[Portfolio] Matthew Paris

[matthewparis]

Hello gamesteppers!

I thought I'd post up my portfolio site which I was just able to get running.
I know I need more work, and like, environments hehe, but over the course of the next year I'm making it a priority to strengthen my work.

Comments and crits on anything greatly appreciated guys!

http://www.matthewparisportfolio.com/

[Xeon18]

Hey bud nice stuff I like the look of your site, just a couple of things. When modeling your stuff really watch your poly counts cause on a couple of things (race car, modular track piece) there were lot of unnecessary faces, I would suggest just going back and eliminate some of those faces that don't add to the silhouette and try to optimize your work. One last thing, and this is totally being bitch picky but your employers will be the same, is that in your demo you spelled stadium wrong.

[matthewparis]

*face palms*

I'm betting that misspelling was the victim of the all nighter I pulled to fished that part of the sequence haha. Nice catch man thank you for the crits.

I'm hoping to have some better art to replace those unoptimized pieces with in the coming months.

[alsoknownasOTiS]

I know you said you know you need more environments...which yes is true...but if i was you...i wouldn't include your "Bug Man" on your reel for environment artist. Go ahead and keep him on your site, but i would put him under a different section to separate everything out...but overall the site looks good..nice layout, simple and easy.

[matthewparis]

Good point on the bug guy, he probably detracts from what the focus should be, but you think the drawings should stay on the reel?

Yay for aftereffects and flexibility!

Thank you for the crit.

I happened to post this on polycount too, and it had been said I should have my name bigger than the "environment artist" title. Now I'm split, decision wise, on that because my Portfolio class teacher had said title is more important than name.

Any thoughts?

[alsoknownasOTiS]

you'll probably replace the drawings with stronger environment pieces as you get them...if i remember correctly you had 3 in there currently..i'd eliminate the weakest and just go with 2.

As far as the Name size...i'm not really sure...I would think you'd want your Name larger..and your title to be just a little smaller...but to make it seem like your name isn't important on your site seems odd

[andrewG]

website looks good. though i do have a few ideas to help out.

As for layout I might suggest breaking up the pics into different sections based on the project. so all the race track pics in one section and the bug man in another and so on. It was a little confusion when i went to full screen of each image, which pic belonged to which protect.

for the bug man i would get rid of the skeleton. I would just post the mesh, texture and wireframe of it. i would not post the skeleton unless you are going to rigging. though i could be wrong about this.

for modeling I would try to optimize the mesh of your car and bugman. they seem a bit high.

In the demo reel i would make the texture maps a bit bigger in relation to the video size, they seem a bit small to get a good look at.

hope this helps.
andrew

[spurn]

you have that camera flyby twice which is unnecessary. take it out and make turnarounds of critical points, and include a few stills of nice angles of the cohesive environment

you don't need the animations in there since they don't really help show off your environment much (yes a close up but you can do stills with the same effect)

make your turnarounds a bit faster too, they are pretty slow

definitely showoff the textures as mentioned above, larger images are key

get rid of the figure/cloth drawings too. if you are applying as an environment artist, show environment drawings if anything.

don't feel turned away from still images

[SpiralFace]

website is good. Nice, simple and right to the point. Only suggestion I would have is to have a quickly typed out resume right there in your info page and have a link to a "downloadable" version. That way you can present your experiance and qualifications right there without there being any need to download anything.

Content wise, I would say get rid of the bug man entirely. It's not all that well polished and drags down the other pieces of work as a whole.

I'm not all to bothered by the higher polygon models as long as you clean it up as best as you can. I'm a bit more bothered by the presentation of the models. Its very bland. At the very least place a gradient in the backdrop to make it at least a bit less harsh on the eyes.

The camera fly around of the level isn't doing it for me. Its not showing what you would actually see in game, and its not all that impressive as a whole. Try to make a camera fly through from the perspective you would be in the game, breaking to show points of interest. Turn Tables only really work for props and character turnarounds. They don't tend to work well for full environment pieces.

Also, be sure to put your best foot forward on your reel. on average you have 3 seconds to keep someone interested in seeing your stuff. So a simple prop object is not the best way to go. I would place the full on environment first seen through a fly through, pausing to analyze individual props along the way.

[Rushn]

It would be good to see concept pencil or color sketches of the environment models too.