[Portfolio] Chris Green - Environment Artist

R00

Good evening Poly counters!

I'm Chris Green currently studying Games Design(final year) at Norwich University and I'll to be graduating soon! I would really appreciate it if you could take a moment to look over my current portfolio, and let me know where you think I stand in my position of gaining a job in the industry as an Environment Artist/Asset Artist. I'm seeing all these fantastic artists getting hired recently and it scares me about whether or not I'll be able to find a position.

I'll be working on my portfolio full time after completion of my course, so please any suggestions to help further the marketability of my portfolio would be appreciated.

Please critique away, what ever you can. I really want to grow as an artist and get to a professional standard

Thank you!

http://www.behance.net/CG3D

Here are a few images to lure you in.....


Humour me if your not feeling lured :poly121:

megalmn2000

Overall it looks good. I really like the character but if you're aiming for a position of environment artist / level designer, I wouldn't recommand to put a character on your portfolio. Also, try to finish your hard surface models with textures.

S_ource

Your work looks really good,I have a few tips maybey rather then critic. You probably have heard that you need to deside what to be and you say that you want to be an enviorment artis then i dont think you should have character stuff in folio unless you want to aplay for that to. You models and textures looks really nice byt you might could spice them upp withsom more colour add some moss and such to get more variation now its like only more or less a single colour. And your UDk scen is werry impressive but what i thought was that you mostly got to see small ares with mostly shadow, Maybey some shots that shows more of the level. And it might just be me but i dont think it looks good with pure black as background for mododels that are only shaded.

ladyknowles

Hi Chris! I really like your work, nice to see someone else from a UK uni studying Games Design.

Your work is great, really impressive when you first see it. Your hard surface stuff is great but agree with the others, maybe some texture work would be great for them. Even just one of them completed would be great to show your whole workflow.

I also agree with the others about the characters, and I know this is a bummer, I'm in the same situation myself. My uni is making me do characters too, which is taking a lot of my time and it'll be a shame to not see them in my portfolio.

Great job anyway Hope to see you celebrating getting a job soon!

Computron

Speedtree? SPEEDTREEE?!!?

Ex-Ray

If you want to push for asset artist you should finish up your hard surface models with real time rendered game ready assets. Have a variety of props with different range of complexity, size and shapes. Correct mat definition, textured, lit and presented well.

If you want to push for environment artist you should have fully fleshed out completed real time scenes, composed and lit well.

Some unity in your portfolio might go well, for example after graduating you could set a goal to do 2 contrasting scenes, concept them up, level design them, have 'hero' assets in them and make the environments. That should provide enough content.

If you defo want to be an Environment Artist/Asset Artist then yeah ditch the characters or make it really obvious it's just examples of addition skillset and make it a low priority in you portfolio.

R00

Hey everyone,

Thank you very much for all your feedback to start with.

I agree with you all when it comes to displaying my characters art but this was placed in to show my versatility in modelling, but as mentioned by Ex-Ray I shall make it known that this an additional skill. As for assets, that is something I will try to work on along with my level development in the future as well as re-doing some hard surface work.

A level or two is definately my main focus this year as they seem to be the bread and butter when it comes to show reels, uppposed to models with shaded backgrounds

Computron: I didn't use speed tree, but I guess you were implying that I should have used it that right? The level itself was designed to I could understand the Engine and spacial awareness when creating worlds.

My question to you all, is there anything I'm missing?

thanks once again for the feedback.

Chris

Computron

chris1988green wrote: »

Computron: I didn't use speed tree, but I guess you were implying that I should have used it that right? The level itself was designed to I could understand the Engine and spacial awareness when creating worlds.

What, really? I thought those were the same foliage parts from the Night/day cycle level that shipped with UDK, they looked very similar. I couldn't find any wireframes or breakdowns of the foliage on your site.

my mistake.\

R00

Computron you have me slightly confused, sorry. You are correct with what your saying. All assets are from the unreal engine, as stated at the top of the of the page on that section of my website.

Korrax

I hate the "portfolio network" or w/e you are using to show off ur work. When I go to the page, the Ad's are larger than ur artwork.. most people would visit that and leave immediately thinking its something other than a portfolio. I also dont like the wall of text describing the level or asset with how much time you spend on it. If I didn't bother reading it I don't think anyone else will. Also get rid of the profile picture and all these buttons. Ur art is being surrounded by fucking buttons and shit all over the place and its very irritating. Its like a blog but worse.

Keep it simple: final image + maps layout + TriCount written on the wireframe shot.

I would seriously recommend to invest in a real domain name and build a portfolio website of ur own. It doesn't have to be complicated.. you can build a website in dreamweaver or notepad with very simple html & CSS. Theres tutorials everywhere for that, and if ur capable of making 3D art ur more than capable of creating a simple website- and if you don't want to spend the time learning that.. Just host a wordpress and download a simple free portfolio theme. Just have ur name at the top with the art shown large and clear. with a contact / resume button. It will look a hell of a lot better.

Your art is nice. I like it and I think you could land a jr. role with some luck and a lot of applying... but do you want to be a modeler or an animator? If you want to do environment art / asset modeling get rid of all that character stuff and focus on what you want to do. I would bring those hard surface pieces to completion.

R00

didn't know what to make of that first section... Thought you were gonna hunt me down or something.

However your advice is very much appreciated and I myself am not overly fond of the website but it was the best I could find that allowed me to display more than 5 images. I'm going to try use wordpress a little later to improve on the site.

