Behance as a Portfolio

sheckee

Hi guys, recently I started using Behance as my portfolio as I just haven't had the time to sit down and make myself a new website. I am currently beginning to do so, but in the mean time I would like to use my Behance profile for potential employers. I wonder if anyone has any experience with this, and whether it is acceptable to use it as your portfolio, if only as a temporary solution.

www.behance.net/sheckee

Thanks guys

J0NNYquid

I made a behance profile upon the suggestion of a friend. He works in graphic arts, and from what I understand, that's primarily what behance is geared towards. That's not to say it doesn't work for CG artists as well, I just don't think it's commonly used. I don't know if I'd make it my main portfolio site, but it could definitely tide you over until you get a dedicated one, and it's never bad to have a different subset of people potentially looking at your stuff, you might get some people seeing it on behance that normally wouldn't.

sheckee

Thanks J0NNYquid, I'll use it for now then I think.
If you go to the MotionServed website (owned by Behance) you'll see that they do feature a fair amount of CG work on there, so whether it's something that's only just picking up or not I don't know? I agree that it is mostly graphic stuff on there though, it just means I can get my work sent around quicker in a tidy manner that's all

Chemical Alia

I don't use behance itself (please tell me this does actually rhyme with Beyonce), but I recently redid my portfolio using Behance's Prosite service. It's basically the same price as the paid Carbonmade service I had been using, but with much more customization control. It even lets you mess around with the CSS. So far I've been super pleased with it.

Andreas

I quite like it, very tidy! If you do want to get a .com eventually no harm in keeping this too. It looks like linkedin but with work samples.

Chemical Alia

Andreas wrote: »

I quite like it, very tidy! If you do want to get a .com eventually no harm in keeping this too. It looks like linkedin but with work samples.

One of the nice features it has is allowing you to redirect it to a custom URL, so you don't have to look like a scrub.

Joopson

My girlfriend uses it for her graphic design portfolio, and it works great for her.

I had never heard of it until then, though; and you're the first I've heard mentioning it for Game-art.

But the site doesn't matter, I suppose- just that it is easy to use.

Ace-Angel

Mainly used by Graphist's although you will find the occasional big talent from Bioware or Blizzard on there.

The biggest issue it currently has (like most other services) is that it doesn't have a unified picture system. You click on one set, but you can barely see the others, there is no simple way for someone to know what they're clicking on the next project with the slow pop-ups and all, which by the way, are located at the bottom?

They don't even has as much as a simple-letter-headers on the projects as backup incase the image is gone?

Then there is also the annoying Drop-Down logo at the top if you're not Logged in the site which appears if you scroll down slightly, plus the the large amount of space waste on the sides, plus the "Look at us, we're a service site by Adobe" links at the bottom. That's all really an eyesore and waste of space for your images, and a big no-no for future people who are trying to hiring you, since it will only get in the way for them.

Does the site also have a picture limitation? I know that Carbon pretty much skewers your images (downsizes them and compresses them) on the free version.

All of these symptoms are exactly the opposite of what an artist should have, having a non-loady-streamlined-simple-yet-nice-functional-site is all you really need, which reads as mouthful, but honestly, the simpler it is with less clicks the better it is.

I still haven't see any 'payed' version of Behance being used by anyone that I know of, so maybe they will have more feedback on how it looks and works for you in that regard.

I would honestly suggest instead (once you have Behance up and running) to try and see if you can maybe get a 'folio running on Wordpress or Blogspot, they're both free have hundreds of excellent themes, and they allow everything to be simplified as you wish.

For example, I was able to setup up my Blogspot on a Flipcard theme to be Classic and for it to use all the space on the screen of the user, and stack my work by type (Character/Enviro/Prop/Etc), and the front page has banner which links to each sub-page (alongside at the top, you have the text version of the links, incase you're using an old browsers and are unable to load 'linked images').

sheckee

Ace-Angel wrote: »

Mainly used by Graphist's although you will find the occasional big talent from Bioware or Blizzard on there.

The biggest issue it currently has (like most other services) is that it doesn't have a unified picture system. You click on one set, but you can barely see the others, there is no simple way for someone to know what they're clicking on the next project with the slow pop-ups and all, which by the way, are located at the bottom?

They don't even has as much as a simple-letter-headers on the projects as backup incase the image is gone?

Then there is also the annoying Drop-Down logo at the top if you're not Logged in the site which appears if you scroll down slightly, plus the the large amount of space waste on the sides, plus the "Look at us, we're a service site by Adobe" links at the bottom. That's all really an eyesore and waste of space for your images, and a big no-no for future people who are trying to hiring you, since it will only get in the way for them.

Does the site also have a picture limitation? I know that Carbon pretty much skewers your images (downsizes them and compresses them) on the free version.

All of these symptoms are exactly the opposite of what an artist should have, having a non-loady-streamlined-simple-yet-nice-functional-site is all you really need, which reads as mouthful, but honestly, the simpler it is with less clicks the better it is.

I still haven't see any 'payed' version of Behance being used by anyone that I know of, so maybe they will have more feedback on how it looks and works for you in that regard.

I would honestly suggest instead (once you have Behance up and running) to try and see if you can maybe get a 'folio running on Wordpress or Blogspot, they're both free have hundreds of excellent themes, and they allow everything to be simplified as you wish.

For example, I was able to setup up my Blogspot on a Flipcard theme to be Classic and for it to use all the space on the screen of the user, and stack my work by type (Character/Enviro/Prop/Etc), and the front page has banner which links to each sub-page (alongside at the top, you have the text version of the links, incase you're using an old browsers and are unable to load 'linked images').

Cheers Ace, that all makes sense. My old portfolio that needs updating is on blogspot - www.jonstewartcg.co.uk - so I'm familiar with the layouts and a bit of the coding. Could you link me to your one at all please? Would love to see what you described in action. Thanks.