in the renderscenes something seems to be lacking. The foliage would probably look a bit better if there were any color-variation on the leaves.

But still good work, keep on working mate.

PredatorGSR

The initial feel is that your buildings feel very flat. I was going to type some long post with details and how to improve it, but nfrrtycmplx said pretty much everything I was going to say.

aesir

Don't be afraid of stronger lighting and sharper shadows.

Ramza394

Thanks for all the replies guys. I going to take everyone's critique and work on some new high poly artwork that will hopefully be more KICK-ASS and less yawn. Then post some new updates in the coming days .