[Portfolio] – schmaled/Dana Schmale, Enivronment and Prop

schmaled

Hey everyone,

Just finished up 3D school at BCIT (Vancouver, Canada) and am beginning to search for a job. My reel was based on buildings located along East Hastings Street near the Downtown Eastside (also in Vancouver).

If anyone knows of any junior environment or prop modeling jobs in the Lower Mainland and feels like letting me know, I would really appreciate it.

Below are some of my shots, there are more on my website. Please check it out.

http://www.schmaled.com

Thanks a lot guys!

Dana

sltrOlsson

Looks really nice! You got a nice level of detail, i like.

Not much to say about the portfolio it self. Maybe put up all of your texture cheats?

One thing i noticed was the rust on on of the normalmaps, a bit to heavy.

What are you rendeeing in? Is it all Mental ray? Fells like Marmoset.

Jungsik

I think people would like to see your texturesheet like sltrOlsson said, do you have any other work you could put up? it would be nice to have more stuff (props, etc)

sltrOlsson

An yeah, i forgot to say one thing. It feels kinda deserted. Maybe if you out in some physics in the scene, like wind blowing in the grass, and maybe some ambient city sounds. Hell, you can record the sound from the exact spot irl? :P

Snader

For me this is right in the center of the uncanny valley. On one hand it looks very realistic, appropriate textures with subtle signs of age and credible building layouts. On the other hand the geometry feels too nice, too clean, too straight, and the scene feels very dead.

The thing is - I can't quite pin down what causes it to feel off for me.

Edit - maybe I do. From your showreel I noticed that you pretty much directly used the photo of the laundromat as the final texture. The real-world lighting and such probably are a wee bit different, and the multiplication of lighting over lighting would also mess stuff up.

Also - some elements aren't integrated very well, such as the poles in the alley, that cleanly intersect the concrete - no cracks around it.

All that said though, it looks very good.

Jungsik

ahh, i had my headphones off but after i saw the last 2 post and went back <_< your reel could def use a sound ^^

gsokol

First of all..your portfolio.

First thing that sticks out to me...is that you only have one piece of work in here. I'm sure that is probably the first and only portfolio piece you have at this time which is fine, but I think it would be unlikely a company will hire you from just one piece like this. I'd work on some more stuff. It would be good to try to do something different, to show that you are flexible, and also teach yourself some new things along the way.

As for the actual layout itself, it works well. You just have a bunch of images right in my face when I get to the website, so I get to all the good stuff right away. This is arguable, but having a demo reel as an environment/prop artist isn't terribly important. Many people don't use these, and work on showing off their work with just images. (could be useful, as you can only show the angles you want people to see). Maybe add some grass sticking out of the sidewalks even.

Your about page is fairly empty, and seems almost identical to your profile section of your resume. I would just remove this part, its redundant.

As for the scene itself, its a great start. I think that everything is just too plain. Consider adding a little more grime on things. Maybe place some decals to break up the obviously repeating brick, or make patches/potholes in the streets (maybe you don't have potholes, but in Illinois we sure do :P). Speaking of the street, you have parking meters, but there are no parallel parking lines. Instead it looks like another lane.

All of your geometry is really clean/straight. Aside from the yellow garbage dumpster, everything is too orderly and in a straight line. Maybe have a little bit of damage on the brick buildings and cut out a few bricks in the corners, or even have some of the building facades stick out farther than others so it all doesn't look so straight and perfect.



Sorry for the wall of text. I hope this is helpful.

malcolm

Great work, I really like the alley shot with the two dumpsters.