[Portfolio] - DarthNater

DarthNater

Wanted to see if you could all give me some input on my new layout. I basically want to make sure my model sheets look ok (I know, I shouldn't be just showing 1 prop, I'm going to be working on some environments here soon) and the tutorial is easy to follow (so far, it's not finished).

Again, this isn't finished (this isn't even the final URL), I just want input from everyone now, so I don't finish it and have it be a huge pile of crap!

http://nfollmer.weebly.com/

Thanks everyone! I know I'll get some good feedback

doeseph

Well to be honest there really isn't much to critique. You have very little on the site and most everything else isn't finished according to you. Perhaps you might want to look into how pictures are viewed, some like a completely new window to open when viewing images, but that isn't a hard and fast rule.

Here's some good critique though: finish the site

DrunkShaman

DarthNater: Whatever you've worked so far is amezing, Hi-polies. The interface of the website is pretty basic and neat, which is a plus in terms of User-friendly. Adding more tabs such as 2d preview, 3d previews to sort out the images wont hurt. Overall the site is amezing.

However, There isnt much you are offering to critiques, so my suggestion to you is, create more 3d models and put the SS of them on your website. If you are able to present with 2d rough sketch of your concept before you created the 3d model is a plus. (You should know this after spending sometime here) By observing your skills I would say that you shouldnt have any problem doing that.

Model few characters, and few scenes (environments) and putting them on your site, should be enough for critiques.

cholden

Site seems fine and dandy. The header is pretty big, and the overall scheme is a little blue for my tastes. More stuff please!

makecg

Hi man, site is simple and I like it alot..

I think insted of the images going into lightbox they could go into a seperate page? and show a bit more of them that way.

whatever you want to do just my opinion looks good either way.

Will Faucher

I understand that you will be adding stuff later on but this may be of use later. I wouldn't show two of the same kind of props in my portfolio. In this case, it is the pillars. Once you have seen one type of pillar, you have seen them all. Needs variety in my opinion.
Of course, I'm not portfolio expert, but I thought I'd throw in my two cents.
They are well made though!

Also, post your tri-count. That's one feature I saw missing in your model sheets!

Rory_M

Hey darth,

I like the simple navigation, and I like your work so far but I think your column pieces are suffering from the presentation. I'd suggest separating the high poly and the wireframes into their own presentation sheets. Maybe like a contstruction shot "wireframes" and a nice presentation shot "high poly." Good work though man.

DarthNater

Thanks everyone. This is the kind of crits I wanted before I started posting work on there. I wanted to get a rough idea of how it all looked to everyone. Its easier to fix now, then wait until its all finished and have to redo it all hehe

Thanks again, ill fix it up as you all suggested! I hate the lightbox too but I figured out how to remove it (I'm using weebly so you start with a template and modify them, the lightbox was in the code...)

PredatorGSR

You are obviously missing the resume, which you probably haven't gotten around to adding yet, but the reason I'm mentioning it is that there is no reason to list your software on the header image. That stuff should be in the resume.

Emphasizing the software like that kinda does the opposite of what I think you want to emphasize, which is "I'm a great artist no matter what tools I'm using". These days, as long as you know Max or Maya, Zbrush or Mudbox, and Photoshop, most employers expect that you'll be able to learn a similar program on the job quickly even if you haven't used it before, because the underlying skills are independent of the software.

Layout wise the site is decent, although I prefer a single rectangular box that takes up the column rather than splitting it into 2 squares. That gives you more flexibility to display your pieces.

Art wise, I think your work just isn't ambitious or impressive enough. If you see a column in an industry veterans portfolio, it is either some gears of war style high poly sculpt with obscene amounts of detail, or it is just one element that makes up a whole scene. If you combine all those pillars and arches into a mini scene, that is worthy of a spot in your portfolio, but a single pillar isn't, unless its the best pillar you've ever seen, which yours isn't.

Going forward, I would give you this advice. Your work needs to be impressive, and impressive work takes time. You aren't going to fill up your portfolio with work good enough to get a job in a month. Each piece should take 2-3 weeks, and maybe longer for scenes, and that means working on complicated stuff. You have to aim high.

Frump

Definitely reduce the big header and maybe make some of the empty space at the top smaller. Right now I have to scroll the page but if you reduce the header and top margin it'll all fit nicely. The logos of your software used are really not necessary in the header. That kind of thing should be represented in the resume. The portfolio is to show off you as an artist, not you as some guy who uses tools. Other than that the blue gradients theme looks nice and the navigation was pretty simple. Good job.

