To web or not to web?

Taylor Hood

Hey guys. I've been recently pondering over if I should get a website portfolio or not. I have a few for and againsts in my head. Do you guys think its a good idea?

For :
Shows that you're dedicated by setting up your very own domain.
More personal
Videos and tutorials can be put on it if you want to make it more than a portfolio.

Against:
Mainly, I already use a free service called CarbonMade and its pretty much excellent. It is easy to navigate and straight forward. Also has an about sections. Whats more is that if I pay a small amount of money videos can be uploaded.
You also need to make the website.

The against arguements seem to overpowering.

vahl

if you really want to have both pros, just buy a domain alias that point on your carbonmade folio man it'll cost you barely 5 bucks a year and will result in exactly the same as having a full domain name, etc

Taylor Hood

Good idea man, thanks.

Frump

Having to make a website is not a con... It's easier to do than anything 3d art related. The only con I can see to having/making your own personal site is paying for hosting. However, since you are still in school and not actively seeking industry employment you might as well save your monies and stick with the free solutions or do as vahl suggested for very little monies.

When it comes to unpersonalized galleries, I always tend to forget the people as the site leaves no distinct impression in my mind. I might remember what the models looked like, but I probably couldn't find my way back easily.

A sort of in-between option is getting a wordpress blog. It's free and you can customize it, but it requires some coding and has a .wordpress.com domain.

ericdigital

Seems like a no brainer to me. Even at the very absolute least a shorter URL that redirects to the carbonmade site.

Richard Kain

Frump wrote: »

Having to make a website is not a con... It's easier to do than anything 3d art related.

As someone who works in web design, I would beg to differ. Making basic HTML site is easier than most 3D art related tasks. Making a table-less designed site, with a server-side scripting language, database support, and it's own rudimentary content management system? And then making all of that cross-browser compatible? Not so easy.

And that brings me to my suggestion. Just follow the advice everyone else has been giving, and attach a domain name to your existing web page solution. This will be faster and easier than trying to go it alone, and will require far less learning and testing. Once upon a time you could get away with a basic site. But now that the internet's structure has matured, the expectations surrounding your own site are much steeper.

Mark Dygert

Richard Kain wrote: »

As someone who works in web design, I would beg to differ. Making basic HTML site is easier than most 3D art related tasks. Making a table-less designed site, with a server-side scripting language, database support, and it's own rudimentary content management system? And then making all of that cross-browser compatible? Not so easy.

And that brings me to my suggestion. Just follow the advice everyone else has been giving, and attach a domain name to your existing web page solution. This will be faster and easier than trying to go it alone, and will require far less learning and testing. Once upon a time you could get away with a basic site. But now that the internet's structure has matured, the expectations surrounding your own site are much steeper.

Yea of course you can turn it into some colossal crazy ass project that consumes the soul of anyone that visits but honestly when it comes to artist portfolio sites no one cares about your back end database scripting laungage. They want fast loading content and they want easy nav, without any kind of code knowlege someone can slap that together in a few hours... Spend that time making awesome content and not on things no one is going to even look at.

I have yet to ever sit down in an interview and be told or tell anyone "yea so I looked at your code and holy crap what a mess!"

I will say going with something you cook up is SLIGHTLY more secure than going with a template or one of the pre-made sites. Its worth their time to go after a security hole in a huge pool of sites vs wasting time hacking one dudes portfolio.

Taylor Hood

Yeah, Vig. If I was to do it I'd do with what you have said and what I hear all the time : Clean, basic, quick access to the REAL showcase of your work.

Yozora

making a portfolio is easy, the only real con is the monthly cost. But since one of your argumensts against it was the fact that carbonmade offers a (pretty expensive) $12/month plan, I'm assuming money for web hosting is not a problem.

You can easily find a decent host for half that price.

oh and the "about" section is a pretty poor argument, considering you can make a completely customisable "about" page and place it wherever you want if you design your own site. Or a even better idea; don't even include a "about" section.

Taylor Hood

Yeh but Yozara that expensive plan is for the videos and upgraded space.
It pretty much serves what I need... a basic, clean, and straight to the point layout.

Richard Kain

Vig wrote: »

I have yet to ever sit down in an interview and be told or tell anyone "yea so I looked at your code and holy crap what a mess!"

You'll notice I didn't actually advise that he go to a lot of trouble concerning his site. I said that he should go with the quick and easy solution, for pretty much the same reasons that you stated. I also mentioned that I currently work in web design, and not game art. So while you may never hear a potential employer complain about your code, that is definitely something I have to worry about.

Perhaps you can appreciate that it might irk me slightly when people openly suggest that my job is very easy, and that no attention should be paid to the quality of the back-end. The engineer in me rebels against such statements.

