Portfolio: Daniel Rose, Environment Artist

Rurouni Strife

I just recently (today) finished work on the third of my three project environment art portfolio revision. I have uploaded it to the portfolio and now am ready for portfolio critiques.

I intend to begin applying to entry level artist positions either while I'm on vacation or when I return. I'll be gone about a week, currently weighing the pros and cons of that. I began this revision in mid January, you can check my blog for some previous work that I did use in a demo reel/portfolio if you want to see my improvement.

I'm looking for both site and work critiques. I have internet access and the ability to edit my site while I'm gone but no ability to edit my work. Please still leave a comment and I'll be fixing things when I return. I will be watching this thread

http://secretsilent.com

xk0be

Your site is cool. Maybe offer some sort of hint that clicking on each pic leads to more, I didn't figure it out until like 2 sec ago. I had a post all typed up about how you should show more pics etc lol.

PredatorGSR

I think its pretty much a given that any picture like that will lead to more pictures. I didn't even have to think about it when clicking through to see the rest of the images.

Overall, the impression that I get from your work is that your skillset is solid and technically proficient, but the environments lack imagination.

Chapel Ruins:
All of the pieces are pretty decent, and artistically all the pieces fit together, but the composition of the scene is just boring. Its basically a flat area surrounded by a wall. Individually each piece is merely ok, which isn't really a bad thing, because usually in a great scene you don't focus on individual elements. In this case however, the pieces don't really combine to make something great. I think you could take these assets and make something much more interesting.

Sci Fi Sewer:
I don't really like this scene at all. It isn't very interesting, and it seems pretty obvious that it is just a borderlands style shader on top of photo textures that have been run through the accented edges filter. To be fair, I didn't particularly like borderland's art style much either, but if you're going to recreate the style, you need to match their quality. Individually the assets are very simple.

Alley Way:
I actually think the building on the right is pretty good, but I don't like the scene at all, it is very bland with the exception of the building, and other than the building, the quality of the assets in the scene are of poor quality.

Race Car:
The race car looks good, but then again everything looks good with a car shader, and environment artists don't typically work on those types of cars. Any car we would work on would be damaged cars that are part of the environment and stuff like that, brand new drivable cars like that are typically done by guys who are specifically vehicle artists.

For future work, I think you need to ratchet up the quality. Right now the feeling I get is that the individual assets are mediocre, and your scene composition isn't much better. I think you need to make at least one kickass prop on its own, so you can show that you can make a great looking prop with a ton of detail. Then work on a scene with more complicated assets that are reused multiple times, so you can spend more work on assets but still fill out a scene. I would also recommend taking the chapel scene and reworking it to be more visually interesting, don't be afraid to experiment, and look at a lot of other scenes to get ideas.

Zipfinator

On your resume, the Objective section says "To work professionally has a 3D Environment Artist."

Flava-Fly

Just as a note when I click 'Chapel Ruins' it shows 'Sci-Fi Sewer' on the firefox tab it opens. Small detail but looks like my QA observation skills have not deserted me :P

ikken

Please resave your images as JPG without much compression, PNGs took forever to load for me.
(maybe it's your webhosting not working fine with the russian ISP I use here)

other than that...
the alley scene is great, and the chapel has really nice mood and atmosphere,
I really enjoyed both;

nice website, really clean and simple design, nothing to distract the viewers, good for presentation.
the sewer is a little bit generic, but I liked the colours, the style is great and I'm a biig fan of cell-shading

Gooner442

Actually on the first view of this I didn't automatically click on an image expecting more, maybe I'm dumb or tired but there will be others like me!.. and then when I did click it took quite a long time to go to the new page. Personally I think thumbnails would be better, all on the one screen so no farting about going back and forth.

Why is it called secretsilent.com?.... I thought I was clicking on a game website, don't you think it should be something simple like your name?..after all that is what you want people to remember.

As for the content, I'm not really one to comment seeing as I'm a CG noob.. but I'm coming from traditional art so I will. I think you should push your texturing much more, if the models are relatively simple then texturing on the alley and sewer should be top notch, at the moment the textures are a little bland. I'd advise you to work on your traditional skills a little more, use of colour/light etc

Rurouni Strife

Thank you all for taking the time to check out my site. I'll address the questions individually and then I have a few questions.

Predator GSR: Thanks for all of your crits! I'll definitely take it to heart. The chapel scene is actually going to re-appear in a larger scene with a guard tower, the ruins rearranged and other misc objects. I just focused on a smaller scene for time reasons, and I also had some sort of inspiration. As for the sewer scene, that is totally fair. I've also learned that it's a love/hate style no matter what.

