Portfolio Help

[auctane]

So I have been looking for my first job in the game industry for a long time now. I am getting old here, so its starting to wear on me a little different than it would if I were younger. This has been a life long dream of mine, and some how I got stuck in a strange career path in the film industry that I really want to break free from. I feel like my portfolio is good, but I guess I really need more opinions on it. At this point all I can say is that it obviously does not have what it takes to get me a job.

So can I get some opinions on it and where I should start chopping and adding?

Please check it out and give me some professional feedback: My Portfolio (http://www.flankyou.com)

[Kwakkie]

There are no polycounts or texture maps! If you dont include those, your future employer cant see if you can work efficiently! Are you going for an enviroment artist position?

[auctane]

Yeah good point... I will come up with a sort of UI for each image when it is expanded.

[Ged]

yeah polycounts and texture maps would be good. Perhaps use photoshops save for web function and optimise the images? as some of them took a tiny bit longer than I would have expected to load and an employer might not enjoy watching the image load for 5 seconds(thats how long I waited before I could see the whole image). Its your choice and if you want the good quality jpegs then keep them :)

[GutsandBolts]

You seem to have solid work. I would ask where you are applying and how? Have you been getting no bites or just not making it past the interview stage? Your work seems focused on a particular style maybe you are getting discounted because it doesnt fit in with where you are applying.

[auctane]

Ok, I added on the first vehicle some text with polycounts and what textures I used. I will finish the rest off unless someone suggests that format is no good. I'm going for prop artist/vehicle artist/environment artist.

Ged: thanks for the heads up on the ones loading slow, there were a few in there that were not optimized.

GutsandBolts: Honestly over the last two years the best response I have gotten is "You don't live in LA, move to LA and hit us up again". No bites, no interviews. I have been applying to various companies that are producing games with art not too far off what I have in my portfolio. Most of them are listed jobs on Gamasutra.com which seems to be a joke at this point. I do think that I need to do some work with different styles though.

So I decide before I make the move to go back to school and get a degree, I am going to be spending the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas with some friends in Bellingham, WA (between Seattle and Vancouver, BC) to try and get in and at least meet people...

[elbaz]

Hey, your work is good however i noticed a few things...

You need to vary your content, with respect to vehicles and envrionments etc. You need to show that you are able to create these from multiple genres, and even for different platforms.

For example, I noticed you have a fairly high poly count on your meshes and gazing over a few, i saw things which could have been heavily optimized. For example on you wheels of one vehicle, the edges go straight across to form Quads, when you could have saved a lot of tris by sprouting all the edges from one point as such:

http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/9307/40131783bf1.png

taking that further you could simply use one plane and alpha map it.

You also need to upload your texture flats, and make sure they are used well.

Added to that, seperated flat shaded wireframes also help your potential employer see exactly what your model comprises of.

hope that helps

el.

[auctane]

Thanks for the input el.

As a heads up, the poly count on circles done the way i do them, and the way that you have illustrated, is exactly the same. However the 1 time (years ago) I did a circle the way you illustrated, I got funky normals... and I had to fix it. Those specs (12k-14k) were passed on to me from Mercenaries 2 (Xbox 360), so I went with them. I have done some wheels with circled out alpha channels, actually the Flakvierling AA truck in my portfolio uses them, and that vehicle falls into the CoH specs. :D

Yeah good point on the texture maps, I guess I figured that efficient UVing/texturing is so basic, that I totally overlooked showing that I know how... I'll figure something out there.

[Twindragon]

I think your environments need to be more detailed. such as the alleyway. You could add garbage in the street like paper and gum and all sorts of crud...boxes where bums live in etc. Have fun with it.

[auctane]

Agreed on the enviros - I joined up with a mod team a couple weeks ago and just dropped that one in the middle of it... put it in anyway so I would have some environment stuff. Anyway, shortly here i will have some in game stuff to show off and a mod to go with it. :D

[Sordid23]

For example, I noticed you have a fairly high poly count on your meshes and gazing over a few, i saw things which could have been heavily optimized. For example on you wheels of one vehicle, the edges go straight across to form Quads, when you could have saved a lot of tris by sprouting all the edges from one point as such:
http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/9307/40131783bf1.png


Euhm... you are wrong actualy :P
This has been brought up on some other forums aswel...and they have the same amount of tri's. BUT the one where all tri's meet on one vertex is actualy worse for you game engine, the chances of bad rendereing and bugs in lightmaps are higher.

[Johny]

what might help is that the dysplay of your owkr be shown in game spcs, instead of using gi and area shadows and what not in lowpoly models , id say export your work to some engines, that will show you also know the technicall side :)

i would also work on the textures, they have no life, they all seem very monotonous , and theres nothing to the eyes to focus on. You have solid stuff nontheless, just push it a bit farther and youll be set :)

[elbaz]

ooops my bad, i meant when all the edges meet at a vert in the middle, as apoosed to the edge thingum, my bad.

el.

[auctane]

what might help is that the dysplay of your owkr be shown in game spcs, instead of using gi and area shadows and what not in lowpoly models , id say export your work to some engines, that will show you also know the technicall side :)

i would also work on the textures, they have no life, they all seem very monotonous , and theres nothing to the eyes to focus on. You have solid stuff nontheless, just push it a bit farther and youll be set :)

They are all in Open GL, no software rendering here. Screen grabs from game engine model viewers usually have that gird in them and I don't think that presents well. In game, yeah, but once you kill the HUD and (if its an fps) the gun, then you need to isolate your model out... I just haven't had a good time presenting models of this nature in game - for a portfolio. If you have an example of someone who's successfully presented their work in that way, would you provide a link so I can check out what they did?

As for working on the textures... The nature of the original designs on those vehicles is to not stick out at all. They did not want to be seen. :D They are historically accurate. The only one I would mess with is the gray Tiger tank and that would be to grime it up a bit, as for the rest, I'm leaving those textures as is. I do agree with you in that I need to have some texturing that pops out though, just need a different type of model.

[auctane]

I added a couple of images to the environment section. quicklink (http://www.flankyou.com/)

I'm up in Washington for the next few weeks... wish me luck :)

[BuroKun]

Good Luck!