Student Portfolio Feedback plz
polycounter lvl 11
Hey guys I'm about to graduate from Uni in the next couple of weeks and I've set up a website with my all of my work.
http://www.michailisaakidis.com/
Any feedback will be appreciated!!!
I am working on a project that will incorporate everything in just one big scene... but that may take a while cause I'm also learning new stuff all the time.
Also what are do you guys think I'm best at? I show that I am more of a generalist. My tutors told me that I should specialize in one area but the truth is that I like doing everything
is that a bad thing? :poly141:
Many thanks in advance
http://www.michailisaakidis.com/
Any feedback will be appreciated!!!
I am working on a project that will incorporate everything in just one big scene... but that may take a while cause I'm also learning new stuff all the time.
Also what are do you guys think I'm best at? I show that I am more of a generalist. My tutors told me that I should specialize in one area but the truth is that I like doing everything
is that a bad thing? :poly141:Many thanks in advance
Replies
Thanks for the feedback
http://i.imgur.com/k192id7.jpg
I personally am not a bit fan of having fancy effects in portfolio website. I personally found them annoying and distracting. Some of us also have cross-site scripts blocked by default which, in my case, wix was blocked and nothing would show up on your page at all unless I deliberately unblock it.
Keep the site simple and clean with as little useless gadgets as possible. A clean template for either wordpress or blogspot would server you much better.
Cheers.
firstly i completely second what Direwolf said - it's really tempting to create a really flashy portfolio site that looks really cool and impresses all your friends but think about the people who're going to be hiring you - they just want things to be as simple and easy as possible - a nice long page of images (with zoom) that are savable and have a watermarked name on is perfect. It's 7 years old now but you really can't go wrong with following the advice in the classic: http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotlight-articles/415-general-your-portfolio-repels-jobs.html
the work is good but nothing really stands out to me as amazing, you've got a lot of good technical shaders in there (damn Ryan James Smith - does everyone need to do a vertex paint and world up shader!)* and some good assets, i look forward to seeing the final project that brings it all together.
in terms of specialisation i would say that's up to you really - 99% of entry level jobs are going to be environment art so thats the best places to focus but having skills in character art, animation, effects, shader writing, level design etc. all make you more employable. realistically the more specialist jobs are going to go to people with more experience but once you're working in a studio its much easier to adapt your job role to what you want to do/am best at.
No offense, but this website is insane. These menu buttons are ridiculous, too big, tasteless gloss, red ?
Do not use a grey font as headliner. Make it white. Do not use grungy free fonts unless you Really know what you are doing, same with texture overlays, right now it only looks childish. Do not mix so many serifs with so many sans serifs.
Dont use red as key color. It is agressive and needs to be used with caution.
When you are at the site, everything is moving. Slideshows are moving, videos are starting without questions, images are switching, and these slow transistions do their part on making it feel moving aswell, its total madness : P
Your background has obvious seams, those moving grunge things are not nice neither.
Try to avoid gradients which are black>Grey of any kind. Be it zbrush backgrounds or buttons or just anything, they look really bad in general.
Facebook or twitter buttons are unneeded and sad if they only show 3 likes.
you want to appear professional.
I highly suggest you do a completely new site which is clean, dont overdo your graphics, take clean sans serif fonts, and use black and white mainly. Less is more unless you do it amazingly well. You wont get far with this webpage to be completely honest.
Check out carbonmade or portfoliobox, theyre terrible easy to use and look great without much effort and you cant really do a lot wrong.
Not exactly inviting to have a look at the rest of your work.
Coots7 I agree I should have done a better job with that...
Thanks again guys!
Lead with your art, not your website design.
Try to think of it like this, when someone clicks the link, the tab opens, your work should instantly be on display with hopefully your best piece or pieces right there, and all the rest of it should be just one click away.
The absolutely best thing you can do is fill the screen with your artwork, rather than break the screen up with words and pictures in a fancy layout.
If your going for an art position, you literally have 1 or 2 seconds to impress to survive the first glance, make it count.
I should have a new version up and running by next week..
Again thanks to everyone who bothered to have a look and give me some feedback!
www.michailisaakidis.com