Portfolio Critique - THANKS!

Ghaddaway

Hey there, I am working on another scene right now that I was going to add to my portfolio and after that I was going to start looking for freelance work. so I wanted to get an idea if people thought my work might be the level of quality needed to find freelance work here or elsewhere.

You can see some stills of my work here http://www.ghaddaway.com
Please click on the modeling tab to see my models (linking right to that page was acting strange)

clicking on an image will give you a gallery of related stills including wireframes.

Thanks for any feed back. I can post a WIP of what I am currently doing later if there is any interest to see what I will be adding to the site.

joe gracey

The link you posted takes me here... is that what you wanted?

Ghaddaway

Not even a little bit that's so strange. will fix original post right away.

edit: fixed. not sure why/how it was doing that

Treboras

Apart from the models themselves, I find it kinda inconvenient that I have to click 3 times to see bigger pictures of models. For me that's no problem but for recruiters or future employees /costumers you want to take down any barrier for them to view your work in the simplest way possible.

Also the "Admin" menu on the right should be invisible for normal visitors.

Your models are scattered and duplicated between 3 menus. The X-Wing for example appears on all 3 sub-sites. Get rid of the sub-sites altogether! Display your models on a single site and add sub-sites for your resume and maybe an "About me/Contact me" page.

Move the "WIP's" to a blog or some sort. If it's not finished or is not helping your hiring process, don't put it up on your main page!

So as I see it you have 3 pieces to show? The "War of the Worlds" scene, the Lego X-Wing and the chair? Speaking about the complexity of the scenes of the X-Wing and the chair, that's not much information for your future employee / costumer. The quality of all pieces is really good in my opinion (!) (just the chair has some weird texture detail variations) I'm just unsure about the amount you have to show to convince.

I believe you can look for work as a freelancer when you put this (finished) WIP piece up you talked about in the 1st post, but I would also work to get more stuff on the site.

Ghaddaway

Thanks for the feedback Treboras!

I was planning to over haul the site when I finish my next piece (should have been last week but ran into render issues) but I would probably have kept the same format with out your feedback.

will nuke the WIP section right away, then start looking at a new format for the site to implement with the new content as soon as that's ready.

About the xwing and chair is it lack of stuff like maps and poly counts that's the issue with them or just that they are not super complex and really I should have more if I want to demonstrate abilty to do high or low poly props?

Thanks again for your feed back. every little bit helps!

cholden

Bright background clashes with your generally darker renders.

Site has too many pages. portfolio (home) and resume pages only. It's redundant anyway since you have the same pieces on every page.

WIP pages are a no-no.

AFAIK, you have three pieces, the WotW scene, lego xwing and the chair. I thought there were no breakdowns, but you have them hidden on a subpage. Keep everything together.

Perlinfalcon

You have some nice looking work.

But I would guess that "composting" is not part of what you want to advertise as an important skill. I mean, it's environmentally friendly and all...

but I think you mean "compositing"

Ghaddaway

Perlinfalcon wrote: »

You have some nice looking work.

But I would guess that "composting" is not part of what you want to advertise as an important skill. I mean, it's environmentally friendly and all...

but I think you mean "compositing"

How have none of my friends mentioned this to me before! thank you for mentioning this.

All of this feed back is great. The general feeling I am getting is my work is decent but I need to stream line my site and cut away all of the fat.

edit: took care of this and hid WIP page. other changes probably wont happen until I wrap my current project

DWalker

Personally, I like to give each project a page of its own - I was actually a bit confused when the x-wing appeared after I clicked on the chair. At the very least, clicking on the chair should move to the correct part of the props page.

The wireframe views are also a bit confusing - at least to me. There are two x-wing images each showing ~half the mode in wire frame mode, and the lines are rather hard to see in both. I'd change the wireframe color to something that contrasts well with the model. (I'd go for a dark gray for the x-wing and a light gray for the chair.)

Both the home & about tabs seem to lead to the same place.

Treboras

Ghaddaway wrote: »

About the xwing and chair is it lack of stuff like maps and poly counts that's the issue with them or just that they are not super complex and really I should have more if I want to demonstrate abilty to do high or low poly props?

It's purely the lack of complexity in the model itself. The chair and X-Wing compared to your Alien Monster Scene is like comparing the X-Wing to Legoland In short: The X-Wing and Chair are not a lot of work and can be done very fast and therefore don't offer a lot to look at. They are not bad, they just are not "a lot"

Ghaddaway

Treboras wrote: »

It's purely the lack of complexity in the model itself. The chair and X-Wing compared to your Alien Monster Scene is like comparing the X-Wing to Legoland In short: The X-Wing and Chair are not a lot of work and can be done very fast and therefore don't offer a lot to look at. They are not bad, they just are not "a lot"

Ah ok. I had done them with the idea of showing off smaller props as well as larger scenes. when I rebuild the site I will try to make it clear and distinguish between full scenes as well as pops.

My next piece will again be a full scene

Thats a slightly out of date (the render from last night I saved off with out compensating for gamma) mid fix render of what I am currently working on so hopefully I will be able to get that looking good and will be able to focus on it and the alien scene as my main big pieces and have the xwing and chair as very clearly props.

Treboras

This will be a great addition to the alien scene!

Showing off smaller props sure is great, but the big scenes are the ones for the HR people and costumers, who maybe don't know a lot about production. There you will get the "awwwww niiice" thoughts. What I mean is: Simple Props are very often seen in portfolios, because .. well .. they are simple. The big scenes separate you from others (in a good way).

Ghaddaway

cool I will keep all of that in mind. I will toss up an updated version of that render when I get home tonight, and save the gamma correctly this time haha. its almost ready to get split up and moved into comp if I can just get the back wall and a couple textures touched up I think.

Ghaddaway

this is what I currently have for my scene. I think I may have my GI/light strength just a little bit high (hitting the white a little to hard) and I am having a hell of a time with the metal wall that the 2 is on, I turned off the material that was on it before for this shot and just have a place holder there now. think I will try to displace it a bit to get some varied reflections.



Image is also a little grainy right now need to up my render settings a little bit more. the reference is can be seen here. http://www.conceptroot.com/ult/upload_pic/image_1338917067.jpg

I think I will make a separate post for this piece to get specific feed back for it.

djgardner

The white background really doesn't go well, a mid-dark grey might be better.
I don't normally like renders done in Max, especially if you're going into games.
Render scenes in UDK or another engine, and showcase props in either UDK or Marmoset.
You have 3 things on the site, and they'll pretty simple. You don't have any breakdowns for the X-Wing or Chair, so I'm not sure how your maps are done.
Also disable 'prettyPhoto'. upload higher-res images, and make it so if you click them, it opens the full size image in a new window or something.