its not finnished

Thermidor

Ok ... i want to apply to a few jobs , so ive tried to get some of my work together ...

its not the best web site in the world .. but its all i got at the mo ...

thepressurecooker

Of course , and comments are welcome.

MoP

Some very good stuff on there... and some not-so-very-good stuff on there.
I would prune out the stuff you don't feel is "your best" ... on the 2d sketches page there's a lot of lower quality drawings (very rough and not "polished" enough) - I'd drop those, even if it means you only have 5-10 images on the page. Having 5 good images is better than 20 mediocre ones.

Do you have any traditional pencil/ink/paint work? Photograph or scan it in and stick it on the 2D page if it's good. I think that will reinforce your position as an "artist" if you have traditional work as well as digital 2d work.

The same applies to your 3d section - some of your models are excellent, I particularly like the Doom3 helmet - why is it at the bottom of the page? That's a great example of game art work and technology pipeline knowledge, put it at the top of the page!
More recent stuff should be at the top... in fact you should consider removing the older stuff completely. Why bother showing the earlier version of the highpoly realistic girl, if the newer version is better? Move the new one up to the top of the page, get rid of the old one. It will save loading time and give a stronger overall impression, IMHO.

GET BETTER RENDERS!!! You have some really nice models that are being killed with poor render settings ... you're using Maya right? Fiddle around with the renderer settings to give nice antialiasing (some of those renders are actually worse than screengrabs, because of weird aliasing and lighting)... use a background colour other than black, and throw some nice lights into the scene to complement the models.

Your kitchen environment is good work but again the renders are killing it, there's nowhere near enough contrast or eye-pleasing lighting/shadows in there, again just mess around with light settings and renderer, and update them!

Don't bother with the big grey border around each render, instead just have a bigger image! I don't wanna be peering at a tiny render encased in a huge grey border. Make the render full-size!

It just seems like a shame to me to have such evidently good models (the wireframe shots are good), and then ruin them with low-quality renders.

So, yeah:
- Prune out the lower-quality work in the 2d/3d section to leave a solid quality base of work.
- Organise the 3d page so that the stuff you want people to see the most (ie. relevent stuff like the doom3 helmet) is at the top of the page.
- Get rid of the grey border around images, give higher resolution renders.

The actual site itself is a good, clean, fast design... it's just the content that needs optimising.

Good luck with the job search, I am sure you will land something!

MoP

Daz

It's not from Finlad? ;-)

Cool Erik, shall have a good look later. Btw, I'm getting this [AD-SIZE] where I should be seeing an image, have I got some damn adware or something? anyone?

Thermidor

Hey Mop
Thnx for replying so quick .. i was just gona send a link to rockstar leeds

i guess i need to talk to you , and others first about this ...
the first problem , about the renders ... im basicly not very knowlegable about rendering , or setting up maya to do nice renders ... i did download a script thats meant to do global illumination in maya , called GIjoe i think ... but i couldnt get it running . lighting and such i usually use 2 directional lights ,, and put a soft directional behind and a ambient to raise the light in the scene. how do you change the background colour in maya ? i know these are odd questions , but i never considered it important (over other things) to learn this stuff ... until now .

the finnishing on my work has always been a problem ... mostly i do somthing to experiment , so as soon as i know ive succeeded i move on ... stupid i know

the big grey border - well , i just wanted to keep the resolution of the images down, so they load quicker , the grey part is probly only a couple of kb ... so i tryed to make most images about 50k... what do you think , can i go higher? and by how much?

sketches - argh , yes , i have lots of traditional 2d work at home (4 sketchbooks 300 miles away) and a scetchbook still to scan here. but i thought this was an unimportant thing , and ppl would just skip by it.

pruneing - ok, what should i take out ... shall i just put my latest work at the top ... the 2d section is all sketches ive do pretty recently.

also , is my text making me sound stupid?

Thermidor

eek daz , take a screen shot for me and post it here ? ... i hope its nothing ive done ...

rooster

MoP is dead on about re-organising stuff, i scanned through the 3d stuff, figured id got a good idea of the style and quality (some real nice stuff in there) and came back out of the 3d section. Came back to the thread, read MoPs post and noticed he mentions a doom helmet. Went back to find it and it looks sweet! and I totally missed it!
Best stuff first. I'd put the wip nude woman after the finished one too, and the helmet should probably be somewhere infront of chucky.

Thermidor

ahh , cool , ill do that

thnx rooster

/Edit
ok , done ... i think its more logical now ... should i get rid of the vin deisel project , as its so far from finnished ? ....

Herr-Maestro

no it quite good for a Model itself but would indeed skin it. You're almost done with it.

Rick Stirling

Mop covered most of it - the renders for the most part are very washed out. Prune some old stuff.

The first thing on your site is a huge "About Me" section. By all means have a short paragraph about yourself on the first page, but not a novel. You want to bobard them with a sexy image!

Move the "About Me" section to a link. And trim it. Although it has information, it wasn't exactly relevent "I was good at art at school". Well, you are almost 30 now, so school doesn't matter

" just wanted to keep the resolution of the images down, so they load quicker". Dont worry. If you are using it to get work, they will have broadband. Just slip them into imageready to get good compression.

I'm not sure if R* Leeds are taking people on at the minute.

My unfinished portfolio site: http://portfolio.rsart.co.uk/

Gmanx

Good luck with the jobhunting Therm. I would say that your 3d work far outshines the 2d at present. That may change if you get to scan more sketches, giving you a wider choice.

In the kitchen environment, try running the images through Photoshops autoleveller, or manually adjusting the levels to give them a fuller value scale. They look a bit washed out.

Thermidor

wow , thnx for the comments guys.
Ive updated the 2d section with some sketches out my book .... still not even a fraction of the better stuff i got back home , but it shows some small variation.

so Rick. make a sorta visual front page thing ? good idea .. and yes , you are right about the info being too much ... love your site BTW...

Gmanx - yeah , i gota re render the thole lot, ahh well ... maybe i will figure out this global illumination thing.

Thermidor

ok , ive done what rick said, theres a sorta splash pages now.

Gmanx

That's the way!! Your trad sketches are very nice, some good line weights and sensitive shading. That splash image is just right - it's indicative of your style, and adds colour and drama for a good 'first impression'.

Steve Schulze

Hm. I know its sort of the standard way to do and art website like this, but having little sections of the pictures as thumbnails never fails to irritate me, particularly when they don't represent a significant portion of the final image (say a single eye or the like). I know its artsy and everyone does it like that, but personally I like to see what I'm opening before I open it, otherwise, why bother having thumbnails at all?

Thermidor

i think its probly more my "bad" use of thumbs like this ... done well they can encaptulate what the image is all about ...

somtimes thumbs that show the whole image can be hard to see ...

but its a good point