Looks good, but nothing that stands out. Your Davinci scene is cool but I couldn't tell from the thumbnail. You have that awesome sci fi pod looking thing in the middle that you should show off in the thumbnail, not some paperbook on the floor.
Admittedly, I'm no environment artist. However, I think I can still offer some critiques.
1. Your environments don't have any focal points. There's nothing for the eye to linger on; it's all just pieces put together into some sort of vignette with no focus. You have a sci-fi environment, but there are no fancy lights or space ships or futuristic towers or anything to look at.
This needs to change.
Give us something to focus our attention on. Guide the viewer's eye towards what you want them to look at.
2. Your lighting is, in general, pretty flat. There are no hot spots to make the textures pop a little. Give us some glancing angles, some rim lighting, some warm and cool contrasts, some nice cast shadows. These will help draw the eye. In addition, you need more ambient or bounced light because your scenes are all under-lit.
3. Your textures are muddy, but this is partially because they're under-lit. Even if you don't have a lot of blacks in your textures, it seems that way because your scenes are all quite dim.
4. Your scenes lack depth. This is partially because of the lighting (or lack thereof) and partially because it seems they're all in a vacuum. There's no atmosphere, no fog, no dust particles or light shafts, no bloom or depth of field. Give us some atmospheric perspective.
I'd like to offer critiques to your individual pieces, but they all seem to share the same problems, so global critiques are really what you need.
I think you have some technically good work, but the artistic side needs to be pushed farther. Get into the nitty-gritty and spend some time tweaking the lighting and other things I've mentioned. The sci-fi environment and the Fraggle Rock environment could both be really strong pieces if you gave them more dramatic lighting, more atmosphere, and clear focal points.
ErichWK on 09-13-2011 11:00 AM
26,000 tris for your Pod.......................
So now that I'm on lunch I can critique this fer realz. Here's the biggest problem that bugs me. Your renders are really noises and jaggy and just hard to look at. I can't tell whether it's the anti Aliasing that is making it hard to focus or just your texture work...but looking at some of your wood textured stuff it seems you just go heavy on the brushed metal.
Do you do any high to low baking? Because the way you set up your low poly props it seems like you don't. You model out every detail that can be easily done with a good bake. I also don't like how in your portfolio a lot of your props are just small on the layout and hard to see the detail. Especially your maps. Your normal maps look like just a blue box to me. Go big, man and don't be afraid, So we can look at every detail you do.
For the Gateway I'd delete the part about your scene taking five weeks..because to me it just seems like A couple days worth of work. That hard edge on the left wall isn't doing you any favors, also.
Your rock wall...Pretty tri heavy and the colors are a bit washed out. It seems like you just took the photo and slapped it on there.
I'm assuming you went to Ai San Diego by looking at your SOE Free Realms stuff, you are very broad on what you did for that scene. It'd be nice if you showed at least some individual assets that you worked on or made it more clear what you did specifically.
Overall, man..everything just seems super photo sourced and like you just did a Crazybump (or as my teacher called it..Lazybump) filter over all your diffuses. There is no clear material definition and all your assets are WAY too poly heavy. I'd think about figuring out the best methods for creating a high poly to low poly workflow and dividing all your Tri counts by 4 or maybe 5 on your assets. You do have the basics down, thats the hardest step. You just REALLY need to go the extra mile in order to make all your stuff work. I'm not being a dick (it may come off that I am) but I just want to see my fellow San Diego Ai kids succeed so I am being brutally honest because at this stage at your looking at your work... I wouldn't hire you. But don't give up! Take it as a challenge and make something awesome!
SouthpawSid on 09-13-2011 01:12 PM
Your work is above average for student work coming out of an Ai school, and you obviously have a grasp on a lot of the game art creation workflows.
That being said, you have some work left to be done to become much more appealing to game studios.
I think jeremiah_bigley hit the nail on the head with the darks comment. Try adding some ambient light in your environment. It's simply way too dark atm. Lighten things up but still keep some good lighting contrast in the scene.
Same with his suggestion on decals and breaking up the photosourcy look of your textures.
I think the biggest problem is your work is your geo optimization. A lot of your tri counts are INSANLY high for what's being put into games today. ErichWK is very right, 26,000 is pretty crazy for a drop pod thingy like that. The modeling looks as though it was that of a blockout model that was never cleaned up for a game, since you can see edge loops continues all through the model in numerous areas where it should be simplified. If you're up to, try and get that prop down to like 2,500 tris or so.
As far as the site itself, it's laid out fine, and pretty easy to navigate, so nice job on that.
