Update on me, plus some comments portfolio reels.

Hey Readers,

Its been a Long time since I last wrote, and hopefully I will be able to keep up more on my posts (school got the better of me for a whole term).

Since I last wrote, I have figured out exactly what I want to do once I graduate. I plan to become an environment artist. (Huzzah!). As of now, my blog will probably be more specific to what comes with that, but I still plan on posting as much as I can about entering the industry itself.

Since that decision was made, I have been making massive choices on how to best present myself. After talking to teachers, fellow students, industry professionals, as well checking out multiple websites and forums, I have been shown and discussed multiple ways to best show off environments.

Obviously at the basis of that profession, the key elements are modeling, unwrapping, lighting, texturing, but most importantly presenting all of those elements in finished, professionally done environments. That being said, there are tons of ways to do this. You can finish in engine environments and show off videos of play throughs (like using the UDK), you can make specific assets and show them off one by one or even in groups. You can also render out camera passes of whole environments modeled and textured in 3D programs, such as Maya, or Max.

After looking at my options, I had to decide between those three methods. While I am going to be in classes that will be helping me push both high quality 3D rendered environments in Maya, as well as a Level Design class using the Unreal Development Kit (more on that later I promise). I decided that high end environments are the way I plan to go.

Not only do I get the added benefit of having much more control over what I show, but I get to do it in a program I know, where content creation is done in the program in a relatively WYSIWYG way, instead of bringing assets in to another engine, getting it to work, AND mastering it to best show off your skill sets.

On top of all that, you also have a basic principle to go off of. Why show less when you can show more. With engines, there are limitations, but from what I have learned so far, it is better for an environment artist to show off more detail, more story, more character in your environment now, in your portfolio pieces, since theoretically there is no time crunch. When you get a job, you will be under pressure to get work finished as fast as possible. It strikes me as a smarter move to show the most you can now.

It currently is near the end of my break. I will write more in the next few days, and can say I have begun work on finishing up my primary environment piece. This next week will see more detail passes for modeling, more props to go in the scene, and a bit of unwrapping to prepare for the texturing I will be doing.

Night, and more soon.

Alex