Recommended Portfolio Building/Hosting Websites?
polycounter lvl 7
Hey Polycount,
Right now I only really use blogger to store my artwork and stuff but it doesn't really cut it in terms of a portfolio I can show people who are interested in my work.
What websites do you guys recommend the most for building and hosting a portfolio? I know very little HTML or graphic design CSS stuff so the less code I have to work with the better it is for me, even if that means my portfolio will look a little more generic then it would otherwise.
Any recommendations are appreciated!
Right now I only really use blogger to store my artwork and stuff but it doesn't really cut it in terms of a portfolio I can show people who are interested in my work.
What websites do you guys recommend the most for building and hosting a portfolio? I know very little HTML or graphic design CSS stuff so the less code I have to work with the better it is for me, even if that means my portfolio will look a little more generic then it would otherwise.
Any recommendations are appreciated!
Replies
You could also try carbon made, it is simple, its free as well, but you don't have too much control as far as the layout.
http://carbonmade.com/examples
Wow. I must just be doing it wrong, because yours looks nothing like the blogger I know, it's really nice and well done and awesome.
Is it just like one single post with all the images and stuff in it with nice art for the various borders and headers?
And I am checking out that Carbonmade website now.
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryPortfolio
i think i paid $70 for the year including the domain registration. Great tech support and with no knowledge of html i had things up and going in a couple days
Its not a Blog post it just A "Page" I think Blogger lets you have like 5. So I have one page for my gallery and one for Resume then a blog, but the pages are separate from the blog.
Heres the Html Code for the Page you can see its pretty simple.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4618134/Gallery_Code.txt
I just Picture linking. I created a thumbnail in photoshop and then just linked it to the full photo off Photobucket.
The green highlight border was some code that I Googled for. I didn't really write anything just cut and paste a bit. I did it in less than a day so its not hard. Best of all its free, bc I'm one cheap bastard
I just redid mine for college applications. Nothing special. I just kept it simple. I coded html and css but the gallery script I downloaded online for free. If you go to www.w3schools.com they are a good resource for coding.
if you need to dump lots of image in your website,
I just use blog or some other preset ready web.
you can use your own hosting and install the blog.
1.) Make it look great, easy to read and navigate.
2.) Don't use some cookie cutter template that can be easily recognized
3.) Don't skimp on it. Portfolio sites take time to do. Take the time and do it nicely. I would hate to be reviewing a potential employee and see his site and it just look atrocious. It is a direct reflection on you. If you show that you are lazy on your site, chances are you will be lazy at work.
4.) Make sure it goes to the art first. I don't care about what you do in your personal life or on the side. Sure put an about page on there if you want to but have it go to the art first and foremost. That is why people are going there in the first place.
That's a few of the major things I would mention right now. There are a lot more as well but seriously. Spend the time to make a nice site. It pays off. You don't have to be a web wizard to make a nice page. I think mines pretty clean,easy to navigate and works well.
It was all made in dreamweaver and photoshop.
Yeah cutting up thumbnails isn't fun but it really doesn't take that long in the whole scheme of things.
1. Make a psd with the dimensions of your thumbnails you want.
2. Open up an image you need a thumbnail for and copy to clipboard
3. Paste image into the thumbnail.psd file and resize, move, etc to get what you want to show inside of the borders
4. Save as say gun_thumb.jpg and there you go.
Just keep adding to it. You will have all your thumbs in this one file and you can easily add more thumbs without having to manually do a ton of other work and they all stay the same size.
There I hope that helps a little. It's a long post but seriously your site / portfolio is the biggest thing you have that will lead to you getting a job.
You wouldn't go to a night club unshaven, unshowered, dirty, stinky, messy hair and just looking like a fucking scrub and expect to get a lady would ya? NO? Then why would you think the same approach to a website/portfolio would be ok as well.
Good luck...
I've been on the hiring & reviewing end many times. A game artist's website is purely a vehicle for the hiring manager to evaluate your artwork, and your ability to deliver the skills we need if we were to hire you.
We don't care if everyone uses the same template, we're not judging your web skills, we're judging your game art skills. The artwork, resume, and contact info are really all that matter.
If the site design is pleasing to look at, sure that's nice. But it only counts for like 1% of your total "score", if you want to look at it that way. Your artwork itself counts for 90%, work experience something like 5%.
Just make sure you follow the basic advice given here: Your Portfolio Repels Jobs