To web or not to web?
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.
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.
Replies
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.
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.
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.
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.
It pretty much serves what I need... a basic, clean, and straight to the point layout.
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.
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.
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
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.:)
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...
"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.
Poor site with poor content =
Flashy site with poor content =
Poor site with excellent content =
Average site with excellent content =
Flashy site with excellent content =
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.
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.