[Portfolio] - Stephen Dalzell - Environment Artist

snarf78

Hi guys,

I'm guilty for not reading the way folio work should be posted sorry, could I get some feedback about my work thank you. www.stephendalzell.com

c0ldhands

Your folio is easy to acess and presents you with your work right away, the less clikcs the better. One thing that could have been better, and this is only my opinion is the way you present every peice in the "back to the future" scene.

I would like each peice to be shown by itself and taken from the scene because some of the building you cant see them all. Wires are good but some assets miss textures or only have lightmaps like the cars. The Soul calibur scene is pretty dark and could use better lighting, also presentation on the bigger assets are missing (was this a collaboration?) Same thing for the Metroid scene.

You need to show more of your Delorean, its by far your finest asset and you need to show it off more, even more highpoly shots from diffrent angles and more shots of it but not only from the scene.Would definetly skip the 2d section tottaly. Just my two cents...

Joshua Stubbles

I'd ditch the 2d work. It's fine, but unimportant to an env artist position.

The DeLorean is probably your best single asset but you only show one image of the highres model, from behind. Show more of that. Break the asset down by showing it's wire/low/texture like you've done with the others.

Your best environment imo is the Soul Calibur 3 scene. You have some lighting issues on the ground stones and the textures are all really brown and muted, but everything at least fits the scene. Might be a smidge of overuse on the rock pillars in the moon scene.

The back to the future scene is good, but I think it's lacking punch. The UV layouts of some objects is not very good and the textures are washed out and lacking contrast. The ground texturing also could be better. The tiling asphalt grit is really noticeable and the crack overlay is really too uniform. A few more texture blends could add a lot. Asphalt has a lot of character on a road surface. Usually there are patches, larger cracks, multiple pours, etc. Here's a good example of nice road detail:



Not saying add a bunch of dirt and stuff, just something to add unique detail and character. The road takes up a large portion of the screen afterall.

The metroid scene is interesting but there is a lot of repetitive detail going on. I know you're probably trying to be as optimal as possible, but there is such as a thing as being too optimal. The scene suffers for it. In the second pic from the top, there's a large blank wall that has one texture of dots tiled all over it. There are only 3 little objects that seem out of place, stuck to different areas of the wall. It just doesn't feel coherent. Texture-wise it all looks the same. Maybe different kinds of metal and painted metal would help. Right now it's either wet metal or glowing blue. The lighting might also be hindering it. It's either really dark or bright blue and the general lighting doesn't seem to have any purpose or origin, it's just there.

snarf78

c0ldhands wrote: »

Your folio is easy to acess and presents you with your work right away, the less clikcs the better. One thing that could have been better, and this is only my opinion is the way you present every peice in the "back to the future" scene.

I would like each peice to be shown by itself and taken from the scene because some of the building you cant see them all. Wires are good but some assets miss textures or only have lightmaps like the cars. The Soul calibur scene is pretty dark and could use better lighting, also presentation on the bigger assets are missing (was this a collaboration?) Same thing for the Metroid scene.

You need to show more of your Delorean, its by far your finest asset and you need to show it off more, even more highpoly shots from diffrent angles and more shots of it but not only from the scene.Would definetly skip the 2d section tottaly. Just my two cents...

I'm sorry that I have taken soooo long to respond I have been really busy and have not really had my computer to hand. The assets in the back to the future scene that you mention without textures were all done with shaders in UDK a coloured chrome material for the cars and so on.

both the Soul calibur scene and the Metroid scene have bad lighting and I do intend on fixing this issue but lighting is not really one of my strengths. I chose not to show the wireframes for the temples in the Soul Calibur scene because its all made up of modular pieces and wouldn't make any sense although I guess I could if it would make for better viewing.

The Metroid scene is very low poly I didn't show the wirefames because there is not really anything that would look good and worth while, but again I guess I could show some wireframes of the level. I forgot to mention that all the work is mine but I'm sure you have guessed that already.

The Delorean in the UDK renders is the version shown in all the pictures I didn't have time to do a high poly version to be fair I don't think it would have added much. I have given in and dumped the art section.

snarf78

Joshua Stubbles wrote: »

I'd ditch the 2d work. It's fine, but unimportant to an env artist position.

The DeLorean is probably your best single asset but you only show one image of the highres model, from behind. Show more of that. Break the asset down by showing it's wire/low/texture like you've done with the others.

