John Valenti | Environment Artist Portfolio WIP

aajohnny3d

Hey,

I found this site and I just started working on my new portfolio.If you have any suggestions of better sites let me know!

http://www.behance.net/johnvalenti

Rurouni Strife

Benhance is more professional looking than Deviant Art, so good find. If you aren't HTML savvy enough to make your own site/cant afford hosting then yea I'd do it that way. You COULD do Wix and perhaps some pro's can give you better feedback on it, but I personally hate Wix with a passion.

Some notes on your work:
-The shield and the steps seem to be way higher in polycount than they need to be. You could optimize them greatly.
-Your last screenshot in the real time renders section: What is that suppose to be for? I don't see it having any purpose at all.

I like the render you have with the chairs and the glass table. That and your wood platform that looks like it's from RE4 are my favorites.

Keep working at it!

danshewan

If you want an environment artist gig, then show us some environments - right now, all we've got is some props. Show us that you can plan and compose a scene, use an engine for more than model viewing, light it properly etc.

I'd calm down the background images on the file cabinet and the (what I'm presuming is a) rifle scope. Maybe just reduce the opacity to 50% or something, as they're pretty intrusive right now and detract from the models themselves.

Even though Behance is better than some free solutions out there, I'd still suck it up and pay for dedicated hosting. It's so cheap these days, there's really no excuse for not doing it, even if it's self-hosting a Wordpress site or something similar. Until then, maybe just link directly to a specific gallery to avoid that profile info page.

I'd say you've got a solid foundation to build on (pardon the pun), so go get your teeth stuck into a bigger project to demonstrate a wider range of technical and artistic skills.

BlvdNights

Less wireframes on some of your presentation pages.

Also for your tiling texture, show independently the diffuse and normal at least.

I also agree with the posts above. Do a full scene.

Thegodzero

Where is the portfolio? All i saw was what looked like a corporate site with some 3d art. Way too distracting, id rather see a blog style portfolio than what ever that site provided you. Too much noise that have nothing to do with you.

raul

your presenation is all over the place. Need to think in steps. High poly, low poly, textures, and maybe a beauty render.

Loose the noise backgrounds ( with pics n stuff ) on your break down shots. Text should be small and easy to read. As you have things at the moment, the text is getting way more attention than the pieces.

The low poly for the shield is ridiculously high! u may want to optimize that. You are not being too careful with some of the props. I saw waves and artifacts on the trailer piece.

Also, i agree with that if you want to be an env artist, to show off environments. In that note..and this is more of a personal question. Is it really necessary to stick the udk logo in every screenshot? To me that drives away from what matters....your work.

aajohnny3d

Isn't environment artist like a prop artist too?

BlvdNights

aajohnny3d wrote: »

Isn't environment artist like a prop artist too?

It is to an extent. But you aren't going to get a job showing off small props like you have. Art teams at studios want to see if you can do multiple things.

Artistically you need to show that you understand:

-Composition
-Lighting
-Texturing (This is vague depending on the type of project you work on I.E. are you making realistic or handpainted textures. Be flexible though.)
-Modeling

Those I'd say are the big key points (there's a lot more but they vary in different situations and studios.)

Technical prowess is a huge boost as well. Showing off that you can create materials or use lighting in a game engine can demonstrate that to an extent.

aajohnny3d

Do I even have the talent to do that?

Sam Hatami

Whats talent got to do with it when results is about 99% hard work ?

You need to figure out why the tech is available for you, i.e when to use raw power of triangles and when to let the tech do the job for you.

You are on your way, you just need to look around on other people arts, try to get good healthy critique at a proper level, and work on it with a good attitude.

And also, last edit :P: Don't be fast to categorize yourself, not until you've tried it all, it is art no matter what, it is about polygon placement and density, its about textures, its about observations in general,its about patience, no matter in what field you are trying to improve. So just take a deep breath, take a project, finish it (don't stop midway even if you think it sucks).

Just do it, think less.

Chemical Alia

I don't really like this site for presenting your work, it's a lot of text and extra stuff that I don't think is very important. It's very sterile and the banners are distracting. If you set up something like a simple Carbonmade page, it would instantly look cleaner and provide quick access to the art.

It would be nice if you could use your props to create an environment, or make a few new ones based on different themes. You could present the environments first, with a breakdown of the props used to create it. They would also make more interesting gallery thumbnails than an individual piece.


I'd also take out the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th sentences from your "About" paragraph; there's a lot of repetitive statements.

BlvdNights

MetalMind wrote: »

Whats talent got to do with it when results is about 99% hard work ?

You need to figure out why the tech is available for you, i.e when to use raw power of triangles and when to let the tech do the job for you.

You are on your way, you just need to look around on other people arts, try to get good healthy critique at a proper level, and work on it with a good attitude.

And also, last edit :P: Don't be fast to categorize yourself, not until you've tried it all, it is art no matter what, it is about polygon placement and density, its about textures, its about observations in general,its about patience, no matter in what field you are trying to improve. So just take a deep breath, take a project, finish it (don't stop midway even if you think it sucks).

Just do it, think less.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^THIS