Portfolio critique, internship

Jonny10

Hello fellow polycounters,

I'm Jonathan, a "Game Production" student nearing my internship term. For which I'm mainly going to apply for environment prop art positions, hoping to pick up some technical tasks too. I'm looking for some feedback on the presentation of my work, any other advice is also welcome.

http://jonathan3d.com/

bonds0097

Get rid of the loading times. Drop WordPress and go for a static site that allows people to get to the art immediately.

mutatedjellyfish

I sat there staring at a blank screen for maybe 30 seconds while it loaded. That's really, really bad. The sideways scrolling (which is rarely done well) took 5 or 6 spins of my mousewheel to completely expose the next thumbnail. That's pretty bad too. The individual project pages aren't nearly as obnoxious, but the initial website experience ensures that no one will ever get that far.  I wanted to close the tab before your front page finished loading.

vonBerg

Hi,

What is your focus/style? (For example: Stylized or photo realistic).

Presentation advice:
 - Present your work in a vertical way instead of scrolling in the wrong direction. Its easy to miss stuff. But this is just my personal preference.
-  Show interesting screenshots instead of the single tree.
- Please get rid of the so called "smooth auto scroll" it is very annoying!

For example:


Goodluck with finding an internship.

PS:Are you Dutch?

BetaRazer

I agree with some of the above points. Wordpress is not always the best choice of template for hosting a portfolio. Try looking at others such as Wix, Moonfruit, Magneto or Joomla. Or even better; script your own with some html and css.

In terms of your presentation, ditch the side scrolling design as it's taking me far too long to see all of your artwork. It's extremely offputting and will deter many viewers from wanting to see the rest of your work. The user/viewer wants to scroll freely and quickly. Stick with vertical scrolling instead.

Also, you've got at least 7 pieces; drop that down to 4 showcases, 5 maximum. Bin your weakest pieces of work and keep only the strongest. What is your desired role? What kind of artist are you aiming to be? Environment and technical art are both specialized fields. Research into them and decide what it is you want to be.

Each image that we see for the first time has to have something that will immediately grab the attention of the viewer. I'm very unsure that the tree image for instance does just that. We see loads of trees in art; but what makes yours special? Just something for you to go and think about.

Hope these pointers help. Keep trying and good luck.

Jonny10

Thanks for your input everyone! Good points, Much appreciated.

I didn't realize the loading times were that ridiculous. Turns out there's a 6.5mb load just because of the images, will have to spend some time re-uploading them. I've changed it to a simple vertical layout with landscape images and have decided to advertise myself purely as an Environment Artist.

@Vonberg, did my name give it away?

vonBerg

"Terug in de tijd" was pretty obvious Goodlluck! It is a good thing to see other Dutch people here.