Portfolio Variety, opinions?

Will Faucher

Hey,
So I have a few issues concerning variety in my portfolio at the moment.
I'm starting out, and I would love to hear some advice from people who know what they are talking about.

So here's the thing. As of now I am a student, working on my portfolio. I am currently working on an environment that should be finished soon (It's an abandoned/deserted Japanese shrine). However, I've begun thinking about what my second environment should be. Now, I've always been told to try and mimic the style of a company I'd like to work for, and I was thinking of trying to nail a Sci-fi environment with Mass Effect's style, or a more historical environment with Assassin's Creed's style (Medieval or Renaissance-style environment perhaps?)

Knowing that I currently have a traditional Japanese environment, which would be better to add the greatest diversity in my portfolio? The last thing I want is to have too much of the same thing. I'm sort of stumped as to which of the two choices would be better to add to a portfolio.

Thanks so much!

cholden

Variety is a more direct approach because it hits more targets. If you specialize in a style you have to be really good at it, and are more likely to only find work where that style is used. Showing a variety of examples (nature, urban, fantasy, sci-fi) increases your value to more employers. This is the same for game engines. As in, if one piece is presented in UDK, the next one is Crytech, and so on.

Will Faucher

I get what you mean. See, I'm not trying to specialize in a style per se, I'm just trying to get a few different styles. For my school portfolio, I'll only have time to finish 2 environments. Which is why I was asking which would be best to start next.

Kwramm

personally I'd make something different, if you just have 2 enviros in total.

I don't necessarily thing in terms of diversity of the portfolio, but you also get the work with new design elements, have to do new research, etc. when making something different. There's just much more opportunity to learn with that than making similar things over and over....just my 2 cents tho

Eric Chadwick

You're already doing abandoned/deserted man-made buildings. It's good to show a range, so you could do a clean sci-fi interior setting, or do a landscape type scene, or a more cartoony hand-painted scene of some sort.

Will Faucher

Yeah that is what I was thinking about. However, I had thought about something more urban. Something that is lived in and that is devoid of nature. I'm not necessarily talking about a modern urban environment, I was thinking perhaps a more historical one. I just don't know where to get some nice sci-fi concepts.

BradMyers82

Hey man, I don't know what level your art is at, so its difficult to comment here.
But I can say from personal experience you should concentrate more on learning and less on making the perfect portfolio piece. Granted, you may be a really awesome artist, and all you need to do is concentrate on a single environment or 2 for your portfolio, but in this day and age, it's very uncommon to land a studio gig right out of school.
Usually, people work quite hard after graduation, and that's when you really start getting good.

Again, I'm speaking from personal experience. Before I graduated, I got really caught up in trying to make things perfect, when in actuality, it would have been better to crank out a bunch of o.k. work and treat it as a learning experience.

I would like to actually see what you're doing. Do you have any WIP threads running?

Will Faucher

I do have a WIP thread going on, but I haven't updated it in a while, and there have been some significant changes done. But here it is: http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=69902&page=2 . The first 2 pages really don't show much of what I've done, only the last picture of the second page really shows what I've got done so far.

Anyways, back on topic. I understand what you mean by treating a few OK props as a learning experience. However, it's like I said, this is for my school portfolio and I'd rather have something a little more interesting than a few props here and there. I'll have the time to make 2 environments, so I'm trying to get some variety in there. I do know that it is rather rare to land a job right out of school. However it doesn't mean I'm about to make my portfolio any less interesting. I started 3D for the first time ever shortly before the holidays, and I've been working hard ever since.

So anyways, I've been thinking alot tonight and I'm leaning heavily towards a sci-fi environment. Unless someone convinces me otherwise, I'll be going that route.

CJE

A Sci-Fi environment would be cool, you should take some inspiration from companies you want to work for, and direct that piece towards that particular style

Farfarer

A mix of stuff is nice to see but really I think you'd do best to work on stuff you enjoy/want to work on.

I tend to find myself that if I've done a lot of realistic things, I want to do something fresh and stylised and vice versa.

Ghostscape

Prophecies wrote: »

For my school portfolio, I'll only have time to finish 2 environments.

Your school portfolio and its portfolio requirements are not your professional portfolio.

It's good to have variety, but honestly if there is one you'd rather do, that is the one that you're going to execute better on, and that's the one that will be valued more by companies working on projects you'd rather work on.

SHEPEIRO

yeah always do what your interested in

that said a fantasy urban scifi scene would compliment a historic rural realistic scene

carlo_c

A nice tip from the game industry mentor podcasts that I remember was to choose 5 studios you'd love to work for or are actually targeting to apply for and have a portfolio piece based on each one.

That would give you 5 portfolio pieces hopefully with some diversity depending on the studios you chose, and a semi-targeted approach with applying if you chose studios that you are applying to.

Will Faucher

Thanks for the tip guys, I just have one last question. I am debating between making some sort of hangar bay, with the focal point being some large ship, or a generator room/hallway/lab. With the hangar bay, the environment itself would be rather large. Does it matter if you don't get up close and personal to see the tiny details you add to the environment itself? Or would it be best to stick with something smaller, and go all out texture-wise? Of course, the focal point is different. What I'm trying to say is; is it better to make the environment the center of attention? Or the ship? Here is an example that may explain what I mean better since I totally fail at explaining myself properly.



Notice how the environment with the ship seems rather dull with ordinary textures?
Hopefully I've explained myself properly, I'm a rather complicated person :P

kdm3d

I think the first one would be better to show off modeling and texturing ability. The bottom doesn't look like it would take much skill to model and texture... kinda boxy and tiling, ya know?

Will Faucher

I agree, however, I'd be making a nice ship for the focal point. But you are right concerning showing off the texturing work.

kdm3d

well... are you going for environments? or hard surface? The ship is more of an asset, where as the environment itself is a different focus in game design. You dont need the environment to show off the ship.

Will Faucher

Hmm good call, I am going for environments. Brain fart there. The problem with a simple hallway is that this is going to be part of a demoreel. Meaning there will be a panning camera. Hallways tend to be repetitive so I'll need to look into something slightly more elaborated.

I've been looking everywhere for some decent sci-fi concepts of indoors. I've found a TON of them that are outdoor and landscape-ish, but not so many interiors.