Portfolio Review - Critiques welcome!

anglorum

Hey there guys! I've recently completed the major update to my new portfolio. Just wanted to get the gist of how you guys felt about it.

http://cargocollective.com/artofwilliamtate

Something to keep in mind is that I'm aiming towards environment/prop art, somewhere in the realm of Blizzard (The WoW Team), or a similarly styled studio specifically.

Feel free to comment on the layout of the portfolio, or the content itself.

Thanks guys!

DWalker

It feels a bit barren at the moment, to be honest. It's more a matter of formatting & presentation rather than content, for the most part, but presenting the page in an appealing manner is important. Take a look at some of the portfolios of other artists - a search for 'portfolio' in the PolyCount forums will bring up some nice examples. The standard presentation is a banner featuring your name/job, a simple menu with links to the starting page, a resume, and possibly an 'about the artist' section, and some fairly large thumbnail links to your projects is a fairly standard and effective layout.

The current thumbnails are rather small, and they feel as though they are just dropped into a grid as they are added. The titles on each thumbnail, while functional, don't really fit the images. Try adding the text to the images themselves; you can either have separate images for the on-mouse-over event or just use the old standby of a rectangular frame for the selected item.

On the project pages themselves, the title really should be left-aligned; at the moment it's off to the right and doesn't really flow well. I'd also use the same title banner & navigation bar throughout the site to keep things consistent. I'm not a fan of including the thumbnails from the main page at the bottom of each project's site; the navigation bar at the top should be enough.

I'd encourage more consistency on the presentation of each project. Some show models, textures, and wireframes, others show only the models. For games, especially, polygon efficiency and effective use of texture space are important, so include the polycount, wireframes, and textures for each project. Also, remember to include your contact information on each image; it's present on some, but not all. I'm personally in favor of placing videos, if present, at the bottom rather than in the middle; I think your champion's lodge video does add enough to keep, I'd just move it to the end.

The movie for the paper route does not load, at least for me (I'm using Firefox).

The final image for the 2D work of the barrels really seems to belong with the Worgen Barrel section.

I'd also encourage you to title each of the 2D pieces, possibly including a description if they were created for a specific purpose.

Snader

Your pictures are tiny. They should be 960 wide at minimum.

Gifs are nice, and though you can't make them 960 wide because of filesize/downloadspeed issues, you can place them side by side to add up to 960 in total.

You need info about yourself.

DougClayton4231

You definitely need to add your contact information at a minimum and fill more of that grayspace with your work.

Crowdsmurf

I love the champion's lodge; it really shows what you're capable of. I'd try to avoid that not all the pictures/ videos have the same width. Have you considered using a gallery? Perhaps show one main picture that you're most proud of, followed by a very simple gallery? That way, you don't have to scroll down so long before you see the other projects. Just a thought.

Either way, good work, keep it up.

anglorum

Thanks for the critiques guys. I'll be definitely taking into consideration (and already have and implemented) a lot of the suggestions made here.

As much as I really appreciate the input made here about the portfolio itself, I'm curious what you guys think about the quality of the work inside it?

Thanks again!

low odor

I think the presentation is fine...easy to navigate..best work first.. The work looks good...my only nitpick crit is that a good portion of the textures seem just a tiny bit washed out. I think a contrast saturation would make everything really pop....good work.