Your best environment imo is the Soul Calibur 3 scene. You have some lighting issues on the ground stones and the textures are all really brown and muted, but everything at least fits the scene. Might be a smidge of overuse on the rock pillars in the moon scene.

The back to the future scene is good, but I think it's lacking punch. The UV layouts of some objects is not very good and the textures are washed out and lacking contrast. The ground texturing also could be better. The tiling asphalt grit is really noticeable and the crack overlay is really too uniform. A few more texture blends could add a lot. Asphalt has a lot of character on a road surface. Usually there are patches, larger cracks, multiple pours, etc. Here's a good example of nice road detail:



Not saying add a bunch of dirt and stuff, just something to add unique detail and character. The road takes up a large portion of the screen afterall.

The metroid scene is interesting but there is a lot of repetitive detail going on. I know you're probably trying to be as optimal as possible, but there is such as a thing as being too optimal. The scene suffers for it. In the second pic from the top, there's a large blank wall that has one texture of dots tiled all over it. There are only 3 little objects that seem out of place, stuck to different areas of the wall. It just doesn't feel coherent. Texture-wise it all looks the same. Maybe different kinds of metal and painted metal would help. Right now it's either wet metal or glowing blue. The lighting might also be hindering it. It's either really dark or bright blue and the general lighting doesn't seem to have any purpose or origin, it's just there.

I will respond tomorrow night as I need to go to sleep now, thank you for commenting and sorry for the lateness of my reply have been really busy.

snarf78

Joshua Stubbles wrote: »

I'd ditch the 2d work. It's fine, but unimportant to an env artist position.

The DeLorean is probably your best single asset but you only show one image of the highres model, from behind. Show more of that. Break the asset down by showing it's wire/low/texture like you've done with the others.

Your best environment imo is the Soul Calibur 3 scene. You have some lighting issues on the ground stones and the textures are all really brown and muted, but everything at least fits the scene. Might be a smidge of overuse on the rock pillars in the moon scene.

The back to the future scene is good, but I think it's lacking punch. The UV layouts of some objects is not very good and the textures are washed out and lacking contrast. The ground texturing also could be better. The tiling asphalt grit is really noticeable and the crack overlay is really too uniform. A few more texture blends could add a lot. Asphalt has a lot of character on a road surface. Usually there are patches, larger cracks, multiple pours, etc. Here's a good example of nice road detail:



Not saying add a bunch of dirt and stuff, just something to add unique detail and character. The road takes up a large portion of the screen afterall.

The metroid scene is interesting but there is a lot of repetitive detail going on. I know you're probably trying to be as optimal as possible, but there is such as a thing as being too optimal. The scene suffers for it. In the second pic from the top, there's a large blank wall that has one texture of dots tiled all over it. There are only 3 little objects that seem out of place, stuck to different areas of the wall. It just doesn't feel coherent. Texture-wise it all looks the same. Maybe different kinds of metal and painted metal would help. Right now it's either wet metal or glowing blue. The lighting might also be hindering it. It's either really dark or bright blue and the general lighting doesn't seem to have any purpose or origin, it's just there.

I have recently got my self a job as an environment artist and had to move this is the reason I have been delayed in my response. You mention that my Delorean is my best asset and I do fully agree, but I didn't want to confuse potential employers with vehicle work when applying for environment work.

The UVing was done as quick as I could do them as this was a project for uni and I was just rushing it along. The textures all looked OK at first but I played around with the UDK LUT (look up table) as I am not very happy with my lighting skills, this changes lighting, particle and texture colour.

You also mention the asphalt texture I agree with what you are saying especially after viewing your racing track stuff, but due to my own stupidity I made the road and pavement area one piece of geometry so to rectify this I would need to cut it up.

I also agree with with what you say about both my other scenes, which again I have tried to compensate for my own lack of confidence on lighting buy using the LUT method I mentioned earlier and by applying a rim shader effect to them. I do feel that these methods have not helped me in the slightest.

The Metroid scene was created at the same time as finishing the Soul Calibur scene and whilst writing my dissertation, so it was a case of rushing it to finish it. I did toy around with the idea of adding some painted metals and had bigger ideas for the scene but they did not reach fruition, I hope that one day soon I can start again and fix both scenes and maybe have work as good as yours.