Zipfinator: Thank you much!

Flavafly: Thank you much! Will fix (once my laptop decides to work...)

ikken: I saved them as png's thinking that higher quality would be better versus load times. But I think I might resave them, it seems like it's 50/50 on website loading time.

Gooner442: Thanks for the suggestions! I'll try to have a more creative way to show you can click on them, and if not I'll just say "click for more". It's named that way because...well I'm stupid. I created the site last year and I wanted a creative name or something. I thought that that would be a good idea. Didn't quite think that I should have just named it after me. I don't know if I can rename the domain name, it's hosted through JustHost. I tried once and didn't quite work that well but I'm basically a web newb in a sense. I'll try and look into it again but I paid for it for two years so it's what I'm using. Can't afford a new one. About the art suggestions, I agree. I really want to try to work on my traditional skills too, both in hand media and Photoshop. I feel I have a long way to go there.

Now for questions. Is it better to have faster loading jpg's versus high quality png's? Anything I should cut?

I'm going to make the changes and update my needed social networking sites and start applying for entry level positions really soon. Comments are very welcome at all times! I want to keep improving regardless if I get a position (really hopeful) or not.

Thanks again!

Laughing_Bun

What the heck is going on in the chapel ruins wireframe shot? talk about confusing.

Rurouni Strife

Alright, fixes were implemented. Laughing_Bun, unfortunately I can't edit that right now but I appreciate your crit. I'll see what I can do when I get back to Indiana because I don't have the PSD files with me/UDK won't work on this laptop. It's that old.

I will be playing around with my domain name to see if I can get a change done later today and then also be updating my social network/job network sites. I won't start applying until I return from Myrtle Beach on Monday because I won't have internet there.

X-One

In the alley scene the bricks on the left side of the last image on the page look very low-resolution. Maybe crop it out or re-frame the shot to leave it out. In general, I think the alley could use a solid lighting pass. As it stand it looks like a gloomy overcast day (pretty much the most boring of boring days.

The car you have could use some texture love. It's pretty super clean right now. Get some dirt in some crevices, and add some scratches or stone chips to the paint near the bottom of the body.

The fantasy scene I like for the most part, but I'm not a fan of the stacked stone, especially given the amount of undulations in the surface. Even if the walls were straight, the vertical stacks would be fairly unstable. I'm in preference to having all of the stone remain a single solid piece. I don't think you want to go back and add localized geometry at this point, so maybe hanging vines or moss to replace the retails that would be lost by removing the grid pattern.

Rurouni Strife

Thanks X-one, I'll look into trying those suggestions when I get home. As for the alley, I was looking to get it pretty close to the reference images which happened to be taken on an overcast day. I'll definitely think about deviating from the reference though.

Rurouni Strife

Quick last reply, I made some minor changes to my alley and the fantasy scene. Stronger God Rays happened to occur due to a slight camera change but I kind of like it, it does not seem as muddy. Images are now interlaced and optimized PNG's. My resume page now has the PDF linked separately from a basic HTML page with my resume on it. I've noticed that seems to be pretty common in portfolio's. Final question: keep or remove the Indy car?

http://secretsilent.com

I didn't change the name because JustHost wanted 10 bucks for it. Unless it's really really important I think I can survive at secretsilent.

cholden

Looks cool. Hey, ever notice your environments are all stone halls? Might consider a different composition for your next piece.

Will Faucher

This may not seem like much of a crit, but an actual sky would really help out your chapel scene. Right now it looks like it is located in a void of poop. Where is that sun coming from?

Rurouni Strife

Cholden...you are awesome. I loved the crit that Predator gave up above and I'm going to be doing that, as well has making myself a better all around artist while I apply. I do have a freelance gig to do that, get this, is not a stone wall. Should rock!

Prophecies, thanks dude. I'll try to fix it up tomorrow, not really up to it tonight. I was in a hot car going from Columbia SC to roughly Indianapolis IN to day. I'm glad I got done what I got done!

Thank you kindly everyone! Wish me luck.

ae.

I would take out the F1 car as it is your weakest/unfinished piece in your portfolio, everything else looks awesome!

Keep up the good work, and bust out some different types of environments

Jon Rush

Looks like some great work!

We're looking for a contract env artist to work on Star Wars, here in Austin, TX...

Send on in:

https://jobs.ea.com/search/view.do?id=a0z50000000f66q