Critique my level design portfolio! Pretty please!

Campaignjunkie

... Following the glut of "check out my portfolio" threads here, I now humbly present...

http://www.portfolio.debacle.us/

I'm trying to "break in" right now, but I'm also a student, so I'm setting my sights low towards some sort of summer internship thing somewhere, assuming many studios would bother offering that to me.

I think I did everything (mostly) right, according to all the advice I've read around here, but I don't know what content I'm supposed to have for a design portfolio exactly - map overviews with notes? Is a fly-through of each level necessary? Would whoever looks at my portfolio really care about that stuff?

Oh, and I've only tested in IE7 and Firefox... Does it look okay in Safari?

Anyway, critique away! Brutality welcomed.

pior

Hey that was simple to navigate, love the big thumbnail links!

But seriously, drop the blog-talk. I don't think that any portfolio reviewer (hence potentially AD or something) wants you to teach him color theory.
"The blue barrels are there to (a) provide some color contrast against the yellow walls (b) fly around and look cool during the disaster sequence."
If you feel like you need to explain it it makes me feel like you are not confident enough with the impact of your results.

I believe that images should be talking for themselves, so if there is something you really need to point out about the screenshots on a page I'd say simply group all that text in one tiny chapter that you keep at the top of the page - then go with images only.

Same for the joke at the bottom of each page : you are potentially wasting Art-Director-Time here, something you don't really want to do :P

Good luck

RE3456

I loved the dm_firth lvl, bring back the memories, it's been awhile since I played HL2 DM.

Tulkamir

To add to what Pior said, don't degrade yourself or your work. You do that in several places.

Campaignjunkie

Hmm, I thought I was being endearing / interesting / "different" / showing that I could analyze my own work or something - but I see your points. Misguided rambling deleted!

diminished_Self

always want to put your best work/foot forward. with that in mind you probably want to take out the not so proficient with maya point under your skills on your CV. dont tell us what you suck at, tell us what your most proud of.

Tulkamir

Also, and someone else should probably comment on this to confirm, but if you want to get a design job you should show more design relevant work. Right now it conveys a lot of world building and texturing, but the actual design elements don't come across. Level design docs would be great. Layouts, one pagers, gameflow charts, etc... As well as some videos of actual gameplay. Right now you convey that you are an able world builder, but not that you have solid design skills.

Oh, and on the layout of the site, I quite like it. Very clean and concise, easy to navigate, etc...