Portfolio overhaulin'!

Jakob Gavelli

Heya!

I spent the last few days removing and adding to my portfolio.

http://jakobgavelli.carbonmade.com/

I removed my generic ugly sci-fi shit and some random realistic props, and added : The Tomb and the Summer House.

Handpainted and stylized stuff is really fun, so I guess there's no use bloating the portfolio with average looking photosourced stuff?

Also, the Tomb is in dire need of a rebake. The skull pillar is 2 300 tris, doesn't that sound a bit low for that kind of asset? I think I need to step up the polygon count to get better silhuettes and more interesting forms. The low polycount kind of kills the sculpt?

Is there anything project I should remove or rework, or is my portfolio screaming for more original work?

UPDATE : New theme. Bigger font, bigger thumbnails!

mats effect

I really like your work you have some cool styles I feel like the summer house could be presented better though, fill the entire screenshot with the scene as you have a lot of just background for those images.

jamiemurphy

List your best environment/pieces first; my opinion the red robot is your best, then tomb>summerhouse>wiz-tower.

Give more information about your workflow and techniques, engine used, shaders and post processing.

Show texture flats

I like the way you have presented the textures/models in the summer house but i'm not so keen on the thumbnail you have on the homepage.

Nice and easy to navigate website on the whole.:)

Jakob Gavelli

@mats effect : Thank you! You're right. The house wireframe shot will incluse the tree + owl as soon as I get around to it.

@jamiemurphy : You're right. Currently they are listed from newest to oldest. With the Wizard's Tower being the weakest I'm thinking about removing it all together.

How should I approach the current procjects I have?
Summer House : It's really modular, I've pumped out loads of buildings, would it be benefitial to create a village scene, and then do individual breakdowns on some of the houses in the fashion I have now?

Tomb : Rebake and polish? There are glaring issues with it at the moment but I just really wanted to get it done.

Red Robot : Feels the most finished and could really only use some texture flats to compliment the description?

The Wizard's Tower : Remove?

Thanks for the comments so far, and I can see that I've had alot of people watching the portfolio.

Don't be afraid to reply, I really want to hear ANYTHING you have to say!

MiAlx

Hi Jakob, I like your work!

I would suggest working a bit on the presentation / thumbnails of your individual pieces. First of all, I agree with what mats effect and jamiemurphy said, re-arranging the thumbnails and working the presentation would definitely help. Secondly, maybe having slightly bigger thumbnails to give a bit of a better idea of what they'll see when they click on the thumbnail.

But the thumbnail for the hand painted asset, in my opinion of course, I feel you should redo completely. Maybe just the thumbnail, not the presentation of it once you click on it. The flat grey background of that thumbnail negatively affected the impression I had of its content for some reason, but of course that could be just me.

As far as order and hand painted thumbnail goes.. Something like this (just an idea, dunno?): Click me.

cheers and keep it up

Jakob Gavelli

@MiAlx : Thanks! I think you're right about the thumbnails. I've rearranged them and it feels a bit better. The size of the thumbnails isn't something I can currently change using carbonmade as far as I'm aware, which is a pity really.

I'm thinking about changing the Handpainted Assets part of the portfolio to have a similar breakdown and presentation as the Summer House has, I kind of like it. And update it with some new stuff.

I think the Summer House project would be better if it was a whole village, and that I kind of rushed to the finish line.

I'll keep the portfolio as is, but will probably have some major updates at the end of next week.

I'll update the thread then!

DWalker

You might want to take a look at your font selection. At the least, your name should be larger than the menu items.

Your about section really should have an online version of your resume rather than just a download link.

Your e-mail address at the bottom of the page should be a proper mailto: link.

Jakob Gavelli

@DWalker : Thanks for the pointers!

I'm trying out a new theme that will let me control the size of the thumbnails and font sizes. I think it looks alot better. With bigger thumbnails you loose the last project though, since you'll have to scroll down.

Jakob Gavelli

Update time!

Did some rebakes on the Tomb which resolved my nasty normal issues, and re-did some of the lighting and textures. I'll post some breakdowns of the assets soon. Maybe then it's easier to get some more feedback on specifics.

New portfolio template works really great imho. Still need to work on my thumbnails.

Summer Village feels unfinished and should probably start up a separate thread to get more feedback on it. It's currently lacking props to feel like a real town, and I'm having a big problem with foliage in UE4...

Anyhow it feels as if I'm on the right track. More feedback on individual projects would be great!