Private Portfolios - Good or bad?
mod
Hey all,
After a little conversation with some friends (and fellow polycounter), I thought I'd ask around to see what people think about private portfolios. In other words, sending potential employers non-released work. Stuff that is still under NDA. I know I've heard about people doing it before, and I can see ups and downs of doing it, and not doing it.
The plus side - You are able to show your most recent work, which is more often than not, your best work.
The down side - employers may toss your application right out the window because it breaks your current NDA.
But, I've still heard about people doing it, and some friends say they would do it, but I don't know how I feel about doing it. Even though my NDA is pretty low key and I was told I can talk about stuff with friends, as long as I don't blast it all over the internet.
I just want to know your opinions on the matter. I know there are a few recruiters around, so I'd love to hear your opinions.
Cheers
After a little conversation with some friends (and fellow polycounter), I thought I'd ask around to see what people think about private portfolios. In other words, sending potential employers non-released work. Stuff that is still under NDA. I know I've heard about people doing it before, and I can see ups and downs of doing it, and not doing it.
The plus side - You are able to show your most recent work, which is more often than not, your best work.
The down side - employers may toss your application right out the window because it breaks your current NDA.
But, I've still heard about people doing it, and some friends say they would do it, but I don't know how I feel about doing it. Even though my NDA is pretty low key and I was told I can talk about stuff with friends, as long as I don't blast it all over the internet.
I just want to know your opinions on the matter. I know there are a few recruiters around, so I'd love to hear your opinions.
Cheers
Replies
So long as a good faith effort was made to ensure that the private, NDA'd work was protected, it didn't reflect poorly on the artist. If there was not a good faith effort made, then it did reflect poorly.
and ya, im wondering what the best way to set it up is as well. how do you password protect stuff? And whats the point of passwords if you`re sending them to people anyways? if they distribute what you give them, they can just give them the password as well?
I'd also only distribute to folks whom you can trust - I wouldn't give Joe Indie Hiring For Mod Work access to that - but I'm pretty sure any game studio large enough to have an HR department is going to treat it professionally.
My hosting provides a bunch of easy tools for managing users, e-mail, etc through their control panel, but barring that you can usually set stuff up with .htaccess and .passwd files, but I haven't used linux/unix commands to do that stuff since my freshman year of college. You're not going to be able to do this with free hosting on carbonmade or whatever folks do nowadays.
google "htpasswd" for a code generater to transtale your user/password
the acces should look something like,
AuthName "Restricted Area"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /srv/www/.htpasswd (directory to find the passwd)
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
require valid-user
these are just text files, like .php, .html
google it and you will find a bunch of items on it
Be careful though with what you show or if its worth it, cause it could reflect bad on you in the sense of, "this guy just shows stuff thats confidential and what if that happens with our project if he gets hired."
I think its fine to have a private portfolio that you protect, I would never look down on someone who protects parts of their portfolio as long as it isn't a pain in the ass to get into.
I also think its a good idea to maintain a public portfolio with whatever you are free to post.
Their loss. Either they call up every studio inquiring about the status of the art work they receive (pretty unprofessional because the applicant may not have informed his current studio that he wants to change jobs) or they act on an assumption (pretty stupid because you could still have permission to show the art to a limited amount of people, even though other parts of the game are under NDA)
i know some studios frown upon it but as an artist its kinda hard to show someone your skillset if all you've done for the past 3 years is NDA'd work and its the only way you can show them what your made of.