[Portfolio] HitmonInfinity Environment Artist
polycounter lvl 11
Hello Polycount,
I'm looking for some feedback. I'm trying to find a full time position as an Environment Artist. I am currently working for Speedtree, building up our new tree library. Middleware is great, but I don't think I'll be content until I'm in game development.
My portfolio can be viewed here: http://kerbywithane.com
I could use any critique/advise you can give. Is my website efficient? Does my work need more attention? I've been applying for quite a while, with very little response. Tell me what it's going to take to get an employer's attention.
Thanks in advance.
I'm looking for some feedback. I'm trying to find a full time position as an Environment Artist. I am currently working for Speedtree, building up our new tree library. Middleware is great, but I don't think I'll be content until I'm in game development.
My portfolio can be viewed here: http://kerbywithane.com
I could use any critique/advise you can give. Is my website efficient? Does my work need more attention? I've been applying for quite a while, with very little response. Tell me what it's going to take to get an employer's attention.
Thanks in advance.
Replies
Also I kind of like it when the first page of an artists portfolio website goes right to the gallery (of course take this with a grain of salt cause my site is really simplistic). Also if you havent any experience in game development besides speedtree you might consider applying for a 3D modeler /Prop/Asset position.
Honestly though i cant see why youre not getting a good amount of attention from employers. Keep at it man, your stuff is good!
I recently changed the icons to display text when they're rolled over. I specifically made the first one "Reel 09" hoping users would gravitate to the gallery first. What did you look at first?
I think a lot of art directors feel the same way. You have 30 seconds MAX to get their attention, and waiting for a reel is just going to waste their time.
He speaks the truth. 99% of the comments I got about showing off work in this industry is open on your best image gallery. LARGE thumbnails or ditch the thumbs all together and just do image after image in high resolution. You want your work out there and in their face. Also, ditch the flash if you can. I did and I don't regret it at all. It takes a while to load and isn't worth it most of the time. Good work, but the website will bring it down. These are just suggestions though, good luck
So... I suggest you start a WIP thread here on polycount, and work on a full environment, in a game engine like unreal, or crisis. Once you have that, your chances for a studio job will sky rocket, trust me.
Good luck man!
A few points I would suggest.
1- No flash, as it doesn't add to the functionality of the site. The overlays can be done pretty easily with a javascript library, if you really want to use them. Will keep the site nice and light and responsive.
2- I think the first thing I should see on your site is your best piece of work. Right now all your stuff is 'behind' the stone wall. We should land on your portfolio.
3- I'd go with medium size images > hi res, rather than small > medium > hi-res. Because right now the small thumbs are just further obfuscation of your content. If I want to scan through your work, I want to be able to at least comprehend what each item is.
4- Perhaps posting some wires? or breakdown of your pieces? Either in an expanded view with the high res shot, or in a sequence.
5- I would consider paring back the site graphics, as the grunge scheme is competing with your work.
FYI, I speak as a web designer rather than a 3D artist. I have neither industry experience nor the expertise to crit your work.
Hope that helps.
and echoing previous comments (i.e. grimmrobe and others) - larger images, no splash page - the first thing visitors/potential emplyers should see is your work straight up and keep on working on finishing assets rather than presenting 1/2's.
keep on cracking!
Other suggestions like no Flash are good too. And I agree that in your reel the wireframes are more distracting than helpful. They're too dense to mean much if the smoothed mesh looks good.
I'd also ditch the logo. This is just a personal gripe, the work will always speak louder than small annoyances like this, but I have memories of being pushed to create a "personal logo" to use on my reel, business card, etc. while in school and I always thought it was pretty silly. Now every time I see a logo I immediately associate it with student work, even though when I got to your gallery the work was good. If I was old and jaded (which isn't all that uncommon in the industry!) I might not have made it past the splash screen.
Beyond that, the site design in general should be a bit cleaner, I think. There are a few too many bevel/embossed elements and messy fonts for my taste. If you like the font and want to keep it for the site, I might suggest changing it to something cleaner in your resume anyway.
