[Portfolio] Wesley Martin
Hi everyone! I've received some great feedback on some of my work so I thought i'd put my site up here for some crits. Any advice on the site would be greatly appreciated! I tried to make it as simple as possible so that it's all about the work. If you want to crit the work itself as well feel free, but I'm mostly interested in improving the site at the moment.
www.wesleymartin.com
Thanks in advance for any input!
www.wesleymartin.com
Thanks in advance for any input!
Replies
Also, your clay sculptures are really strong, but you don't have any real large detail shots. I would definitely like a closer look at those sculptures.
I feel your thumbnails are too small on your site and it is very hard to navigate from image to image. You have each image opening in a new window which makes it very hard to browse.
Also, I think you should consider re-categorizinig some of your assets such as modeling and sculpting. You should take from start to finish a lot of these models to present them in a game state, as it may be nice to present your sculpting abilities, but your technical knowledge as well.
Your resume is also very lacking. You need to separate your information a bit and provide a more professional layout of your qualifications, work history, etc. There are a lot of great examples of resume's here around polycount.
Good luck!
serialkiller - haha yeah my bad... to be honest this was my first semester modeling so some of the wires aren't worth showing off... but I will see if i can include some more wire renders
kaburan - so you think I should put more process shots of fewer models rather than have many different models at different stages of the process? I am planning on putting more information about each image so it's easier to tell what each was rendered with. thanks for the tips on the resume, I will keep working on that as well
Thanks for the great feedback everyone! I made major changes to the layout of the site and navigation, so hopefully it is easer to see images and view them at full resolution. I will work on fixing the thumbnail sizes and putting some more technical information about each piece. I appreciate all of the advice and I will keep working to make it better~
you should make some kind of anim of it doing something clumsy and silly... if you can.
This is going much better. I can still see all the thumbs while I'm looking at an image, so navigation is much less tedious. And the larger images really do help. That said, I would still like to see a next arrow. But perhaps it's just me, and not really a huge deal now.
As for the site itself, you really really need to categorize your content better, particularly in the 3d vs. 2d vs. sculpture sort of stuff.
For example, instead of a giant dump of random 3d stuff, break it into (at the least) environments, props, and characters.
I know you still have a ways to go to graduate, so as you get closer I will be happy to tear into you regarding your resume
As far as the content goes, I would definitely suggest combining / removing some of the images down into lesser or single pages. (The green - grassy scene, while looks pretty, is 9 images and I'm not entirely sure what I am supposed to be looking at specifically, consider it is an incomplete scene)
I also don't think it is entirely necessary to have 3 different image scaled clickthroughs, considering anyone who is looking at your page has all of about 19 seconds to give you a glance, that 3rd ginourmous res is probably never going to be seen. (Giant epic environment awesome-ness excluded of course)
And remember - every image has your name / website URL at the least. Make sure it is somewhat non-obtrusive - but there nonetheless.
Can't wait to see the new content next semester!
uneditablepoly - thanks for the warning... i noticed it too around that time but i think it was just an overload of people trying to access it that day...
Kupikimijumjum - thanks, glad it's improved! I may try to do a next arrow in the future
ott - thanks don! I tried to incorporate all of those changes~
So I completely re-did my resume several times based on the input from you guys, and I added some more wireframes and info about my models. I also reorganized the images and removed several. I decided to leave the super-big images available just in case anyone wanted to see details. Thanks again for the input everyone! Feel free to keep it coming if there are more changes I should make
Generally companies hire for specific roles, and any complementary skills are just benefits that might come in handy. But you have to be kickass in that specific role first before you can even be considered.
As mentioned before, those small thumbnails are almost useless. They are so small that you can't tell what you are clicking on. If you want to do thumbnails, make them as big as this guy has so they are useful http://shogun3d.com/.
I would drop your character section because your characters aren't particularly well done, and while the fact that your sculptures are life size is kind of impressive, they don't really show the kind of skills that people expect from digital art, primarily detail and interesting designs, so I would drop those too.
If you want to be a designer, you need to have levels you've designed, or small games you've created, etc that show design experience and skills.
Fortunately you are still in school, so you have some time to think about this stuff.
Also, on your resume, get rid of the conference position as well as the camp. As a student, you don't have industry experience to put on your resume, but the non 3d jobs have no relevance. When you are trying to get your first job, the stuff you put in the experience section are stuff like mod groups you've worked with, large scale student teams/games you've worked on, and internships.
Best pick one area, try it, build on it, see what's needed to become director.
The 'creative design' tag on your website makes it sound, to me, like you want to be more of a designer than an artist. Your work conflicts and looks like you want to be an artist creating content, right? I'd decide which discipline you want to go in to and tailor towards that. I don't believe your work has to be rigidly stuck to the discipline but it should all work towards that one area.
Then, the first thing you show is a character that could use a lot of work, and isn't the best piece in your portfolio, so this might scare people off from the beginning.
If you're going to mention wanting to become a 'game director' (do you mean art director, or actually the guy in charge of everything?), I'd do so in a seperate part where you talk about your goals, not in the first part of your cv. Personally, I'd advise against it altogether, but that's your call.
If it's shocking to you that people might call you out on these things, maybe your education failed to prepare you for the reality of finding an industry job, and what level you need to be at.
I suggest --as others have said-- that you pick a strong point and really focus on it.
I was actually surprised when I looked at your 2d and sculpture work, how good it was. The reason being... Your 3d still has a pretty long ways to go until you are ready for a job. So after looking at your 3d first, I didn't expect much from your 2d art. But I was pleasantly surprised.
Also the creative design bit. Like others have said, it doesn't really make sense, and pretty much all this tells me, you are rather new to 3d art.
However, the good news is, you can get better at 3d art very very quickly when you have a solid traditional art background, which you seem to have. My suggestion is to stick around these forums and become active. You will learn way more here than at any school out there. You will receive though, but honest crits and get better fast.
Start a WIP thread, for your next model or environment and get crits along the way. Keep working hard and you will get there.
Good luck!
I updated the site with lots of new work and large thumbnails! I also removed quite a bit of work. As always I would love your input. Thanks again to everyone who has helped me out so far~