yodude's environment folio - early stages + crits

yodude87

hey there you guys

setting up a folio, still on a very early stage...

its set on carbonmade, still using the free version, so its very slobby... will upgrade to the premium version where i can personalize it even more.

would like to know from you guys if these works would fit in a folio, wether i should post also breakdowns/texture sheets, single props, etc, as i have few clues on how an environment artist folio should be set. crits are welcome as always, thank you guys for looking

http://rodrigom87.carbonmade.com/

Noodle!

In "Urban Environment" I think you have a lot of issues right now.

The first is believability. Things seem just placed around with no real connection to how an urban environment actually looks. You've got a very cramped sidewalk with very thick power poles taking up big real estate.
The power poles themselves first of all feel like they wouldn't at all be in a downtown setting, and most likely not with handles for the kids to climb up and electrocute themselves with. I associate power poles with more rural settings. Moreover each power pole now has it's own transformer, which feels excessive.

I think the same attention needs to be given to almost everything in the scene, from trees just sticking down into the sidewalk to the size of the sidewalks and placement of lamps.

I'd suggest looking at many reference photos of areas like this one and analyzing them to see what elements they consist of and how they're placed. I'd also say you'd need to look at unifying your textures in feel and giving them approximately the same amount of texel density. Right now they vary quite largely from object to object in quality.


That being said, I think the porfolio is well set up and I think with a bit more attention to detail things will be top notch.

chrisradsby

I think most of the environment-work is fine for entry level, you're not showing off any individual models, wire or textures though which is a big problem. The environments themselves are quite boring as they are now, no amazing-looking angles or really interesting detail it show you can do the job but probably lack the creativity needed for something really cool.

Other than that I think you're going in the right direction, just keep working and try to compare your work with others even professionals.

Chimp

My personal first impression was that your lighting is the single weakest point. improve that and all of your works will look ten times better. but yes I think the others are right in that it all doesn't really connect- it all feels like floating separate entities. its all a bit muddy texture wise as well.

good though- you're not doing things badly, these environments all are quite ambitious and it shows that you finished and pulled them off! it just needs some tweaking which is why we post

GOBEE

Quick critique of the Urban Environment that may help.. is this city floating in the sky? Or is there a dust storm? I don't think the clouds are doing you any favors. A simple blue might make this scene work better, along with what Noodle! mentioned.

The thick telephone poles stand out as low-res compared to everything else, and in one screen it looks like one is almost hanging off the edge of the sidewalk. Maybe make it more interesting and have one of the telephone poles knocked down, laying in the street? Give the viewer a story. Why is this telephone pole knocked down?

Looks like the trees are coming directly out of the concrete as well. Place those in other areas where the viewer won't see where it is growing out of, or create a dirt texture so it looks more believable.

yodude87

thanks for the crits guys

tying to make the urban environment a bit more believable, thought some canges in the mood would give it a better feeling... so, you guys tell me if im going in the right direction:



from a city view, passed it to a urban warfare sort of thing (actuall still passing, many things to be added currently).

what do you people think? any crits will be appreciated

edit: still have to fix the skydome, indeed it feels like the city is floating... have to find a solution for that

edit2: added a couple more pics for the deus ex project, as it felt kind of empty, 2 pics only at first

yodude87

updating





will be posting more images of projects ad various stuff i plan to add to the folio, crits are welcome

marq4porsche

My main concern with the urban environment is that that street just ends. You should at least put buildings up indicating that the street turns into another street. Then you would have a lot more believability right off the bat.

yodude87

yodude87

well hello, its me again

not early stages anymore trying to finish my folio, so that things can start to move ^^ at first i was having it at carbonmade, but i decided that wix would be a better choice. well, enough rambling, this is what i have so far:

http://www.wix.com/rodrigomaldonado_48/folio

any crits are more than welcome, from layout, to grammar, to renders :P planning to start to "show it off" (in lack of a better word) monday, if everything goes alright.

yodude87

...no one...?

BARDLER

Your website does not allow you to right click and save images which is immediate problem. Flash is a big no no, its to slow and annoying.

Also be careful with labeling your stuff with video game names, because the way you labeled them seems like you actually worked on the game. Make sure to put inspired by, or reference taken from said game.

Blaisoid

-i think the homepage is unnecessary, i don't think anyone's interested in reading obvious statements such as "this is my portfolio"
-i also think it works better when each project has a thumbnail rather than being just text
-"portfolio" "bio" texts are huge, they steal viewer's attention
-i'd combine "bio", "about" and "contact" pages into one and just put email adress there instead of some special contact form

to be honest i think i like carbonmade one more. it may look cliche but it has that practical simplicity which makes it easy to browse.

yodude87

as regards the labelling, there's "tribute" next to the brands. so to avoid mistakes ^^

made a new version, on shownd.com (took a look at your folio, blaisoid - aside from saying that its wonderful, really... great modelling, texturing and concepting - saw that shownd allows you some more liberty than carboncopy does for its free version: more pics, and the likes).

there goes:

http://shownd.com/rodrigomaldonado

tried to make it pretty much straight-forward, looking at blaisoid's and some other guys folios.

hope it doesnt look blatantly copied, and if it does, just say and ill make some changes to the layout (as much as shownd allows us to play - its quite standardized).

njc6425

Some good modelling there

sybrix

This looks so much better. I'm glad to see you improved the sky in the western scene, the new skybox looks a lot better to me too. One thing I found strange is that you used the exact same homepage banner that you click on to access the page as the header. You may want to just remove that and have the piece title in plain text.