Enviro artists- original vs. common models for demo reel?
polycounter lvl 7
Hey there!
I am a student and aspiring environment artist halfway through my education and must soon choose a concept for my demo reel.
I am curious what would be better as a piece on my demo reel, something commonly seen in video games (For example a rotting warehouse, some ruins in the forest, a scary house), or something not commonly seen. (like a... crazy awesome village in the trees, or a busy marketplace, or a gorgeous garden, ect)
It would make sense to me that to stand out of the crowd I might want to do something original and memorable, but I'm wondering if I should show that I can do common things too, like a generic scary warehouse.
Thanks for any comments and opinions!
I am a student and aspiring environment artist halfway through my education and must soon choose a concept for my demo reel.
I am curious what would be better as a piece on my demo reel, something commonly seen in video games (For example a rotting warehouse, some ruins in the forest, a scary house), or something not commonly seen. (like a... crazy awesome village in the trees, or a busy marketplace, or a gorgeous garden, ect)
It would make sense to me that to stand out of the crowd I might want to do something original and memorable, but I'm wondering if I should show that I can do common things too, like a generic scary warehouse.
Thanks for any comments and opinions!
Replies
I would suggest you do something you feel comfortable doing first. If you think you can hack out a hyper fantasy environment unlike we've ever seen, then do it. If you'd rather go after something a little closer to home - like the front of your house / apartment then do that. Just make sure you do it to the best of your ability. (So light it, do the background, challenge yourself).
The majority of us in this industry don't show things we first did 'back in the day', but thats only because we've enough things now that the older stuff is irrelevant. However, knowing most people well enough around here like I do, I also know they tried out a TON of techniques, tools, and exercises before pulling the trigger on a successful portfolio.
Whatever you decide to do, post it in the P&P section and you'll have yourself some great criticism to grow with.
Good luck!
Fell free to do something uncommon but don't use that as an excuse for crappy design, all good fantasy designs are grounded in reality: gather a library of photo reference of tree houses and other house styles.
Listen to the above, practice, and then think about portfolio stuff once you have a bit under your belt.
I'm not planning on creating my demo environments quite yet. You see, my training center requires that I pitch my demo reel, and therefore which specialty I want to take (which for me will be environment modeling) ideas exactly halfway into my training year. My pitches will be reviewed and approved/disapproved by my school owner and mentors, and I will begin creating them the following semester.
I only have a few weeks before my pitch and I've been thinking and researching a lot about what kind of environments I want to spend my last 4 months modeling.
Thanks for the tips! I guess I shouldn't concern myself with originality, just ability. That is good. And I will make sure to have much more practice by the time I have to create my demo reel pieces.
I like the idea of creating a city/architectural environment and a much more organic-based one.
Should I be gearing my style towards the company I want to work at, or is it my skill that matters more? Like for example, what if I wanted to apply to companies that did super-fantasy games and I modeled a broken-down shopping center? (just an example). Would something like that give me less of an edge over somebody else who was able to match the company's style?
Studios recognize talent above all else and realize if you have the talent and the technical knowledge switching from one style/theme would not be hard for you. Studios also are bias to seeing work done in there style so its a bit of a mixed bag.
Doing a project that in grounded in more realism seems to be the optimal choice for many as with fantasy and sci fi its hard for an employer to tell what you did really well, what you did wrong and what you just pulled out of your ass since hey its sci fi and fantasy anything could essentially go. Where when something is based on real life objects people can recognize what you did right, wrong and what you did creatively to improve a mundane every day object. Down fall of realism is its harder to stretch your creativity where fantasy and sci fi the sky is the limit.
You have to find that balance. Not to mention doing something your passionate about as that passion will shine through over a piece you care less about but find it the safer/smarter choice.
I was asking myself this some time ago. I mean, once you work in a game company (env/prop artist position) you might work doing someone else's "concept art" in 3D. Now logically it might make sense to follow that path while "building up" an online portfolio. But at the same time I believe is important to show that you can also create/concept things of your own. (in the end, you are presenting yourself as an artist right?) Personally when I started doing 3D stuff, and it wasn't soo long ago, I thought environment / prop artists were doing their concepts themselves, and then doing them in 3D. And that's really what motivated me to start learning 3D. Although that's not the case in real productions (I might be wrong though). And it does make sense, as there is people really talented for 2D concept, that can keep an even design style/mood through all the project consistently, and do it fast on top of that. So yeah, to do someone else's concepts or personal concepts? I will say do both.
There is personal and professional motivation, and it can be confusing at times to have both live together harmonically.
For Halo Reach I didnt recive a single concept for any of the environments I worked on. Worked from basic massout of levels to final production with no concepts, just discussions between myself and others on what the level should be like.
I found this extreamly challanging and rewarding in the end when I knew I could do it since concepting is compeltly not my thing and I dont really enjoy doing it. I prefer to work off others very lose concepts and extrapote my own concepting ideas ontop of there base. This is very common as concepting time is always valuble so learning how to conecpt your own work will help in the long run.
I could be totally wrong on this as I know some artists who had multiple concepts for a single zone they were working on. Maybe I just got lucky :P
I concepted all the work I did in my folio (minus a few group peices) and found it very helpful. I also had some really nice paintovers by friends and PC memebers to help me along the way too.
SanderDL, I also do lots of rough sketches I am only available to understand myself, but when presenting a concept to a client or as a portfolio piece, yes in that case you want to pull out a nice piece. You might also show your initial thumbnails/sketches as they were part of the process if you think they are worth it.
I will recommend you to watch Gnomon's Gears of war creature creation (or something liike that..), it really helped me a lot in this subject. If you think you wont be able to draw consistently an object/creature/character from many different angles( in a "presentable" fashion), a good trick is to play with 3d primitives and do heavy paint overs/post in photoshop.
Another DVD that I found really to help me, is CG survival kit, also from gnomon, specially the comp part in photoshop is awesome. Hope this helps.