[Portfolio] Kevin Wolmarans
polycounter lvl 13
Hello all im a recent grad (see signature for info)
Folio: www.kwolmarans.com
I'm looking for a crit on both the site and the content.
Note: The site isn't setup as a specialist site as im currently searching pretty wide for post graduate employment (Delivering magazines wont cut it once the student loans kick in![:\](https://polycount.com/plugins/emojiextender/emoji/twitter/confused.png ":\")
), after which i will narrow it down to 3d Art and eventually world building.
Folio: www.kwolmarans.com
I'm looking for a crit on both the site and the content.
Note: The site isn't setup as a specialist site as im currently searching pretty wide for post graduate employment (Delivering magazines wont cut it once the student loans kick in
), after which i will narrow it down to 3d Art and eventually world building.
Replies
the guys on polycount can be pretty harsh but the advice they give is often spot on, that link Ive given you should give you a good start.
Really there is a lot that needs to change about your site if you want to come across as professional or even just display your work in an easy to browse fashion. things I think are important
1. wheres the art? - I had to go into sections labelled with names I dont understand for example "3ds max" or "game design"
2. Whats with the design? - seriously it looks like something from 1994 there are so many fonts and colours that I dont know what your trying to achieve. stick to 3 or 4 good colours and 2 fonts at the most in order to retain a professional brand
anyway welcome to polycount I hope we can help you make this better but Im pretty sure people will tell you to take out all the stuff except 3D art and world building as you didnt do too bad a job on the hallowed grounds stuff and you could have a good enviro portfolio if you work on a few more projects.
From looking at your art, I would toss everything and start a brand new site. Flash is not good. Photoshop stuff is basic at best. Game Design might be worth keeping. Check out some portfolios on this site from recent grads. Heck, check out any work on this site and see what your up against. Need to do some serious catch up here mate if you want to land a job.
Bear in mind the photoshop and flash stuff is freelance graphic design which i do to supplement income and needs to remain there for the time being. Basic/cheap print ads and such are still needed by the consumer.
The degree is naught but paper to me and now that i have it i can concentrate on a portfolio.
@Ged: Ive red the portfolio articles on Game-artist.net and here and figure in about a year ill have a decent enough portfolio. I checked the css file and there is only 1 font used for the site(the button images however use different fonts tho but they're gonna get redone based on input from here and other forums). I can see your logic on the main index buttons being misleading or hard to understand hence the requested opinions.
I'm more thinking about the layout of the folio atm as i dont like the type where its all thumb's and large images, sure its artistic but...
I'm currently prepping to take part in several forum mini contests at various places so in about 2-3 months ill have a lot of better quality work in the folio.
More advice on what to do next would help.
p.s. I dont mind blunt and ruthless as long at its constructive. Keep it coming the best advice is that from a 3rd party
http://www.kwolmarans.com/3dsMax/Fountain/Fountain.html
thats cool, but you can see the the smoothing groups of each polygon. That is exactly what a normal map should hide. Dude, make a simple high poly and project that detail down to your low poly. If you use a normal map filter make the resulting texture an overlay on top of your normal bake.
Just do the normal map tutorial that ships with max
Learn to make proper high poly models.
You also waste a lot of UV space. Try to reduce the wasted space as much as possible by scaling and moving around the shells. Also try to make sure they are all scaled together and proportionally, you can change their sizes later to give more uv space for the areas that are most likely to be seen in game.
Who or what is Yaujka Kanbaya and why does one of your animations look like its by him? Actually, doesnt matter. You should remove the whole page because it doesn't look very good.
I dont get the "hallowed grounds" project thing. The main image shows a pretty decent graveyard scene (which clearly is not made by you) but the rest of the page looks like some sci-fi shooting range? Whats that gotta do with the graveyard?
The web design looks very dated, reminds me of old geocities websites. Using the name of the software to categorize your work seems silly, but you wouldn't have that problem/"necessity" if your portfolio was more focused.
The text next to each project is huge and takes my focus away from the images. Most of the text is information that you can put on the image itself (like the name, triangle count and textures).
Really the best advice is to look at other peoples portfolios and try to understand why they look good/bad. And then make your own website based on those conclusions.
Theres a lot of advice on these forums and you'll learn a lot more if you just clicked on a bunch of threads to read them. Do not rely on the advice in your own thread alone.
You seem to be very proud of your academic achievements but your work tells me you're just doing the bare minimum to pass the criteria set by the school. Seems like the problem is that you're more interested in becoming a great student rather than a great artist.
Actually it does not seem like you have much interest in game art at all, but you found Polycount, so I guess I must be wrong.
http://portfolio.deviantart.com/
good to hear your taking crits seriously, yeah when I was talking about fonts I was including all site navigation and images...really all this stuff should be on brand like you are selling your skill/talent as a real product
check out how clean and modern the branding is on this http://www.kolbyjukes.com/ no crazy fonts or colours let the art work do the talking.
Good idea to enter mini-comps they will quickly show you which areas you need to improve and show you how you rate as an artist in relation to some of the other people in similar situations out there. you probably are better off following contes advice and getting one of those really nice premade portfolios and just putting in your best stuff until you are more ready to put up your own professional site like you say you plan to do.