[Portfolio] - Will Schneller
polygon
Hi everyone,
I was hoping to get some feedback on v1 of my portfolio - http://www.willschneller.com/
As for a bit of info about me, I graduated in 2010 with a BFA in Fine Arts. I've been working on a small university research project for over five years now, with nearly two of those years full time after graduation. I'm on contract until late summer so I'm trying to get my portfolio in order. My goal is to eventually work in the industry on AAA projects.
I'm looking for feedback on everything from the content to the presentation.
Thanks much in advance!
I was hoping to get some feedback on v1 of my portfolio - http://www.willschneller.com/
As for a bit of info about me, I graduated in 2010 with a BFA in Fine Arts. I've been working on a small university research project for over five years now, with nearly two of those years full time after graduation. I'm on contract until late summer so I'm trying to get my portfolio in order. My goal is to eventually work in the industry on AAA projects.
I'm looking for feedback on everything from the content to the presentation.
Thanks much in advance!
Replies
Overall, I like your site layout. It's clean, right to the point, and easy to read. I also think that your projects are interesting in that they look sort of research-projecty, if that's a word
One big crit I have is that your breakdown shots and textures are so small, that there's really no point in even showing them. In the case that the texture size is tiny, (64x64), it's fine, but if it's 256 or up, we should be able to see them at full size or at least close to it. That allows people to evaluate what's going on in the textures.
My big question to you is, what do you want to do? Are you interested in environment art, layout, game design, character stuff? It's symptomatic, being so early on in your career, that your stuff will be more generalist and be too broad. It's not a bad thing really, since you're fleshing out content, but if you're looking for say, an environment art job, you'll need to really dig deep into that discipline and understand things like tiling textures, proper use of D/S/N and Gloss maps, good lighting (at least a bit), and more involved engine output. Unity is fine, but you'd benefit from knowing some UDK, and also maybe showing assets in something like Marmoset to get your output up to snuff with your work.
Lastly, I hope they're paying you for this research project that you've been working on for 5 years, especially because 2 of those have been after graduation. Without knowing any specifics of the situation, and speaking in general terms, there's a huge difference between school projects and actual game production. If you can get on a mod team, or even contract development for casual/mobile games, it'd be a good step to take.
Best of luck!
but anyway i got some feedback for you.
first of all most of your pics look like simple ingame screenshots, and although you were the artlead, this doesnt realy show what you realy contributed to the project. i´d suggest polishing and showing of more single assets.
for example a single shot of that proble with its technical details and wireframes.
and yeah the wires are nearly not visible at all.
also showing tri counts for some pipes and tubes is not realy to your benifit.
instead enlarge the textures so you can actualy see something on them.
stuff like the HP renders of the tube and the unity material shots are good, you should expand on them instad of showing unlit and untextured versions of your scenes.
for example showing the shader-graph for the materials could show future employes that you are capable of building optimized, structured and commented shaders.
to sum it up; most of this is sadly just blending stuff that doesnt show of your capabilities as a game artist at all.
focus more on your ability to work with technical and stylistical limitations, instead of the most beatiful render.
they wont be hiring you to render stuff i gues.
to the resume:
it looks clean and organized, but i´d cut vague skills like "drawing" and "painting"
everyone can write that, without any portfolio-pieces showing theese skills of, they are just empty phrases.
also you should seperate skills and software.
last part, about:
i´d cut more then half of that. especialy the typos :P
realy noone needs to read:
"When I'm not working or developing games with my friends, I'm practicing my craft by observing the world around me. I believe that understanding our surroundings will lead to stronger and more believeable creative work, and it serves as a constant source of inspiration."
everyone does that.
seriously focus on the important stuff here, and cut everything else.
they dont call you cause they think you are nice, they call you cause they are impressed by your portfolio.
this looks like a lot of ranting here, but the organization and the clean style are exetuted well.
now its realy up to fixing the single shots of your artwork so that it shows employes what they want to see from you.
@Amadreaus: I admit I sort of rushed those breakdowns
@Goeddy: I feel like I'm waling a fine line with what I'm showing. Our project has seen a lot of artists over the years, and I find my self not making as much new content as I do tweaking and reassembling other's work. I guess I showed those screens because the assembly in Unity, lighting, and overall direction were my biggest contributions. I agree that wires need to be stronger on those single assets. I originally had drawing and painting in because I considered focusing on concept art and had a 2d section to my portfolio...it's actually still there just commented out! haha. I was lucky to meet someone from 343i and he suggested that I take out the 2d stuff if I wasn't applying for a 2d position. I will remove those from the resume though. Also, I wasn't sure what to do for the about me. After you said that, I agree it was probably too wordy...I'm long winded sometimes (as I type this wall of words!). Didn't catch the typos either :P
I suppose I have a lot of work to get to!
There are still a few things I'm messing with, and there may or may not be some typos, but I will work those out this week. I'm heading out to GDC early next week and would like to have my portfolio done by then.
I'll be adding work from a few personal environment projects soon.
http://www.willschneller.com/
If anyone finds anything that's broken or misspelled, or has crits on content or layout I'd love to hear about it.