If you had 12 weeks to learn a certain aspect of game environments, such as particles, high-low poly, vertex painting, texturing... anything really what do you wish you spent that time learning? The reason I'm asking this is because I have a module where I will spend around 200 hours learning and I'm wondering what you…
Everything. Basically if you have time to spend, try and do some of everything, then figure out what you find most interesting and focus more on that towards the end.
Which fundamental aspect of game art are you worst at (Painted textures, lighting, z sculpting...on)? I'd start there, focus heavily on that and work down. With 200 hours you can definitely improve significantly.
As an environment artist, if given free time to study something else, I would recommend diversifying and studying character art. [edit] I completely misread the question, thought you were an env artist asking what else you should study
also, if you want to be an environment artist, focus on making entire environments. a portfolio with a crate, barrel and dumpster does not make you an environment artist, thats a prop artist folio, and chances are props like that will be made in 20 mins by artists on the team or outsourced to china.
vertex painting is used pretty extensively now, most blends support masks and other interesting effects, but there is rarley a case where the artist makes the shader and uses it in the game. every game I have worked on there is a specific shader library you can choose from with some modifiable values to tweak it that were…