[Portfolio] Elliott McSherry, Environment Artist
polycounter lvl 14
Hey all!
I'm in my final month of the Computer Games Modelling & Animation course over at Derby University. With about 3 weeks left it seemed the right time to get my portfolio out there along with some applications amist all the craziness that is the final month of graduation. I've been fortunate to have feedback from my fellow greentooths in the past for some of my work, which has helped me push my scenes and skill to a better level.
I am looking for feedback on the feel / usability / layout / resume / quality and content. As it stands the only thing currently W.I.P is the Brawl entry, with Shady Dealings being the most recent scene I finished, and the tavern being the oldest.
My website link can be found below with some previews of the work,
WWW.MCSHERRY3D.COM
Update soon
I'm in my final month of the Computer Games Modelling & Animation course over at Derby University. With about 3 weeks left it seemed the right time to get my portfolio out there along with some applications amist all the craziness that is the final month of graduation. I've been fortunate to have feedback from my fellow greentooths in the past for some of my work, which has helped me push my scenes and skill to a better level.
I am looking for feedback on the feel / usability / layout / resume / quality and content. As it stands the only thing currently W.I.P is the Brawl entry, with Shady Dealings being the most recent scene I finished, and the tavern being the oldest.
My website link can be found below with some previews of the work,
WWW.MCSHERRY3D.COM
Update soon
Replies
Your artwork looks awesome and I really digg the website layout for your portfolio.
Here are some ideas on how you could show off those environments a little more, which will also help beef up your portfolio.
1. Add wire frames for all the environments.
2. Add more than one beauty shot for all the environments. A total of 2-3 from different angles. It does the environment no justice by only having one beauty shot.
3. The "Tales from Earthsea" environment looks great and I'd highly recommend you add another beauty shot, plus a wire frame.
4. I may be wrong, but I don't think it's a good idea having a blog within your portfolio. From what I've read, a portfolio should only showcase your artwork and nothing else which distracts the potential employer from what you do best. Like I said, I could be totally wrong.
Awesome artwork and I wish you all the best in your quest to secure a job in the games industry.
If we take a look at your shady dealings scene, you have a blue dumpster placed in the back, and because it's blue it just melts into the background. Same with the red barrels, being placed in the warm lighting of the interior. The look awesome as assets but come out as rather plain in the scene, which is a bit sad because they are really nice assets.
You have some really nice tilable textures, good understanding of modeling and putting together scenes. If you feel like if you can take a break from modeling/texturing sometime I highly recommend that you try to do some traditional painting. Other than that I feel like you really need to try to move out of your comfort zone, and get stronger visual design elements into your scenes. Like creating a scene without dirt and grime and focus on perspective, color and interesting shapes.
To sum it up: I feel like your portfolio lacks creativity as an artist, but you show the skills needed to get into the industry. Since I know you I'm also being very honest with what I think. You've made some really awesome progress, I really hope you land a job man.
REGARDLESS!
You've done some nice work and I really liked your seamless textures. Just a couple of minor nitpicks:
1) Scholars retreat looks more like a tavern.
2) Would be aweome to see you do your own foliage.
@ Feanix: It's a retreat yo! Retreat to that ale and study, you know you'd study there if we back in the fantasy lands! Foliage, organics and the whole colourful fantasy stuff is something I'll be working on after I finish University, will be a nice route to dive down to bring it up to a level where I'm confident with it.
Thanks again will be working on all the feedback this weekend.
Blogs are a nice way to show you are a human being, I know a lot of employers who actually look for written material before asking for an interview.
I have to agree with chris, all your artwork seems to blend together and not really have a focus point, while it is nice to show you can do good environment work. The ability to be able to show a "bland" background with a nice focal point is just as important as not.
You need more wire frames, I haven't seen a single one. That's important to an art director who may be looking at you. You don't need to include wire frames of the entire piece, parts will do.