My last suggestion is to get rid of the white silhouette dude on your website logo name header thing. Your're obviously not a graphic designer, so stick with some simple text, and you'll look much more like a professional ;-)
:as posted in your last portfolio thread a month ago in case you didn't get them
Replies
1. Your environments don't have any focal points. There's nothing for the eye to linger on; it's all just pieces put together into some sort of vignette with no focus. You have a sci-fi environment, but there are no fancy lights or space ships or futuristic towers or anything to look at.
This needs to change.
Give us something to focus our attention on. Guide the viewer's eye towards what you want them to look at.
2. Your lighting is, in general, pretty flat. There are no hot spots to make the textures pop a little. Give us some glancing angles, some rim lighting, some warm and cool contrasts, some nice cast shadows. These will help draw the eye. In addition, you need more ambient or bounced light because your scenes are all under-lit.
3. Your textures are muddy, but this is partially because they're under-lit. Even if you don't have a lot of blacks in your textures, it seems that way because your scenes are all quite dim.
4. Your scenes lack depth. This is partially because of the lighting (or lack thereof) and partially because it seems they're all in a vacuum. There's no atmosphere, no fog, no dust particles or light shafts, no bloom or depth of field. Give us some atmospheric perspective.
I'd like to offer critiques to your individual pieces, but they all seem to share the same problems, so global critiques are really what you need.
I think you have some technically good work, but the artistic side needs to be pushed farther. Get into the nitty-gritty and spend some time tweaking the lighting and other things I've mentioned. The sci-fi environment and the Fraggle Rock environment could both be really strong pieces if you gave them more dramatic lighting, more atmosphere, and clear focal points.
26,000 tris for your Pod.......................
So now that I'm on lunch I can critique this fer realz. Here's the biggest problem that bugs me. Your renders are really noises and jaggy and just hard to look at. I can't tell whether it's the anti Aliasing that is making it hard to focus or just your texture work...but looking at some of your wood textured stuff it seems you just go heavy on the brushed metal.
Do you do any high to low baking? Because the way you set up your low poly props it seems like you don't. You model out every detail that can be easily done with a good bake. I also don't like how in your portfolio a lot of your props are just small on the layout and hard to see the detail. Especially your maps. Your normal maps look like just a blue box to me. Go big, man and don't be afraid, So we can look at every detail you do.
For the Gateway I'd delete the part about your scene taking five weeks..because to me it just seems like A couple days worth of work. That hard edge on the left wall isn't doing you any favors, also.
Your rock wall...Pretty tri heavy and the colors are a bit washed out. It seems like you just took the photo and slapped it on there.
I'm assuming you went to Ai San Diego by looking at your SOE Free Realms stuff, you are very broad on what you did for that scene. It'd be nice if you showed at least some individual assets that you worked on or made it more clear what you did specifically.
Overall, man..everything just seems super photo sourced and like you just did a Crazybump (or as my teacher called it..Lazybump) filter over all your diffuses. There is no clear material definition and all your assets are WAY too poly heavy. I'd think about figuring out the best methods for creating a high poly to low poly workflow and dividing all your Tri counts by 4 or maybe 5 on your assets. You do have the basics down, thats the hardest step. You just REALLY need to go the extra mile in order to make all your stuff work. I'm not being a dick (it may come off that I am) but I just want to see my fellow San Diego Ai kids succeed so I am being brutally honest because at this stage at your looking at your work... I wouldn't hire you. But don't give up! Take it as a challenge and make something awesome!
SouthpawSid on 09-13-2011 01:12 PM
Your work is above average for student work coming out of an Ai school, and you obviously have a grasp on a lot of the game art creation workflows.
That being said, you have some work left to be done to become much more appealing to game studios.
I think jeremiah_bigley hit the nail on the head with the darks comment. Try adding some ambient light in your environment. It's simply way too dark atm. Lighten things up but still keep some good lighting contrast in the scene.
Same with his suggestion on decals and breaking up the photosourcy look of your textures.
I think the biggest problem is your work is your geo optimization. A lot of your tri counts are INSANLY high for what's being put into games today. ErichWK is very right, 26,000 is pretty crazy for a drop pod thingy like that. The modeling looks as though it was that of a blockout model that was never cleaned up for a game, since you can see edge loops continues all through the model in numerous areas where it should be simplified. If you're up to, try and get that prop down to like 2,500 tris or so.
As far as the site itself, it's laid out fine, and pretty easy to navigate, so nice job on that.
My last suggestion is to get rid of the white silhouette dude on your website logo name header thing. Your're obviously not a graphic designer, so stick with some simple text, and you'll look much more like a professional ;-)
:as posted in your last portfolio thread a month ago in case you didn't get them