[Portfolio] - MikeCox, Environment/Prop Artist

Mike8917

Hey everyone, my name's Michael Cox, I graduated from Bolton University last year studying Games Design.

Ever since then I've been building my portfolio and I would love some feedback on the site and content.

Here's my link: http://www.mjcportfolio.com/

There's a few things I need to add in the rocky highway page which I'll do momentarily.

Thanks guys!

meshag

Hi Mike

I'm surprised to find this thread on page three without any comment.
Your portfolio is far better than many ones i've seen. So here are my 2 cents.

I find the presentation quite clear and easy to navigate. I'm not a great fan of lightbox but if you use it, it would be nice to be able to jump from one image to the other without closing it.
Considering the art itself, you have some very nice stuff here. But i would personally love to see more of it, for example a lighting pass in udk for the pirate scene and more angles of the shanty town.
You could also use bigger pictures in some cases. For example the boat in the props section is very small. As it seems it uses very few textures and i would be curious to see it more closely.

Anyway, as i said before, nice portfolio.

Mike8917

BUMP:poly124:

Alberto Rdrgz

Really Nice stuff, the third environment's link doesn't work.

Mike8917

Thanks man

Yeah sorry about that, I'm in the process of redoing a few things in that scene, so I've taken it off. I'll put it back on when its complete.

Kot_Leopold

Looks great to me. The page is simple and easy to navigate, yet still retains that professional look. Environments and props are top notch too, keep up the good work!

Joshua Stubbles

Pretty good work overall! Got a few crits for ya,

Pirate scene:
- Nice lighting in the scene but could probably benefit from a little contrast. Taking away a few of the dock lights to create a little more dark space between each other could help deepen the atmosphere.
- There's a reflection under the boat/dock but no shadow. Some kind of shadow or vertex AO would really pop.
- Overall coloring is rather muted. It's either blue or yellow/brown. I know it's wood and stone in the dark, but some tweaks would help. Decals of dirt/grime, moss on the rocks, things like that which can add a little color.

City scene:
- More color is nice here, but the yellow is perhaps a scootch too saturated.
- Skyline loses sense of scale with the foreground. Adding a slight blue shift to the building textures, or adding a thin blue fog in the background can help sell feeling of distance, especially with all of the warm colors up in your face.

Props (ship):
- The details are great on this. My only gripe here is the wood texture. The texture sheet shows it's flattened to a fair extent, but the texture itself is tiling within a non tiled texture. If you have unique texture space, use it! Add some more variety to that wood. Ships get pretty gnarly below the water line with moss, barnacles and the like. Details like that can really help

Props (cannon):
- Looks good overall. The diffuse might be a little noisy, looks like a bunch of bats have been dropping #2's on it for years. That would be okay since it's in a cave, but the sides and underside wouldn't be so noisy white. The spec is also pretty wide and soft, looks like it's got a dull lacquer finish applied to it. Found this on an image search: http://www.dregsld.com/tutorialfiles/tutfiles/SM10.jpg You can see the narrower spec range and it's got a nice toothy grit to it.

Props (druids ale):
- Looks like the normal map might need it's green channel inverted - some of the shading just doesn't look right.
- Lots of wasted geometry in the main corner supports and crossbeams.

Props (rowboat):
- Looks solid, but the paint could use a touch of desaturation. Maybe the lighting is blowing out or something, but it just looks super intense considering the decrepit nature of the rest of the boat.

Decent folio overall. A few tweaks and it could be something really solid.

Mgoblue412

If you take it off to redo stuff I would put like an under repair or something over the image so that people know it is down and do not just think that your links do not work. Also I do not really like the gradient on your textures from diffuse to spec to normal, I would rather there just be a solid line so at one point it just changes instead of a gradient.

Mike8917

Wow! Just what I needed! Many thanks for all your comments Joshua! I'll go back and make the changes!

Mike8917

Hmm that's odd, I don't think the thread had updated or something because I couldn't see some of your comments before. When I checked this yesterday I had about four replies. Now today I have eight and an extra one from the day after I posted it which wasn't appearing! Odd :S

@meshag many thanks man apologies I didn't reply sooner. Your post wasn't appearing on my end for some reason. Thanks for the crits mate, sounds good!

@Kot_Leopold Thanks very much mate!:)

@Mgoblue412 Thanks man. Good point, I might do that, cheers! Yeah a lot of people I've showed it to don't like the gradient on the textures. I'll put up solid ones instead, thanks!

Thanks for all your feedback on this guys!