Week 4

For this week we told to look at the area that we wanted to get into the industry and review some showreels and portfolio's. We were told to find good and bad showreel's so we can analyse them and summarise what we liked about the showreels and what we disliked about the showreels.

Below is a showreel of environment artist by the name Alex Mourant who speciales in environment models. All of the models were done In maya and beside the windmill scene at the end everything was rendered in mental ray.

The thing I like about this showreel is how much attention to detail is used on the models, Everything is modelled very cleanly and the texturing for the church and the windmill scene I think is some of the best I have scene, Even the lighting in the scene's is very good maybe not the best I have seen but a lot better than I am at the minute.

I really like this show reel because I think everything works together really well, I think the music in the background compliments the work and makes the showreel look really good.

Below is a showreel from David Lesperance, he is currently working in the games industry but his work is awesome.

The showreel below is probabily my favourite showreel at the minute when it comes to environments. There is some bad points to the showreel which I think is only the music because it makes you lose focus also I dont like how all of shots are just rendered images, i prefer the camera panning around the models but beside that there is not many negatives.

The video itself to me was shocking, I thought the props and environments were some of the best I have seen, at the begginning of the showreel he shows some modular props which look excellent then he moves on to environments which all look really really good.

He uses lighting to the best I have seen in an environment showreel and it's not just the lighting, the modelling and texturing is out of this world, all the models are High res bare in mind but even still probabily one of the best environment showreels I have seen in quite a while.

Below is a showreel from someone called Jake Wright.

This is one of the bad ones I have seen so far and by bad I mean the showreel hasn't been put together really well.

The showreel alone is only 29 seconds long which isn't long enough time to show any kind of good work espcially the amount he trys to fit in to the time frame.

I think the 1st prison scene isn't the greatest when it comes to environment scenes and this is because the lighting does not make any sense at all because there is shadows in some places and then not in some where they should be, also the modelling and texturing isn't the greatest I have seen in a showreel and when that scene has finished he puts up animation which takes up most of the time and doesn't really show much of the environment, which annoyed me because he says he's an environment artist.

The main thing I did like about the showreel was the music, the music worked well with the animation but not the prison scene at the begginning, I think personally that alot of work needs to be put into this showreel and a lot more models need to be added to make the showreel last alot longer than 29 seconds long.

After reseraching good and bad showreels I started looking at website portfoilio's because there is a lot of good environment artists that haven't got showreel videos.

Below is a link to environment artist called Alex Galizun who I really like because he has wide spread of different environments that I think all look really good. He doesn't stick to the same kind of environment e.g grimy environments, clean environments he broadens his skill which allows him to model good looking environments.

He does only do small environments but the they all do look really nice and have a really good atmosphere about them e.g the iceyapex scene he has modelled does make you feel cold when you look at it which is what I like to see in environments.

I also like the layout of his website, its easy to find what im looking for and every link works which may sound stupid but on some 3d websites when you click a link nothing loads, so he obvioulsy keeping his site up to date.

http://alexgaluzin.com/

My final website portfolio is by someone called Charlene Dunn

As soon as you enter his website he has a big video of  the latest game he has worked on which is Red Dead Redemption which made me think this person must be good.

I then looked at his gallery and I must admit I wasnt impressed by it at all. I dont know if this is because some of the games he has worked on were on the older consoles so I expected more, but then I went further down the gallery and some of his latest 3D work wasnt the best.

I mean for someone who has worked in the games industry and worked on one of the best selling games this year his portfolio wasnt great at all which actually shocked me. She doesn't present his work well she just seems to do random renders and not even consider the lighting, and also a lot of the shots are from in game which I dont think makes a good portfolio.

My honest opinion is for someone who is in the industry now working on big selling games should have a better online portfolio than that.

http://www.charzamm.com/