DarthNater

Thanks, that's some good advice. It sucks when you have ver little time to work on anything (I'm lucky if I have 3 hours a week). I need to stop rushing pieces . Those two on there now are from a map I've been working on ( for months now haha). Hopefully I finish that soon.

Thanks for the insight, I appreciate the time you took to do that.

Anyone look t the tutorial yet? I want to make sure it makes sense and reads ok (again, only have parts 1 and 2 done)

linkov

DarthNater wrote: »

Anyone look t the tutorial yet? I want to make sure it makes sense and reads ok (again, only have parts 1 and 2 done)

I don't want to discourage you or something, and most certainly please take no offence in what I'm about to say,.. but I find it a little bit arrogant to have a tutorial section what is supposed to cover well explained (already) topics, especially when your own portfolio contains only two pieces of art.

As for the rest of it.. You probably want to work on your presentation shots. To me, shots what contain high poly, realtime renders, texture sheets looks confusing most of the time. Find some good render solution for your high poly, probably read something about lighting setups. Make your real-time renders full-sized shots with some darker/less saturated backgrounds.

reiro

Nice and simple clean page. Header seems a tat too big. The color theme is a bit too blue in my opinion and your work needs better lighting to be presented in a proper way and fashion.

Your high poly stuff is great though.

Goat Justice

The Site:

Maybe make the lightbox versions of the images a bit larger. Its good that you have the fullsize links, but on my first pass through I just clicked and got small images. Other than that its pretty good. Everything out front and easy to find.

The Work:

The bottoms of the columns for your rail piece look a bit unfinished. There is also something weird going on with the twisted part. I suspect it may be having too few edge loops before you twisted it.

For the column piece, using a 2048 might be a bit much.

The biggest thing you need is more ambitious pieces. Complete scenes with prop sheets for a few key props would probably be the best thing to go for. Really impressive individual objects showing high-poly/low-poly/texture can help as well. In any case, make the subject matter as engaging as possible. Try to show the viewer something they havn't seen before or the coolest incarnation yet of something they have seen a million times.

DarthNater

Linkov - No offense at all! I realize no one wants a mediocre artist telling them how they do things I guess it's just in my nature, I like helping people (probably should have been a teacher). I like when people give 'negative' crits, that's how you learn and grow...

Everyone else, thanks for all the input. I think I have enough ideas from you all to clean this up, as well as my art. Thanks again, I'll get this finished sometime in the next year :P

Richard Kain

The header is definitely too big, shrink that down a little bit. I do like how you're throwing up your pieces right off the bat. Having meaningful content on the home page is definitely the way to go.

Right now you are in the same boat as me. You have a basic structure for your website, but you haven't really gotten the content up there. I'd say polish up the structure a LITTLE more, and then just start focusing solely on the content.

PhilipK

Goat Justice wrote: »

The Site:

Maybe make the lightbox versions of the images a bit larger. Its good that you have the fullsize links, but on my first pass through I just clicked and got small images. Other than that its pretty good. Everything out front and easy to find.

The Work:

The bottoms of the columns for your rail piece look a bit unfinished. There is also something weird going on with the twisted part. I suspect it may be having too few edge loops before you twisted it.

For the column piece, using a 2048 might be a bit much.

The biggest thing you need is more ambitious pieces. Complete scenes with prop sheets for a few key props would probably be the best thing to go for. Really impressive individual objects showing high-poly/low-poly/texture can help as well. In any case, make the subject matter as engaging as possible. Try to show the viewer something they havn't seen before or the coolest incarnation yet of something they have seen a million times.

Agreed on that, also I find it a bit strange that the Hi-polies seems to be the main focus in the pictures while if I was the employer would find the ingame model definitely most interesting. After all that's what everyone will see in the game

But your models look nice, but as Goat Justice said, creating a scene, doesn't even have to be anything big, just a few models put together in a nice way presented ingame preferably (UDK maybe ?). I think that'd definitely make your portfolio more impressive!

Good work anyhow

DarthNater

Thanks philipk. If you look at nfollmer.com, I do have some more finished pieces but I felt the rest of my work wasn't good enough for my portfolio. Ill have to cut back on the high poly bits and shift focus to the in game shots

Btw which one of you jokers are columnlvr