Portfolio, university, thoughts.

Croftyness · Mar 2013

I'm still in my second year of university and creating a portfolio with hopes of getting an intern placement for my 3rd year.

http://davidcroftsharland.wordpress.com/

This is what I have so far. Any thoughts. Obviously I've only been doing this for a year and a bit so I don't have masses of work.

Some more stuff will be included on there later in the year. Most of it being engine characters.

I haven't started contacting developers yet, but I hope to start tomorrow.

Much obliged

DWalker · Mar 2013

Overall, a nice, clean layout, but the white background does make it seem a bit sterile.

I'd probably reverse the order of the images on your facial modelling page, placing the rendered images first, followed by the wireframes, and finishing with the texture. I'd also replace "Click to view more" with "Click to enlarge"; the first phrase implies (at least to me) that there are more images. I'd also like to see more text - at the very least a polygon count and list of modelling tools used.

I'd like to see more images for both the flats and the bowl - wireframes and textures at least.

Overall, the site seems very monochromatic. I don't know if this was an intentional decision or a result of your being a modeller rather than a texture artist. I would recommend getting at least some experience painting textures, however, even if you want to work primarily on modelling - artists, especially in small companies, need to be versatile. The flats or the tank would probably be the easiest - texturing a face well is no small task!

A final, brief comment - the textures on your pzkpfw III are listed as 2048 x 204. Adding the missing '8' in Photoshop should be simple enough.

pixelb · Mar 2013

Having ads and social networking buttons all over your site is ugly and unprofessional, get rid of that stuff. Like DWalker says, the lack of texturing on most of your pieces is obvious. I'd also like to see more wireframe renders and polygon counts.

JamieRIOT · Mar 2013

It looks too much like a blog. Remove all the clutter because the only thing companies want to see is the artwork, a resume page and way too contact you.
You have some good modelling for someone only learning 3d for about 18 months (I presume). Avoid filling your site with wip work, just put solid, finished work on your site.

Optinium · Mar 2013

As people have mentioned it's to cluttered and 'blog' like, simplicity is key. Look at other portfolios and try to imitate some of the conventions you see.

The buttons for your projects are not to interesting and lacking in colour, they don't entice me to select them. Change them to some decent images of the work, preferably textured and be sure that people can make out what they are (ie if it's a gun it's a picture of the gun not a super close up of the trigger). Also try to avoid making the end user scroll a lot, have everything as compact as possible (again simplicity is key).

From what I can see there is also a lack of real-time stuff, get some assets in game-engines and present them that way or do it in marmoset.

Finally be sure to pick a background that makes your images jump out (usually something dark).

gsokol · Mar 2013

My initial impression from looking at your site is that you don't finish anything. More than half of your portfolio is untextured models. You can't really justify having untextured stuff unless you have really baller high poly models to show off.

It looks like your panzer tank was textured, yet you don't show that in your thumbnail.

Are you gonna try getting interships specifically for games? If so...you can remove your rendered stuff.

Its always better to have a few quality pieces than to have a bunch of average stuff. Quality over Quantity. Your better off only keeping a couple of your best looking pieces and maybe working on making them look as good as you can.

E_Hollaway · Mar 2013

The site isn't looking too bad. So far I think you have a good chance at getting a 3d generalist internship somewhere. You haven't gotten there yet but soon you may want to start thinking about choosing a medium to focus on, environment art, character art, hard surface and prop art, etc. I was right there where you are about 2 years ago, shortly after I chose my discipline which is a mixture of enviro art and prop/hard surface. I was never really a fan of character art.

Parralax · Mar 2013

I understand that your body modelling assignmnet isn't finished yet (i graduated from staffs uni) but there is no real reason for you to have your basemesh on your portfolio (unless it's just there as a placeholder) also for your computer animation you relly need a video rather than a still image.

Keep up the work and try to develop your own style away from what the lecturers teach for when you go into 3rd year/FYP.

Portfolio, university, thoughts.

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