In answer to your question, I want to be a modeler not an animator so when it comes to designing the new site all the character stuff will be gone. Thank you also for appreciating what is left of my portfolio, i'm still a student of the industry so i'm very aware of what I need to learn in order to be a better artist.

Korrax

I am sorry if I came across as strong, but the fact there are Ads larger than ur art when I open ur page is just horrible. Imagine going into an art gallery and seeing a great big TV beside a nice painting or statue, and playing on that TV is the latest Ad for Louis Vuitton condoms or the new Kotex pads. Would you display ur art in that gallery expecting lots of people to view and possibly buy it??

Blaisoid

However your advice is very much appreciated and I myself am not overly fond of the website but it was the best I could find that allowed me to display more than 5 images.

you could try carbonmade (30 pics limit), or the page from my signature (75 pics limit)
they both have a nice clean layout with no ads.

R00

haha thats a very good point mate! Great example...

I'd rather people be upfront with me about my work instead of being reserved with their opinion.

Thanks for the recommendation Blaisoid i'll give them a butchers.

cw

You can get a domain and hosting for less than £30 for a year, then you can just make your own no frills page. Are you at NSAD or UEA?

c0ldhands

Im gonna be harsh and quick :

1. Your quality in the assets you present is not where is supposed to be to get a junior artist job. Hard surface look unfinished, not that much sense of detail or form, they look like primitives slapped toghter.

The "enviroment models" section only presents a couple of your typical simple static meshes like rocks walls and so on, still your applying for a enviroment position. Texturing is at least decent.

2. The Unreal engine is the only category that present some interest, you show that you posses the tools of UDK when it comes to designing a level. Looks good.

3. The Concept part and the Character part is really weak, they just drag the portfolio down, they should be cut. You also apply for a enviroment postion, remember.

4. The site is abit hard to navigate, mainly because is channeled trough another site, also has comercial on the right hand of the screen. I should advice to get a simple site layout or template that is good for displaying pictures.

R00

cw: i'm at NSAD mate. You go there?

c0ldhands: I'm thick skinned mate and at the end of the day if artists don't think it's great then an employer isn't gonna look twice at it. I'm looking into Wordpress sites at the moment which will display my work in a better form. The hard surface stuff is weak I agree but I will be ipdating it in the future, as for the environment section it's still quite new so i'm just experimenting with diferent types of materials.

Is there anything you could suggest I add to make this a stronger portfolio mate?

cw

chris1988green wrote: »

cw: i'm at NSAD mate.

No but I used to go to UEA a decade ago - I was just being nosey.

c0ldhands

What a great environment artist should have is work that reflects his ability to texture, modular construction of scenes/lighting, highpoly/sculpting of both mechanical and enviroment assets.

Take a look here for some inspiration, its a list of awesome portfolios:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=92838

Also check out "carbonmade.com" its a free portfolio page for the everyday artist.
Example: http://ajdin.carbonmade.com/

POFFINGTON

Love all of the work! My main issue is the site, and navigation. You might want to look into doing just a standard scroll down site. Polycount's JasonLavoie has and excellent site.

http://www.jasonlavoie.net/

c0ldhands has also given you good reference for very successful sites.

IchII3D

Nice props, although if your looking for an environment artists position you really need to have a complete scene. Although I'm assuming your props are part of a bigger picture?

Oh and a bit of advice could be that if you used custom normals on your model you wouldn't get so much warping correction in your normal and it would also allow you to remove the polygons under LOD to form a tillable area. Currently if you LOD that you would get massive lighting errors without the supporting polygons.

Your website is really frustrating and overwhelming to browse, I recommend keeping it simple and make your own. I can't even click the images to view higher resolution which really put me off browsing.

R00

c0ldhands thank you very much for that last post. As you can tell this is still quite new to me and your advice has been great. I am now developing my wordpress website after parting with £100 but it will surely benefit me in the long haul (with a bit of guidance).

POFFINGTON thank you very much for that feedback, it really does mean so much. As for the site, well it's getting nuked when the new one is up. Thats why i'm glad you guys gave me your opinion on the current one as I would have been shot down by a potential employer instead.

Also Jason's site/work is badass! Love that guys work.

Another one i'm really fond of is www.scotthomer.co.uk/ one day i'd like to be at that standard.

R00

hey IchII3D didn't see you sneak in there. Yea that is really frustrating not being able to see 'the bigger picture'. With the normals..(i'm still getting to grips with them) the corners are still sharp even tho the high bake is baked correctly. I added support edges or a bevel to round them off. IS there an easier way to cure this problem as my uni isn't too great with 3D work sadly.

As for the website...lets just say i'm glad I got you guys to view it first.

IchII3D

If you ever get warping i.e. colour change on your normals from a flat surface its not so much of a problem. All the normal map is doing is correcting you smoothing group information to represent the object your using to bake. The problem is when the object has to be lodded and all the suporting structre is lost meaning the nomals your map is trying to correct do not exist anymore. Although it doss depend on the package you view your normals in. As a basis, completely ignore 3dsmax.

When using custom normals on your low poly you essentially remove these issues of warping meaning your normal will be able to bake as of it was on a flat surface. This makes your normal map and model more flexible in the future and even allows you to remove the normal map completely with no real lighting or wrapping issues.

R00

Don't know how to delete this thread. Accidentally posted on it. Sorry