NDA and Portfolios

michi.be

Hey guys 'n gals,

I would like to hear your opinion on NDA related stuff.
It's not so cool to do nice work which you are not allowed to post on a portfolio.
In my opinion it's a bit contraproductive to get new clients if you are not allowed to show work.

I know thats the way things go in the industry. But I'm thinking of re-doing some work in the same style and put it on the portfolio.

For example: A contact consists of a gothic church but the contract is NDA'ed.
For the portfolio you could do another church.
Would this ok? How do you guys handle it?

Ben Apuna

Yup, I'm in that situation as well. My current portfolio sucks hard core, and the work I've done as a contractor is much MUCH better. Unfortunately the games where I did my best work are still a long way off from being shipped.

By re-doing some work you mean start from scratch and make a new church? Because re-using parts of what you've made for you client is probably a bad idea...

You could make a new church, and it would probably end up with a higher quality and be done faster than the first one. However redoing something so similar to what you've already done seems sort of boring, and once the title ships and you get to show your professional work then you've got redundancy in your portfolio.

I think it's a better idea to just make something new and different using the skills you learned while making the church. It might take longer and be more difficult but you'll probably learn more and in the long run you'll have twice the number of assets to show off.

Rumkugel

Well often you can talk with the people, so that they let you use some of your work for portfolio puposes, no big deal.

michi.be

Ben:
Yes redoing from scratch. althought it's hard in some cases because if you use stuff from cgtextures it would look similar. Doing another asset with higher quality is an option too.

But in most cases I don't have the time to do another one.

Rumkugel:
Of course. Talking to them first is logical. But in my case it's not likely that I'll be allowed to show it.

Ben Apuna

Yeah time is the contractor's worst enemy Aside from clients that want to rip you off that is :poly127: Good luck.

Rick Stirling

If you are a contractor talk to your employer. As long as you don't state what game the asset is from then you might be ok (let's face it, lots of games have gothic churces in them).

If you are an inhouse employee and ask for permission to post your work on a portfolio they might wonder why you are getting your portfolio ready...

Mark Dygert

^ +1 Best to get that question answered up front when the job starts.
(added to list of interview questions, check)

Also I've heard stories about people forwarding offline examples of their work along with links to their online portfolio. If that is a good strategy for you in this case, that's your call.

You also have to guess what that will say about you.
Worst case: If this guy is willing to leak stuff to get another job what is he going to do with our stuff?
Best Case: You get the job and no one really cares.

Or resign yourself to knowing that your portfolio will be a few years out of date unless you plan to update it with personal projects...

JohnnyRaptor

You could also show your older non-NDA work, let them know you have better work available but cannot forward these with email or put online etc, BUT can show them if given an onsite interview. That way you can control what they see and make sure they dont keep anything or "leak" or whatever. Ofcourse, this is dependent on your older art being competitive enough...

michi.be

Ok so I sum it up:

I will ask for permission to upload anonymised art to my portfolio.
If not I will do it in a similar fashion if i have the time.
Or I will do just better stuff to pimp up my portfolio.

In case of my current NDA (offsite contractor) I would have to wait 5 years until I'm allowed to show it, hehe. Fairly long if you take the technical advance in the last years.

Elhrrah

I could understand them not wanting the art for their project showing up in your portfollio, especially with the amount of time they still have left (going from your 'five year' comment). They might let you upload select bits of art; the ones which pose no risk to them. If you can spin it right, they might allow you to place it in an offline portfolio, something that won't be spread around the internet.

The one thing I can never understand, however, is when a low-to-no budget indie crew pulls something like this with an NDA.