Lamar''s Portfolio stuff
polycounter lvl 9
Hello everybody i am not new to polycount but this is my first official post. I just graduated from school, and i am looking for some feedback to my portfolio reel and my site. I am a fan of this community and look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts and ideas for me to improve. Thanks for checking me out.
Site: lamarmchaney.webs.com
Demo Reel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6UcT3IGf4aA
Site: lamarmchaney.webs.com
Demo Reel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6UcT3IGf4aA
Replies
-Get rid of the splash page. Use as your homepage.
-Find a new host, this one gives me pop-up/hover-over advertisements. It also load kinda slow. There's also a lot of delay on the on-mouse-over effects like glow and such, might be due to code or the host, I'm not sure which. Hosts don't cost much - I think you can have your own spot for a tenner a year nowadays. That's a very small investment to give yourself a professional appearance.
-Your thumbnail images are very uninformative. The one with the pistols is okay (could be better) but the other ones don't show what the model is about at all. Check out polygoo's site for some pretty good thumbnails.
-It's also a good idea to append filenames with your name. For instance, Resume_LamarMcHaney.pdf.
-About me is hard to read because of the very narrow text columns and lack of typographic separation and whitespace. Ideally, line length is about 12 words or 50~60 letters.
-make your email a clickable link
DEMOREEL:
-Your video is steampunk, your website design is graffiti. That's quite a mismatch. The fonts in the video are all different, too. Besides, you don't even need to name the objects, just have a single font and use it for polycount/texture info only.
-The old-paper overlay messes with how your models look. Get rid of it. Use the pic as a background, sure, but not as an overlay.
-Your models are too small in the video. The pistol ones, anyway.
ART:
Biggest problem you have is polygon density issues. The blue engine on the tron-bike and the side-exhausts and wheels on the car are very dense, for instance, while the trunk-attached boiler is very blocky and the tron-beam is only a plane. Also, the chamfers you have on the car-wheels make little sense. Why did you make them so narrow? And the keychain on the pistol is ridiculously expensive - there's about 1000 triangles in JUST the chainlinks.
Second, the graffiti style mixed with those fonts in the real mixed with the style of work you do is all ... clashing, I guess would be the word.
I get a popup that really bothers me, also slows down load times. Finally, and perhaps worst, something in your site breaks my browsers ability to scroll up and down, so I can do nothing but look at the tops of pages.
You're right, the website does load slow; but it's not the code (I believe), it's the hosting. Unfortunatly, I am unable to pay for hosting because i have absolutely no money to do so, even for just 10 dollars. But, i am going to look into finding a different host site. I agree with the thumbnails suggestion and i will get on that right away, it makes since. I'll also work on the about me page and make sure my email is clickable. In terms of the Demo Reel, yeah i have different font for each piece because a game designer at Lucas Arts said most designers look to see the artist put some type of individual font to separate the pieces, giving them their own look. I decided to change the font for each one. i can easily fix the shot on the guns, no problem.
@ysalex
I don't know why you are having that problem, i did test the site, on server, in different browsers, and on different computers to see if there were any problems, only one i got was screen resolution problems. Let me know what browser you were using, but i will be looking up on the problem today.
In the first paragraph of your About Me, you say hello and your name twice. There is also a small spelling error in your Ebony and Ivory section, "weilder" should be "wielder".
I also don't know if you should be calling yourself a "3d Prop Artist", it makes it sound like that's all you can do. If you don't think you can specialize as either a character artist or an environment artist I would just leave it as 3d Artist.
I also saw in your resume that you won a contest for a 2d piece, so get some 2d artwork up on your site! The more you can show that you can do, the better. Good luck!
I'm not suggesting you keep it there forever, though. Just while you're working on it, because no ads and probably a bunch faster.
- The background is a bit distracting, I have difficulties to focus on the demo reel.
- The web pages are heavy. Use this tips:
In Photoshop, instead of saving a normal file, go to File / Save For Web and Devices. Then, select the JPEG format and low down the quality to 60%. The quality will almost stay the same and the size is a lot more optimised.
- The ad is very annoying at the beggining. I guess it's the web hosting service.
- In your about me section, I would put more space between the line to make it easier to read.
- Your resume text should be bigger, I can't read it well. Yes, we can download it but I want to read it first before downloading it.