Gav

But, you're arguing creating a full-on, complex website vs. creating a VERY basic, one page web portfolio, aren't you? I mean, to defend Frump, even if it does bruise your pride a little bit, it IS super easy to get a bare bones, super simple website up and running for an artists portfolio. What you do is probably isn't easy, I think what we're saying is that it's 'easy' to get all of your images on a site and have them displayed to the viewer...

Making game art isn't easy, but making a cube sure is.

Edit> Anyways, LoM, I think Carbonmade is fine for now...there are plenty of people who use it. You could easily buy a domain if you want a flashy name and point it to your blog or something. Pretty much hassle free. You could also have a big image dump and I think that would work fine.

Taylor Hood

Yeah, thanks Gav

Mark Dygert

Richard Kain wrote: »

You'll notice I didn't actually advise that he go to a lot of trouble concerning his site. I said that he should go with the quick and easy solution, for pretty much the same reasons that you stated. I also mentioned that I currently work in web design, and not game art. So while you may never hear a potential employer complain about your code, that is definitely something I have to worry about.

Perhaps you can appreciate that it might irk me slightly when people openly suggest that my job is very easy, and that no attention should be paid to the quality of the back-end. The engineer in me rebels against such statements.

I hear ya. I get your frustration buddy
I just think this specific job is a super easy for just about anyone to do without ever touching a line of code.

I'm not even sure I would call PhotoShop > File > Automate > Web Gallery, web design... Wouldn't that be like someone downloading free models from turbo squid and calling themselves a 3D artist? heh

Frump

Richard Kain wrote: »

You'll notice I didn't actually advise that he go to a lot of trouble concerning his site. I said that he should go with the quick and easy solution, for pretty much the same reasons that you stated. I also mentioned that I currently work in web design, and not game art. So while you may never hear a potential employer complain about your code, that is definitely something I have to worry about.

Perhaps you can appreciate that it might irk me slightly when people openly suggest that my job is very easy, and that no attention should be paid to the quality of the back-end. The engineer in me rebels against such statements.

I do web development too. I certainly didn't mean to undermine it or anyone who does it professionally. My point was in relation to a basic gallery site with some thumbnails. Which, compared to convoluted modeling software and much more advanced backends, is easy as pie. I was kind of grumpy when I posted and I was annoyed that he had making a site as a con since I think making sites is a great thing.

Gav and Vig were able to interpret what I meant pretty well.:)

achmedthesnake

I have yet to ever sit down in an interview and be told or tell anyone "yea so I looked at your code and holy crap what a mess!"

ahem.... i actually do go through the 'coding' on a lot of sites - including a lot of polycounter's - mostly just curious to see how things were done, but sometimes i do get a "a baby could projectile vomit in a more tidy fashion than the xhtml in this site.." feeling....

maybe i'm just ocd when it comes to web standards...


i do think however - if you do have the time - making a custom site that reflects your creative style/personality and aesthetics might reflect a bit better on potential employers...

jakelear

I'll forward on a piece of advice I received from a lecture Todd Howard (of Bethesda) just did at my university last week.

"Don't sleep on the web site" - these days, there's a good chance that's going to be a big part of your first impression, so make it stand out.

Mark Dygert

jakelear wrote: »

I'll forward on a piece of advice I received from a lecture Todd Howard (of Bethesda) just did at my university last week.

"Don't sleep on the web site" - these days, there's a good chance that's going to be a big part of your first impression, so make it stand out.

With the caveat of "don't neglect the art going into your portfolio" remember why they're hiring you. By all means make it great, make it personal just don't forget why they bought the ticket, its not for the warm up band, its for the headliner. If push comes to shove your art will speak louder than your site design.

Poor site with poor content = :thumbdown:
Flashy site with poor content = :thumbdown:
Poor site with excellent content = :thumbup:
Average site with excellent content = :thumbup:
Flashy site with excellent content = :thumbup:

The common factor there being excellent content.

If you don't know much about web design and you're low on quality content its probably not a great time to forsake content creation in the pursuit of knowledge that won't add to the skills you want to use.

If you're full on great content it won't hurt to push it up and over the top.
But job one should be making sure the skills are demonstrated properly. I think too many people get caught up thinking I need to make this site amazing and forsake the content creation. The site gets convoluted the art is forsaken and hidden under catchy ideas and they can't figure out why they aren't landing any interviews.

hawken

I'd say use all the free tools you can lay your hands on - you tube for videos etc - and do what vahl said at post no.2. (instead of wasting your time on learning html and making the site work)

scrolling though a page of nice images is 10 times better than dealing with a "designed" website.

on average - you are not expected to be a website designer if you are a games artist. So whats the point. Put that time you might waste on coding a nice site into making better game art, and display it in an easy to view manner.