I think your hard surface stuff is strong. If you want to be a prop or vehicle/gun modeler I think you seem to have the right level of hard-surface OCD, as long as it doesn't slow you down too much. The motorcycle has lots of solid detail, but the presentation could be a little better and go a long way, I think. What are you rendering in? Slightly more dramatic lighting and some work on the materials would be great. A flat grey render with nice AO could help too.
If you really do like hard surface stuff more than environments, spend some time making a couple more low-reses with normal maps. It takes some time to work out how to properly low-res and make good normals for hard surface stuff, so showing proficiency there will help you in the job search. Texture your nice low-res hard surface stuff and I think you'll be good to go.
I hope nothing above seems to harsh, it isn't meant to be at all. Your work is good. Presenting it well and adding some things to give it focus will go a long way.
I tend to think demo reels are a waste of time for modeller/texture artist types. I always get frustrated by how slow they are, and the disjointed cuts and weird camera moves. bleh
kdm3d - Agreed. I'll have a link somewhere to view it on the new site.
Progg - Yup. Faster, more efficient, the flash must be killed. (I hear Steve Jobs laughing in the distance.)
tbaugher - Thanks. Yeah, I think everyone agrees my zbrush work is sub par.
whats_true - It's sad but true. It's whats true. lol. I'm def going to get those gray models all painted up and in-game. Oh, and the wireframes, that's kind of a school thing. They encouraged it.
BradMyers82 - Well technically I don't call myself an Environment Artist anywhere on my portfolio, but I am applying for those positions. I agree with you though. A solid full environment or two is always impressive to me. I think I'm going to aim at polishing off my current assets, and then possibly taking a shot at an environment. I could prob use some of my current stuff, and I'd def throw in my Speedtrees. This could work... Thanks for the advise. PS: I kinda copied your breakdowns
grimmrobe - 1. Yup. 2. Yup. 3. Yes sir. 4. I have one breakdown in the gallery, the gun. But I def need more. 5. The whole thing is gunna get a facelift. I've always thought the grunge kinda conflicts with my hard surface stuff anyway.
achmedthesnake - Agreed. Def going to push those assets to completion.
3D-209 - I think you're right about the logo. It is a school thing. (Branding yourself and what not) But at the end of the day, I'll be known as "cool motorcycle guy" or whatever, not my logo. I love Birth of Hero font! Maybe you're right though, it should prob get killed too
KateC - What?!?! Those punks said they'd email me if they decided to put it in there! O well, at least somebody knows my work.
aniceto - Yeah, that's flash for ya. You just click the imagine to go back to the thumbs. That's all going to change though.
A couple questions for everybody:
Should I just start a blog somewhere? Or should i just redo the site to be more blog-like?
Based on my work now, can you rate my assets for me? (Which one needs to be first, 2nd, 3rd, and I could prob handle it from there.)
Did you guys see the assault rifle breakdown? Should I have all my assets presented like that?
Thanks again for all your replys. I'm eager to get rolling on these suggestions!
I could take some screenshots tomorrow at work possibly. The trees are made with Speedtree. You can make them in max/maya with similar results, but it takes much longer. There's a full version of Speedtree 5 with the UDK. You can only export straight to unreal, but its pretty solid for anybody that wants to take a shot at trees/vegetation.
"View High Res" button is too vague and often misses so it goes back to the gallery.
Mystery Meat Navigation? Get rid of it. Replace those little things at the bottom of the page with proper links or something that's clearly labeled with text before you hover over them.
The site's design has a very obvious Photoshop bevel/emboss all over it, which just looks amateurish. Same sort of thing with the personal logo comment earlier. It automatically creates mental connections to being amateur/rubbish regardless of how good the content is.
Ditch the splash page - go straight to the gallery.
The hard surface stuff is good, but a page for each piece with a proper breakdown (wireframes, couple of angles, texture flats, larger images) would be much nicer to see. I'd maybe ditch the sculpted stuff - especially that gable wall.
