Gas Station Diorama

Alexsec · Mar 2016

Hey guys.

Today I want to show you my latest project, a small diorama based on Gas Haven. I'm a student so any feedback is really appreciated.

Hope you like it.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/hn/7mglyczu2u2z.jpg

Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artist/alejandrogonba

PixelMasher · Mar 2016

hey man, its great you are looking for feedback from outside sources as a student, this will really help your skills blow up and grow exponentially vs anyone in your class who just looks to their peers. There is a saying, "if you want to become a millionare fast, start hanging out and talking to billionares" so in this case, get feedback from industry people here on polycount

Now to the feedback, some of this might hurt but its all problems almost everyone has when they start learning so don't take it personally!

right now overall scale/proportion, and the textures are what is killing your scene. It is hard to tell what style you are going for, stylized/cartoony? or realistic. Right now the building and doors feel strange in terms of size to each other, same with that garbage can, its super huge and almost the size of a gast pump. Really look at some reference photos and try to nail the relative scale to each other, also that clapboard yellow sign is HUGE compared to the other stuff. Also, don't be afraid to add a ton more polygons to your assets, everything looks really low poly. The days of saving and scrimping polygons are pretty much over. Everything looks really blocky and simple in terms of modeling/shapes, adding more details to the modeling will really help.

For the textures, a lot of them are kind of noisy and seem to have grunge and detail added for the sake of it, leaving everything kind of unreadable in terms of surface materials and a lot of it seems random. Like the walls of the building look like they could also be a ground material. Why is the base of the pump platform some medieval style cobblestone? almost every gas station I have ever been to it is a slab of poured concrete. The underside of the pump ceiling thing is really dark and rusted for no reason, again for all these textures and models, look at real life references and try to duplicate them as closely as possible. even if you think it will look "boring" I can bet as a whole, everything will read much easier and fit together better.

Right now the biggest problem that I think you could easily focus on correcting is: use reference, all the time. This will help you improve so much faster than trying to model props and textures for a scene from how you remember thinking they look, and how they should actually look when compared to real life. This is a common pitfall most artists fall into when they first start, I am pretty sure every industry level artist had the same issues in the beginning.

Now there are 2 routes which most people tend to go after having a harsh critque. A lot of people will say "cool, I will apply the crits to my next project and it will be awesome". or you can go back and apply all the critique points to this scene, even if you consider it finished. option 2 will probably leave you with a higher quality portfolio piece and get you into the habit of applying feedback to you work, which is a critical skill when you are in the game industry, I do it almost every day. Read up on the 80/20 principle and you can apply it here. Focus on improving the 20% of elements in this scene that are going to make the biggest impact, or 80% of your results. I would say this is the textures, and add a bit more detail to the modeling.

whew, long post. Hopefully this feedback helps you even if it hurts to read at first. Don't be discouraged, with some revisions, this could shape up to be a great student portfolio piece. Cheers!

Alexsec · Mar 2016

PixelMasher said:

hey man, its great you are looking for feedback from outside sources as a student, this will really help your skills blow up and grow exponentially vs anyone in your class who just looks to their peers. There is a saying, "if you want to become a millionare fast, start hanging out and talking to billionares" so in this case, get feedback from industry people here on polycount

Now to the feedback, some of this might hurt but its all problems almost everyone has when they start learning so don't take it personally!

right now overall scale/proportion, and the textures are what is killing your scene. It is hard to tell what style you are going for, stylized/cartoony? or realistic. Right now the building and doors feel strange in terms of size to each other, same with that garbage can, its super huge and almost the size of a gast pump. Really look at some reference photos and try to nail the relative scale to each other, also that clapboard yellow sign is HUGE compared to the other stuff. Also, don't be afraid to add a ton more polygons to your assets, everything looks really low poly. The days of saving and scrimping polygons are pretty much over. Everything looks really blocky and simple in terms of modeling/shapes, adding more details to the modeling will really help.

For the textures, a lot of them are kind of noisy and seem to have grunge and detail added for the sake of it, leaving everything kind of unreadable in terms of surface materials and a lot of it seems random. Like the walls of the building look like they could also be a ground material. Why is the base of the pump platform some medieval style cobblestone? almost every gas station I have ever been to it is a slab of poured concrete. The underside of the pump ceiling thing is really dark and rusted for no reason, again for all these textures and models, look at real life references and try to duplicate them as closely as possible. even if you think it will look "boring" I can bet as a whole, everything will read much easier and fit together better.

Right now the biggest problem that I think you could easily focus on correcting is: use reference, all the time. This will help you improve so much faster than trying to model props and textures for a scene from how you remember thinking they look, and how they should actually look when compared to real life. This is a common pitfall most artists fall into when they first start, I am pretty sure every industry level artist had the same issues in the beginning.

Now there are 2 routes which most people tend to go after having a harsh critque. A lot of people will say "cool, I will apply the crits to my next project and it will be awesome". or you can go back and apply all the critique points to this scene, even if you consider it finished. option 2 will probably leave you with a higher quality portfolio piece and get you into the habit of applying feedback to you work, which is a critical skill when you are in the game industry, I do it almost every day. Read up on the 80/20 principle and you can apply it here. Focus on improving the 20% of elements in this scene that are going to make the biggest impact, or 80% of your results. I would say this is the textures, and add a bit more detail to the modeling.

whew, long post. Hopefully this feedback helps you even if it hurts to read at first. Don't be discouraged, with some revisions, this could shape up to be a great student portfolio piece. Cheers!

Wow, thank you very much. This is a really good piece of advice. I'll try to do everything you say in this scene. Actually, I don't use many
references, I don't know, I always try to do everything with one picture even though I know I shouldn't do it.

I will apply all your feedback in this and future projects.

Thank you very much!

Alexsec · Mar 2016

@PixelMasher I made some progress today with the textures. I'm pretty happy with the walls of the building, I tried a ton of new things in Photoshop that I haven't tried before.

I also made all the corners of all the elements rounded to make them less pointy.

And I have added some kind of party decoration to fill the scene a little bit more. I think that the scene looks a lot better than yesterday, still open to receive some feedback though.

Thank you very much!

Gas Station Diorama

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