[Portfolio] Chad Emond

chademond

http://www.chademond.com

Just finished a major retool of my portfolio website. I tried to make it simplistic and to the point but also look professional enough.

The amount of content I have online is lacking I know, but I'll hopefully be able to show some more stuff soon.

Any crits on the site design, resume construction, and pieces would be much appreciated. Thanks! :thumbup:

Firebert

clean and to the point. good job. i so need to redo my portfolio in the next couple of weeks. one of the things i am going to do is get rid of the lighbox/shadowbox interface. i don't recommend it, and i've gotten a lot of negative reviews from using it. i was using shadowbox for a while and everyone repeatedly stated they couldn't see the little "next" buttons for the images in the bottom right corner. why? because no one has the time to sit there and think about how to operate your site. sites should be designed for 5 year olds that drank a case of red bulls and were plopped down in front of a computer.... click click click click click... that's all they would do, and that's what your average internet user wants to do... just click until they see something they like. i combined lightbox and shadowbox, but it still fails and keeps the viewer from seeing everything. not a lot of people like it and associate it with flash, even though it is plug/play java code :P

link your stuff to their own page of images so they open in a new tab or window. keep that page just straight up images with a back button to close the tab or window, or just have it emulate the sight layout. another thing i would recommend is scrapping all the informational text. to be honest, i only read it because you didn't state any of your specs on your images. that's another fault i have as far as putting the specs on my work. and even then, i didn't read all of the information about it, i just looked for the poly count. i don't think it hurts having the info there, but i wouldn't put it above the images. if the viewer is really interested in the work, they'll come back and read it, but if you're in HR, you probably don't have time to read all about an applicants involvement in a project unless you are really blown away into another dimension by the work.

it's good that you are showing your maps, but you're not showing all of them. yet another fault i have as well. take your first character for instance. he obviously has a diffuse map, but you don't show it. if you use spec maps, then state it and show it. if you don't use any spec maps on a character, you should, because you should.

as for the work itself, i would just say keep plucking away. it's good, but i know you will do much better by continually working on stuff to solidify your understand of form and anatomy. show your models posed or in some environment. flesh out your presentations to really catch the viewers attention. showing them in a bind pose is good for construction shots, but not so much for getting someone to really enjoy viewing your work... which if someone likes it, then they will also enjoy looking at it, so amp up the presentation of your models.

chademond

Thanks for the suggestions, I really appreciate you taking the time. I'll look into adding separate pages for the image-sets. I had that originally, but I felt it made the site feel clunky, but it might be more efficient for an HR person.