[Portfolio] Bradley Wascher, Environment Artist
polycounter lvl 13
Hey guys, I just updated my website and was wondering if I could get some feedback and your opinions. I really want feedback on my art as well, whats working for you what isnt working etc. Thanks www.bradleywascher.com
Replies
Art wise, I really like your stuff, I'm not really qualified to offer much feedback on the work itself, but it all looks great to me. If I was to offer any advice, it would be to add another environment, but your ability is coming through pretty clear in the work that's there already.
Good luck with finding a job!
The font for about - gallery - etc doesn't match the rest of the site. I'd change that.
Take off the about page. That's what interviews are for.
Take off your phone number man too.
Crit:
Based on the art and objects I would give them all an A, the placement needs some work and I would give it a D.
Some of the logic in Rigged to Blow is a little wonky. The shells are kind of sloppily placed. Some look like they are defying gravity (closest to detonator is hovering)
Others look like they're about to roll off or fall over. If they fall over I wouldn't be too worried about them going boom but rather the fuse wires being pulled out and
Anyone who can get a detonator like that and assemble that level of destructive power, would take more care in placing elements of it, guaranteeing they would go off.
I wouldn't remove the phone number, maybe include it in an image (if it isn't already) so its not so easily mined by bots. But having gone over portfolios and hiring a character artist and animator recently we looked for the phone number to see if the artist was local or based in a far off place.
We also skipped emailing people and rather called them, email is kind of unreliable and slow at times.
I was going to mention this but was reluctant to mention it since you're a far superior artist!
That immediately hit me as looking weird though, especially the shell closest to the camera in the second shot. It looks like it's barely balancing on an edge and would roll away at any minute.
The bag on top of the pile doesn't look like it would stay put much longer either.
I'm guessing you placed the assets by hand, maybe try a little dynamics sim to create a more natural pile. You're mileage with that may vary since you're using cylindrical objects and they may just roll off out the scene, so it might be a crap idea, but worth a shot!
Same advice. But then I looked at what role you wanted to be and felt you were going down the right route by showing 3D props. Still, I like to see some environments with said props in them, like the first pictures.
Solid work but one issue I had was with the normal for the bomb. The foamy bit that has bumps looks a bit smudged.
The main scene at the top is well done, but I don't get a sense of direction or intention. The obvious ambient story telling of the bomb but the whole location doesn't really give me a location. Its more a collection of small elements not working than a big wrong, as generally the scene is nice. Just me been slightly critical.
As far as the website, I like the simple show of just work. When we look at portfolios to hire, we want to see the art right away. Nice work on all of the props tho, specially the vehicles. Keep up the good work man, and i am sure that you will be picked out of the pile in no time.
Vig: Hearing feedback from your is a true honor and Ive always felt like your advice was really sound so for sure I'm going to go back and address the floating bomb issue some more and maybe try and tweak the bomb locations a bit to make it more believable.
Habboi: Yeah the bomb asset was one of the first to be created and the normals were done super fast, I'm sure i could go back in and just touch them up even in Photoshop a little. Thanks for noticing.
glynnsmith: The sharpen filter is something i had a small issue with, I have to say that part of it also is that i compress the heck of of these images to try and make sure they loaded fast and even worked well for iphone viewing, I currently work for a online retailer so image size is a big thing in what i do and I think i over did the compression and it made the end result look a lot worst. Thanks for the head up though.
Cojax : The Suitcase is using a 1024map so yes it is much bigger than what it would inside a game but at the same time i feel like because it was the focus of the environment and if you were to really try to diffuse it in a game you would get right up on in and you would want the detail. I might test it with a couple differnt res textures to see the results.
IchII3D: The light source is actually pointing from the light but i think the light map res on that ground bsp is just set to high to really capture the shadows correctly and crisp. Also i turned off the horrible default AO that udk has on start up so i lost a little more shadowing bc of that.
glottis8: Im definitely always trying to press my scenes to look better and better, I would say to anyone that wants to make an environment dont use slated walls like I did haha it may look could but man, you cant add anything to the scene without it looking old with all this empty space that really isn't use-able lol. Thanks for the feedback.
CJE: Thanks a lot, I really tried to figure what worked best in other peoples websites and just kind of went for it.
With the portfolio: Agree with the general sites presentation - great. I like the first environment, but the "glowing" cobwebs really caught my eye. They're too bright/thick. Tone them down a bit, it should only take you a minute but would make a major difference. The high poly Gladiator Vehicle is great. But the texture needs more work. More detail and more worn metal in the right places - along the lines of the Gun Rack and you're there. Good luck!