[Portfolio] Justin Sanders Environment Art, Concept Art

Neolight

Hey polycounters! I just set up my website at:

www.sandersart.net

Please take a look and give me feedback on anything you want, be it artwork or web layout. I've just started my senior year in college and I'm looking to nail an internship for the summer before my last semester of school.

I'm currently gunning for a spot at Insomniac Games, so there's a Ratchet & Clank fan-concept that fronts the 2D section.

I'm also gonna highlight that I had a few people pick on the image viewers as being a no-no for portfolios. I wanna know what more people
think before comitting to the change!

Thanks alot, this community has been a huge help to me since I joined.

Heartless

I'm not a huge fan of those kind of image viewers but don't really have much against 'em. If you do decide to go with 'em, I'd add some sort of indicator showing that there are more thumbnails than just those visible, such as arrows on the side that grey-out when you've scrolled in one direction as far as you can go or a scroll bar or something.

But I'd prefer to see a full page for both 3D and 2D. The current setup is a bit cramped and slightly confusing compared to the other pages.

I'd also have your name and the menu items in the header aligned and probably make it a bit smaller so it's not too close to the menu.

As for the art, no complaints there. Except for that distressed font in a few of the 3D images. I hate those fonts.

fabio brasilien

I like it! I generaly don´t like this kind of image viewer as well, but yours worked very well. My only complain is regards the size.
The main page could be a little bigger and the images as well.
Just that, everything else is great for me. :thumbup:

Wombatinahat

Also not a fan of the way the images are displayed. The floating textbox informing the user they can make the thumbnail fullscreen also covers most of the thumbnail image making it pretty difficult to see whats going on if your navigating like that. The artwork is impressive and its a shame it loses somr accessabilty at the moment. I'd prefer to see everything on one page. Great content though

Darkmaster

I really like your style of work here! I am a huge fan of Insomniac's art style, and I think that you really captured that style with a lot of your 2D and 3D work. nothing sticks out to me, the website is clean and the work is awesome. keep up the good work man!

sbnewsom

The image viewer is the least of your worries. Most if not all employers will throw away your resume if they don't see at least wire frames of your models. This also goes for the environmental models for the levels.

Neolight

Thanks for the comments so far,

Wires have been posted under the Feedstock video in the games section. Should I put these up in the main image viewer as well?

wake

a quick little point with navigation-- it's good that I can click an image to go full size, but it's frustrating and annoying to have to close the tab every time I check an image. It seems like a small point, but ease of navigation is a big issue for your site, especially when it's the nth site that a reviewer has looked at. The harder it is to look at your stuff, the less inclined I am to do so.

Solutions might include clicking the image to close the tab or having the image open on the same tab and clicking it navigate back to your site.

bounchfx

dude! kill that flower, or optimize the crap out of it - the leaves on it aren't doing you any favors. or are they dense for a reason? your results look great but you need to make sure you're being as efficient as you can with your polygons

Neolight

That's it. Looks like i'm going to have a wireframe / decimation field day tonight!

Stay tuned for images

Tavor

I love the "Iron Helix Refinery Control Center" (boy that's a mouthful, hehe). All of your stuff could use a ton of optimization. It looks like the meshes you'd apply a turbosmooth modifier to.

Some of the most obvious places are the planar parts of the bridge, the ramp and supports for the roofs on the modular bay, and the front part of the control center.

aajohnny

Is this for video game art? If so I think you need to do some baking, I can tell there is some turbosmoothing, or some sort of smoothing. That is a lot of tris for a flower. Otherwise I love the stuff.

Urbanmelon

Hey Justin, I agree with what wake said about having to close a tab every time you look at an image.

That menu thing on your thumbnails (which are too small I think) is annoying, it hides them. Either make the images open in the same tab so we can just go backwards to the homepage, or go for a Lightbox-style viewer that overlays your images over your website, like Creature Box for example.

You either need to make your thumbnails bigger or zoom in on a detail, just so they're easily readable.

Another bad thing on your site is that you have to go through 2 thumbnails (the tiny ones, then the bigger ones) before you actually get to the image. I think you should just have a page with just a strip of big thumbnails, so the employer is one click away from your hi-res images. It's not original, but it's tried and true and the employers want to see your work, not your site.

Take a good read at this article on web portfolios by an Art Manager, it's a very useful piece of advice.

Employers are not only interested at what you do, but also HOW you do it. You should structure your site being conscious of that. For example, if we take your Feedstock level (which is the best thing on your portfolio), instead of peppering your site with concepts here, and wires there, and screenshots far yonder, put everything in one place, your homepage for the most important works.

So for Feedstock, here's what I would have done. It should be all on the homepage. First your eye candy images that show the finished level (assembled and everything) and a short description of it.
Then you show your process via your images. Show your finished building modules/assets, then show the concept art, then the wires, then the textures. Do the same for the props (finished asset, then concept art, then wires, then textures). Then do the plants (etc, etc).

You have to think about what the employers want to see.

I think you need to work on the ergonomics of your site, you already have great art in there. So just try to make the navigating experience as simple and as transparent as possible.

I hope this helps you in some way !

Arcanox

-Either lightbox or a vertical reel of images that are around 1000 pixels so they don't require zooming.

-Show your work as quickly as possible in the fewest amount of clicks

-Keep it crazy simple

-Contact info easily recognizable


Just mail me whenever you do up some newer versions of the site and want some feedback.

Robbyh

i wold recommend this style of thumbnail viewer : http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex4/thumbnail.htm

ajr2764

Glad to see your site is up. I'll have to agree on alot of the valid points others have made so far. I love the texture work and the insomniac style you've captured. I think once you clean up all those meshes in the environment piece, it will step it up a few notches because its the only thing holding it back. Keep up the good stuff.

Neolight

Allright, here are some new wires

Tavor

I still see some issues. I did a paintover of some things that can still be optimized: