TA Portfolio Review

Hey guys, I’m a fresh out and looking for some advice. could you give my website a quick check, and post your opinions. (the website will be getting a revamp within 2 months)

Truthful opinions are the best opinions.

not one opinion???

Your portfolio has significant design issues you need to address before anyone even looks at content. I’d suggest posting at polycount.com to get feedback on your portfolio design/visuals.

I appreciate the feedback.

I’m redoing my horrendous site, and would like to get some feedback on this new design. I’ve really been surprised at these new one page sites, but don’t want to get get fancy. What do you think about this or this design?

A lil more detailed one can be viewed here.

As always honesty is at the upmost importance. I’m not a huge designer, so any help would be great. Plus it would be awesome to have a good design before I spend a bunch of hours making a bad design. Thanks.

Design looks good to me (the first, not the second, which has flow issues in the whitespace that could be confusing). You just have to be careful not to over-load it with too many items. Include only your best work. Don’t feel that you have to include lots of categories, or put up your entire history.

My opinion is that it’s best if you include only things you think people might hire you for as a primary responsibility. That means show only your “expert” skills. If you’ve got a bit of breadth and can do other things, that’s good – keep that in reserve. Mention your other skills in a job interview or phone screen, if it seems appropriate. Provide examples only if asked for (but that does mean you should have them on hand). Does anyone disagree with this advice?

Never show “just ok” work to pad out your portfolio. One stunningly great item is much better than 15 “just ok” items.

This is really, really important. Even if you’ve got some nice things, a single item that isn’t up to par with the rest of your portfolio could change someone’s mind about you.

Your original design has these big banner images that are, functionally, just cropped thumbnails. I want to be able to see and evaluate your work without having to click-fest. That means the images in your new design have to be complete images, large enough to make out properly. You should have an even larger version available so that if I want to scrutinize it, I can.

And, this point is not necessarily for you, but in case someone searches for “portfolio” and finds this thread:

Don’t show your work in chronological order, assuming the reviewer will see your progression and be impressed. If someone opens your portfolio and the first thing they see is old and terrible, they will simply close your portfolio again. Best work first. Always. I find it surprising how many people new to job hunting get this wrong.

The UI is hard to navigate for me - its hard to evaluate because of it.

I only looked at a few of the things that were under ART|TECHNICAL ART – it came across as tinkering rather than full-on solutions.

If someone were to ask what your level of understanding about 1) art 2) technical problem solving, or 3) programming skills are from the portfolio – they kind of fall flat.

As Bronwen wrote - only show the best work and narrow your portfolio to your interest. Currently, I’m unsure what you are interested in when looking at the portfolio. Take something to as close to production quality as well – the examples I saw seemed unfinished.

I randomly googled “Technical artist portfolio” – this looked like a good example:
http://www.eriklarsson.net/

yea, I’ve basically narrowed the content down to 8 pieces. I’m only going to show technical works. As for the redundant clicking, thats why I decided to go to the single page. I agree that there’s a whole bunch of clicking and scrolling, and that was my fault. The new site should be done soon, so I’ll post the updated one within a week or so. Thanks for the feedback.

Ok, so I’m back. Taking a little while longer than expected, but I have a website thats about 75% complete. If anyone has opinions I’d love to hear them.

www.shawnkirsch.com

Info about how to contact you is the most important thing. I couldn’t even find an email address.

Took a while until i noticed the “Show/Hide” things. Maybe you should have those only on the bigger ones like the Panda thing and keep the rest open by default.

“Experience in … creation…” What is that more specific? And ending the sentence with “And I’m a good communicator” seems kind of odd. I would try to write that text in some other way.

[QUOTE=Eiktyrner;7279]Info about how to contact you is the most important thing. I couldn’t even find an email address.
[/QUOTE]

+1

I would actually remove that box at the top with your intro statement and replace it with contact information, something simple like:

Name
Primary Email
Primary Phone (optional)
Resume Doc Link

yea, I have a spot planned out for that, maybe I’ll just wait to get feedback when it’s 100% done. thanks for the replys though

Warning this might sound harsh because of the text only. but I am going to say it anway.

The appropriate response to Seth would be,

Thank you for taking the time to help me, I agree and will get that fixed/updated right away.

not " yea,I have a spot planned" This does not showcase your “good at communication” point that you have on your site:)

Make it easy for yourself to be hired, not harder, people want A. to see the work B. contact you if they like the work.

Spend more time on the art/work samples and less time on your site. simple,simple,simple

Get rid of the show/hide, just show your work. Also just take the old site down…Put up the new one even in its temp state, it will be better than the old one that people are still seeing.

Then get focus on why you first posted here… asking for feedback on your work:)

I think the layout is good and very easy to understand and go through. I’m a student aswell and we had alot of portfolio discussions with people from the industry at my education, and they all want to see more info about the process and not just a single image of the final result because it really isn’t telling the watcher if it was you who did everything or was your friend helping you at the desk next to you etc, I’m not saying you haven’t done your work, just mentioning what I heard from the people in the industry that visits us, such as Dave Sharp himself from UK :slight_smile:

They want to see how you are thinking and know if you really understand each steps. Why do they want this, because you don’t want to leave them out being unsure if you fit within a role at team A or B or C and if you can follow a process. Not not only skillwise but also mind / thought wise.

They want to see steps, what worked, what did not work. Why did you take the approach A instead of approach B, and you should also be honest and make a disadvantage of yours into an advantage in your CV or so; say you are not good at texturing, you should write it down in a good way such as “I might not be a great texturer, so unless I’m needed to do it I believe someone else would fit better into that position”. This way you let the project leader exactly know where you would fit within the team, team A or B instead of leaving him unsure because alot can be hidden when showing of final images; by doing this you make a disadvantage of yours into an advantage. The same applies for code, they want to get their hands on the source codes and all the approaches you’ve taken, what worked and what did not etc. (never send them though, legal issues so most of the studios don’t accept cds anymore).

I believe getting into the industry is the hardest part, once you are in you will have easy time to find a new job / internship / placement. That’s why you will need to work harder than anyone else =]
I believe this also shows that you are a good communicator and think through everything you do!

As long as you get the message delivered and give them a crystal clear image of yoruself you will be fine =]

My two cents!

Ciao!

@bclark You are completely right.

@djTomservo I didn’t mean to come off as rude. I’m very sorry for that. I really appreciate your time and feedback, the resume and contact information is fixed.

@lonewolf so are you saying each post should be more similar to the level editor post? Or even more detailed than that?

It’s up to you how you want to forward the message to the watchers. You have to imagine yourself in their position and then ask yourself; I know how good I am, but do I show my fulliest capabilities with what I have so far?

Make a list of what you are good at, ask people to check your portfolio. Once checked ask them one by one from the list if they could see those points :slight_smile:

I checked the level editor description and that’s exactly what I ment, and it’s great that you made it expandable so it doesn’t take as much space innitialy. The level of information is good :slight_smile:

I know it’s still WIP and I know their are some stuff missing, but images are worth more than 1000 words and videos are worth more than 1000 images :slight_smile: Make sure you populate it with videos aswell ^^ But don’t make the videos too long or too boring. Generally I wouldn’t give each software that I show off with a video more than 30 seconds lifetime. You could record yourself aswell talking about it.

Looking good! Keep it up and goodluck!

I love Erik Larsson’s site. So stylish and effective. Reminds me I need to update my site too.

Whenever I try to access your site, I get a forbidden access violation.

Yeah I love his site too, but for someone already with several shipped titles a site like that is nice. Someone who is a student will have harder time finding a job / intership / placement with just pictures :slight_smile:

I agree and the videos are coming, working on getting old projects to compile… :wink: