[Portfolio] Brent Waller, Environment Artist
Now that I'm actively looking for work I thought I would get some critique on my folio, both on the layout and the content. Also to promote my work and get it out there to secure some employment.
Seeing as though most of it is professional work I can't really alter any of the content, just remove it if it's not up to standard. I'd post more info on here about myself and experience but that's really what my folio is for so please let me know if there's anything not explained or demonstrated on the site.
Anyway here's the link
www.potatoz.net
Seeing as though most of it is professional work I can't really alter any of the content, just remove it if it's not up to standard. I'd post more info on here about myself and experience but that's really what my folio is for so please let me know if there's anything not explained or demonstrated on the site.
Anyway here's the link
www.potatoz.net
Replies
Only three things bug me and are pretty minor:
The resume seems a bit fluffied with every detail of the jobs resposibilities being broken down in the first two positions listed.
The second thing I don't like is when I click on the picture I have to wait for the image navigation to load and then look for the arrow instead of just being able to click in a general area on the image to load the next one.
A couple of titles in the games section don't align properly either
Like I said, pretty minor stuff but everything else looks great! I love the amount of work you've got and the variety is nice also. Maybe if you added more personal work in a seperate section but that might be a bit much considering the amount of content that's already there.
Best wishes on the search,
-Gannon
1, good point, I've killed the duplicate fluff
2. I'm using a Flash template and I don't know flash I'm able to modify the code a little with some experimentation so I'll see if I can fix that so the next image arrows are always displayed. Or I might just remove the flash version as suggested, not sure yet as I'm a a quite attached to it.
3. I think I've fixed that now, it was ok for me in chrome but IE was completely busted
I don't have a lot of personal work as I don't get much time to work on stuff at home (I have 1 child with another due any day now) Most of the personal work I have I did during downtime at work, things like the forest scene with the bridge, the gremlins stuff (with awesome gremlins models by Ben Southall) and the sci fi bridge.
it take some time to load everything till u can open an image
good luck with the job hunt and welcome to the bums club
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Employers do.
But what's more important than "it doesn't have many negatives" is that it offers <i>no benefits at all</i> in comparison to the non-flash version.
yea i saw some guidline and quality standards given to artist including lots of artist's renders, sometime including mine too
and beside i always save cool stuff to my personal inspiration folder
so be able to save pics from your port is very important imo
We also need a breakdown on what work you actually did in those scenes. That is a big pet peeve with employers, showing a scene from a polished game without explaining what you actually contributed. Some guys you'll see all this great environment work from gears or something, and then you look at the description and all they did was promotional screenshots for marketing. You need to explain what you did, and have breakdowns if possible, because if they find they made the wrong assumption or were misled when they get to the interview they aren't going to be happy.
On the newer stuff it's hard to separate what's mine alone as I was lead environment artist and had my fingers in everything.
Maybe separate the pics into rows by game or something. Yeah it'll mean having to scroll rather than having a big page of images, but it'll be a bit easier on the eye and able to quickly go through images of a particular title.
I'd ditch the flash unless you can get it preloading images or something, it's a bit of a pain to have to sit and wait while browsing 1 image at a time. Either preload so they can all be flicked through fairly quickly, or just ditch it and allow the good ol open in new tab thingie... which is what I tried to do first, I spam thumbnails with middle mouse button to open heaps in tabs and get them loading, then just go through the tabs browsing the images I've chosen to look at. The only downside with preloading is obviously that EVERYTHING would need to be loaded, and can't jump to images straight away (that's the problem I have with mine, but I have a different layout that lets multiple large versions be shown, check it out in my sig if you want some ideas maybe?).
Some really nice content
WARNING: INCOMING RANTS
THANK YOU GOVERNMENT SUPPORT.. OH WHAT'S THAT? NOW you're signing papers for tax breaks... too late, most of the studios have closed and all the talent has gone/is leaving for overseas.
Pretty pathetic after doing a year of work for a company that contracts for the government, and government departments internally just go, "hey, it's near the end of the financial year, lets waste money doing this project we don't need.".. So they pay company X with Australian tax money, and then never even collect the actual project. The company of course just kept the money.</rant>
Good stuff though overall.
Your a 3D artist, not a web designer. All people care about is your work, how easy it is too view and how easy it is to share with other members of the company. Your website hinders all of that.
Overwheliming amount of work. Scrap about half of what is there. Go through and choose your best screen shots from the various projects and show case those. Get rid of everything that was done before Viva Pinata: Party Animals. You don't need to showcase last gen work just because you worked on it in your career. You are only as strong as your weakest peice and everything after Viva is pretty weak and shows its age. The newer stuff is great so showcase that, not a PS2 game you worked on almost 10 years ago.
Some really nice work but too much is shown and flash site is always a bad idea. Hope you find a new gig soon
I will ditch a heap of the older stuff but I may keep a few of the spyro shots from PS2 era as I think they translate pretty well to current day iOS\Mobile specs and the way the industry is headed in Australia that may likely be the direction I have to head in.
As others have mentioned, BREAKDOWNS where ever possible. I think from now on since all your work will be personal, you should grab the chance to seperate your assets and workflows and present them. Highpolies, bakes, textures etc etc.
As a possibility you may not fall into another Lead Position, its good not to leave any skills unproven just incase you need to jump back into the main line!
I'm only asking, because I'm seeing a LOT of flash portfolios from students, rather than something that's faster, easier, and simpler to maintain/update.
:S
keep it simple man, just add a resume and games link at the top and i think you'll be all good.
i hate all the flashy shit personally as it takes longer to load and it's actually harder to navigate i find.
Make the non-flash version your actual version.
Good environments, but you have a lot going on here. I would recommend going down to 5-10 strong pieces and using the rest for follow-ups.
What I might do with the gallery (part from ditching flash obviously) is have it open up to about 12 images to start with with a date range below, ie 2010-2011 and then have a link to another one which is 2008-2009 etc. That way the newer stuff is up front and immediate and if people want to see more they can click through without feeling overwhelmed.
Speaking of the non flash version, has anyone experienced this bug with lightbox, between each gallery thumbnail is a small blue underscore. I'm using lightbox 1, perhaps it isn't present in the new version.
I've fully implemented the fancybox gallery, you made need to delete your cache if the old flash one shows up still. I thinned out the amount of images a little as well.
I can embed videos into this gallery but I'm not sure if I should leave the videos on the showreel section and leave the gallery exclusively for images.
At the moment in Firefox it tells me there are 80 thumbnails, that means I have to mouse click 80 times to see all your work.
Ideally you want the viewer to see everything with the least amount of mouse clicks.
Personally I would have a nice graphical menu at the start with maybe 5 links (5 clicks) to a single page for each project all laid out, so all you have to do is scroll down.
Also by having all your related images laid out the viewer has better context with the project as they can see it as a 'body of work' in one go.