Add your name and web address to all of your images. If they're viewed outside of your site, no one will know who made them or where they came from. Also have your name and email on every page of your site.
get rid of the fancy pansy flash slides and crap. your art is good but i got bored real quick by the webdesign and interaction.
i want the good shit to hit me in the face as soon as i write http://kerbywithane.com and hit enter. any more effort required by me is wasting my time.
SpeedTree comes with UDK.
A couple questions for everybody: (Copied and pasted from a few posts up)
Should I just start a blog somewhere? Or should i just redo the site to be more blog-like?
Based on my work now, can you rate my assets for me? (Which one needs to be first, 2nd, 3rd, and I could prob handle it from there.)
Did you guys see the assault rifle breakdown? Should I have all my assets presented like that?
Something like this perhaps?
-drop flash
-don't have a home/intro page, drop us right into the gallery
-show more art ( for instance bigger thumbnails, or you could have 1 full shot that blends in to the background like Paul Greveson does)
-navigation on top is more logical, so it won't get cut off.
-use as much screenspace as possible, but be careful that it still fits on most screens. you don't really need to cater to <800px anymore (unless it's for mobiles, and then no flash). 950 wide, Y scrolling works fine.
-"contact" -> "resum
Imagine every point folk have made is a barrier between a potential employer and your work. You want the least possible amount. Ideally just clicking the link to your site and being taken straight to your best work and one more click should get to get to the next piece and the next... Everything else bar your work is secondary information - no employer will bother looking at it unless they're impressed by the folio content.
The fact no one's rated the work yet is probably a sign that navigating your site is a pain and so no one has infact looked through it all. Your best work is the foliage set. Then the high poly stuff (in order of the sci-fi bits, the jeep, catamaran and bike). Sadly none of it has a low poly, texture or wireframes. The zBrushed wall isn't folio worthy, I'd remove that.
As for breakdowns - yes. It's good to see wireframes and texture flats. Use a more legible font, though - the one you've got just now is ugly and hard to read.
Blogs are good, but you might want to make it supplimentary rather than a replacement if you're looking for a job. I like looking at blogs as long as they're well organized (mine is not!
Based on my work now, can you rate my assets for me? (Which one needs to be first, 2nd, 3rd, and I could prob handle it from there.)
At first glance, to show your strengths in different categories I'd say:
1. Motorcycle is your strongest technically
2. Jeep in nice but could use a pass to make it look more irregular and beat up, it would be a good opportunity to game-res and texture something dirty (to supplement the clean bike).
3. Your trees are nice, and nice trees are actually kind of hard to come by it seems.
Did you guys see the assault rifle breakdown? Should I have all my assets presented like that?
The gun presentation is alright, but I think you're having some problems with the way your normal maps are shading in the color version. To be honest, I generally like to see higher poly game-res guns too. I know there's an emphasis on low-res stuff here which is good, but game-res gun models have generally been a good bit higher than that for a while. That would work fine for a 3rd person gun, but it's nice to see good enough detail to be used as a first-person gun that can easily be scaled into something usable for 3rd person as well, in my opinion. Especially for a portfolio.
Being economical with polys is a great skill, but making things look good in a portfolio usually impresses more in my experience.
Otherwise just adjust the site with the above suggestions and work on some more game-res stuff and I think you'll be good to go. Or at least well on your way!
The word "blog" also makes me think of text. No walls of text please. Thanks.
Just make clean gallery pages with large images. Keep the image labels simple. Don't use fancy fonts (or Layer Effects) that make the text hard to read. No intelligent art director or art lead will pass you over because of a simple site design. However, an elaborate site design can make them wonder why you spent time on that instead of finishing more pieces of game art.
It would be good to have a finished scene in the portfolio, but I consider that a lower priority for now. I would focus on getting the rest of those assets presented more like the assault rifle. I want to see game-ready assets with texture sheets and wireframes. The high poly renders are a bonus.
Since the trees are the bulk of your pro work, you might consider breaking a couple of those out to their own image with textures and wires.