[Portfolio] - Jake Oliver, Prop/Environment Artist
polycounter lvl 12
Hey guys,
Just started working on making up my portfolio site, It's mainly got work I've done in the last year in it, with a focus on prop/environment stuff.
Does the site itself work? I was thinking of adding a bit of 'click for more' text on the images, but i'm not sure if its needed or not.
http://www.mystichobo.com/
Cheers,
Jake
Just started working on making up my portfolio site, It's mainly got work I've done in the last year in it, with a focus on prop/environment stuff.
Does the site itself work? I was thinking of adding a bit of 'click for more' text on the images, but i'm not sure if its needed or not.
http://www.mystichobo.com/
Cheers,
Jake
Replies
Site works nicely, I haven't clicked on every last thing but everything seems to take you to where it tells you it will. You may actually want to spend a bit of time on each page explaining how you created things, what you used to render the scene/props with - are they in game, etc?
For that environment piece you will definitely want to pull out a couple models, show us their wireframes, texture maps, tri counts, etc. People want to see how you create things, what shortcuts you took, where you decided to put your focus/details, what choices you made and why you chose to make things the way you did, what pieces are unique, what is instanced?
As for the work itself, I like the environment. I think it's pretty monochromatic but you do try to bring some colour in with your lights, I think you could however do more with your textures. There's no real focal point and it's really hard to tell what's actually going on. What's the story behind this place? Show us some of it's history. Who lives here? How do they live here? If it wasn't for the title I'm not sure I'd pick up on the fact that the whole town was floating on the clouds. Bioshock Infinite does something similar. Their environments are so rich with history, story, a clear guiding theme. It looks like you tried to make an environment which was abandoned, but why was it abandoned? What happened? These are all things you should be asking before you start on an environment.
A little story goes a long way and adds so much to an environment.
The Splash Damage art test turned out nicely. Some of the scratches seem a bit arbitrary, and I think you could do more with the spec, but that dark metal material came out nice. The High Poly though is well executed.
Your texture maps, however, are extremely hard to read, it would be nice if you could separate them out individually or in a different way than you are currently.
I won't comment on the gun as other's will have much better advice than I could ever pretend to give.
The rock looks nice. There are some parts that are a bit soft and blobby, but that's not a huge issue. The texture map layout however is pretty terrible. You're wasting almost half of the map when you don't need to be.
It's a good start for a portfolio. There's still a lot of room for improvement but I think you are on a good track. Keep posting your progress up on Polycount. It's honestly one of the best ways to get critique and improve.
I've just recently done a fairly major update to the site, with work that I did while at my internship and also more of my personal work. I've also culled what I deemed to be my older/weaker props and replaced them with work that I believe better shows my current ability.
Does anyone have any suggestions for places to apply to? I'm currently located in Brisbane, but have recently been granted a 2 year working visa for the UK
Thanks,
Jake
Overall I feel like you don't put enough love into your scenes. You work out composition and everything but you don't take it all the way.
http://www.mystichobo.com/images/abovetheclouds3.jpg
I mean look at this screenshot. Brick pillar which pretty much is a cube? It's something you put together in less than 1 minute. There are straight lines everywhere, nothing is skewed even a little which makes it look very artificial. Very big issues with texel-density, Honestly I would take it out completely, that would leave your portfolio in a much better state
The HedgeKnight project is nicer, but it still feels unfinished. Maybe work even more to blend the foreground, middleground and background. The mountains needs more love to make them look more natural, maybe some more detail on the castle and bushes and trees on the field leading up to the castle.
- My advice would be to plan a new scene, work out everything you need to make it look great and how to achieve the look you're going for. I don't mean to be harsh but it's a really competitive industry.
Work hard, post more work on the forums, get crits and learn new things all the time
Hey Chris,thanks for the crits!
You are right about the Above the Clouds scene, going back and looking at it, it is very much not representative of my current skill level (it was done early last year).
I've spent the last couple of evenings going over and refining the Hedge Knight scene, does this look a bit better?
For reference, here's the old one:
I've also been deciding on what to do next: would a sci-fi scene be too cliched?
I started working on a scene based on this concept from deus ex a while back, that I'm thinking of going over and finishing. Here's where I am at with it.
Does anyone have any suggestions for places to apply at in the UK?
The site is pretty cool and easy to navigate, you are deffo' set up on that front.
Heh, they aren't actually bricks; as is shown in the material breakdowns it's actually laminated wood, like this:
Hence the name; "The Boathouse"
When I looked at that splash damage test building, I immediately thought "oh look stretched bricks". Even with the title "The Boat House" on the side of the building I never would have thought those were wood planks. I would work on either changing it to a brick texture, or work harder on trying to get the point across that its wood. What you have right now isnt really communicating the material its supposed to be, and honestly a first impression of "ugh stretched bricks...oh wait...its wood?" isnt a good thing. Not saying you cant have wooden planks on a building like that (clearly your ref says that sort of thing exists) but most people would be expecting bricks, and if you have something that looks like bad stretched bricks instead of what its supposed to be, then the whole "different from the rest" aspect is going to get flung out the window.
I'll look into fixing that scene tomorrow morning.
I'm might have to do it in CE or marmoset though, as the place I'm staying in has pretty horrid internet (like if you try and download anything, it just breaks the internet in general,like nothing else, bar the download works), and I don't have a copy of UDK on my laptop.
Would this be an issue? Would it be better to try and obtain a copy of UDK? (I don't have the original scene on me so I'd have to recreate all the materials and everything from scratch anyway)
I like how the spambots are still here, but their urls are just hidden now :P
Anyway, I've reworked that Splash Damage Test in CE3, and the wood has been redone with a lot of the suggestions given to me on IRC.
Thanks,
Jake