Your blog article "Studio resarch, a job future of hope and achievement." should be a couple studios with a fairly long (3-4 paragraphs) on why you want to work for them. This is a common question in an interview and if you already have it on your blog you already know what to answer. But the one sentence about 15 different studios shows that you really don't have a favorite and like them all (which is good, but most of the studios you listed want people who dream of working for them). Another thing, the negative post about UK's game development status should probably be deleted before applying. A lot may take offense to that.
Your resume, should be a single objective, you've listed 3 and a sentence. Which ultimately says you are not focused on one thing.
The software knowledge area should be rewritten, most employers spend about 5 seconds on a resume, you want something that is easy for them to understand and fast for them to figure out, and a paragraph of text explaining the 5 things you listed above won't do. Do you only know Maya? A lot of studios still use 3ds max, so common keywords HR people would look for would be 3ds max, and if you only listed maya, they will put it down and stop there. It may be a good idea to try using another 3d package if you can, at least understand the differences and how to control it so you can put it on a resume.
Did you ever work on a massive game project for school? I don't know about schools over in UK but in Canada it is popular to work on a massive project near the end of your schooling (at least for video game schools). Putting such a thing in your portfolio will really help demonstrate you know the video game content pipeline, as this is probably one of the very first things you learn in a new studio.
Back to your portfolio, I don't think you should include that brawl piece, it doesn't seem complete to me.
And last but not least you should do a different environment piece. All of your current work seems to be dark and gloomy areas, why not try and do a nice bright city place or something. Something that can show you can deviate from your standard.
These are just my suggestions/opinions, I don't mean anything by them just suggestions/opinions.
Encase your wondering, I have done hiring for Canadian studios and I own a mobile game studio in Canada of which I hired for
We don't work on big projects here in our final year, the course is changing each year so I know the new guys who enter the first year eventually will.
The BRAWL piece is still WIP hence why it links to the polycount post, It's also in a different style to my usual work so I want to atleast convey I'm trying something different. I agree the work is all the same grungey hard surface style, and I will be doing an organic / colourful scene after University when all my hand-ins are gone. I'm hoping I have enough to break in somewhere, but if not I will continue the portfolio grind after University in a new style to compliment my contrasty environments.
I will be adding most of this to my feedback list to do over the weekend, thanks again!
Feedback changes:
- Additional beauty shots
- Wireframe shots
- Modular construction shot
- Blog formatting
- Resume / CV clean up
- Mailto link on email banner
- BRAWL scene completion
At the moment they're mostly one plank / brick duplicated, but I'm going to do a few more before attempting a portfolio one, where I'll do 3-4 unique bricks / planks and duplicate them.
One thing I'm having trouble with is painting cracks and lights, at the moment they look like black and light paint strokes and less like lighting.
I'm currently finishing off my dissertation on UDK modularity so after next week I'll be able to start churning out some more content for the portfolio alongside BRAWL.
On a side note I found out my website was down, but I don't know for how long since Firefox cached my website, which I've been checking everyday to make sure it would be up for employers. It's back up now after randomly going offline when I looked on internet explorer, I just hope it was a fluke in those 5 minutes this morning and hasnt been down most of the last 2 weeks... -_-
Cheers,
Elliott
good example is this :
See how there is barely any visible details in the dark spectrum, i think if you apply this principle to your environments its going to take them a step further for sure!
1. Push composition in your scenes, the "based on earthsea" scene is especially suffering from this the lighting is overwhelming and your horizon line is basically cutting the image in half and killing the flow of the picture.
2. USE color! your scenes are really muted your scholar's retreat scene is all washed out and dominated by one main color and that is really hurting what apears to be a lovely scene. it also feels too even(but that could be the color) maybe having some light coming in thru the window like the reference could help create more of an unevenness.
3. Lastly, love your portfolio layout and sorry if this seems redudant (i didn't read the other comments, actually i really just ignored which could be bad lol)
I will be joining Outso over at Nottingham as a Junior Environment Artist straight out of University, so again a big thank you to all the help and suggestions!
Cheers guys!