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Please give me some critique on my Folio :)

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JGreentheRookie polycounter lvl 10
3dgreen.tumblr.com

If you just graduated what type of experience should you list? Should you wright anything at all in that section?

Do student projects really count as experience?

:)

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  • djoexe
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    djoexe polycounter lvl 7
    You made really good progress since i've seen your stuff at the beginning, great job so far.

    One thing though, is you have sometime too much edge loop where not needed. Your normal map can handle it pretty well instead of adding those useless loop and pumping out your tri count.

    I would also get rid of the coming soon teaser thing...that is not relevant at all, it's not a full game retail and what not that we are eager to see, it's just your portfolio. I'm not seying this in a negative way but just give you my point of view regarding this.

    Great stuff man

    Oh and one thing you should focus more is your material definition. The swat truck is looking good, but most of your pieces don't read well and are too dark in their diffuse.

    Keep it up
  • Bartalon
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    Bartalon polycounter lvl 12
    Here are my thoughts in no particular order:

    • 1. Resume
    You really need to reformat your resume. At the MOST it should be one page long. You have a lot of wasted space, mostly in the form of a large font size and spacing between lines. Your list of skills can also be converted into a table. You can get what you have reduced to one page, trust me.

    Order the content from most to least important. I would suggest:
    a. Name/Title/Contact Info
    b. Skills & Software
    c. Work Experience
    d. Experience

    The Profile section could probably be removed. A resume should be to give the viewer a rundown of your skills, proficiencies, and qualifications. You can talk about yourself on your Website and during an interview.
    Do student projects really count as experience?
    If you have no other previous experience, this helps to fill in your resume and show that you were actually active during school. Replace these as soon as you can as you gain more experience.

    Your name appears twice on your resume which is redundant. I would get rid of the one under Personal Data.

    Consider moving your title (3D Environment/Prop Artist) to its own line so your name is easier to read.

    Date of Birth and Nationality are not necessary.

    • 2. Page Layout
    Again consider moving your title to its own line and making the font size smaller.

    The link to your resume takes me away from your Website. Consider having this link open in a separate browser tab. Same with your blog.

    Pretty simple layout which is nice. Top to bottom, you have your business up front without having to jump through any hoops or splash pages to get to it.

    The image of your SWAT van is as wide as my full screen 1920 pixel monitor. Because of the scroll bar on the side, it still doesn't actually fit my browser window. Additionally, you can't expect someone to be viewing your Website with a full-screened 1080p monitor. A left-right scroll bar should be avoided, so you should consider scaling this image down, or breaking it into two separate images.


    • 3. Content
    In my opinion you should avoid WIP or "Coming Soon" content. Unfinished content doesn't have a place in a portfolio, leave that for your blog to show off.

    I personally think the Abandoned Bathroom is your weakest piece. The poly count is very high for what it is, and a lot of the surfaces look relatively flat. That said, it definitely looks abandoned but I think there are too many discrepancies to showcase this first in line. The red pipe at the top just seems slapped in with no thought or purpose, not to mention pipes probably aren't routed that way in a real plumbing system (if it's based on a real world picture then disregard!). The grass is obviously planar and some of them don't line up with the cracks in the floor tiles. Not sure if mushrooms would grow in an environment like that without some sort of organic matter in the mix, like a layer of sludge or pile of dirt or something. The plant above the toilet is surprisingly alive for the bathroom being abandoned.

    The poly counts of your assets are way too high. You have a lot of extra edge loops that could be removed and, with normal maps, there would be no visual difference at all. The edge count of the pipes in all of your assets could probably be cut in half or more. 8, 10, or 12 sided should be plenty depending on location and silhouette. I don't think any of those assets should be over 2000 triangles if I had to throw out a number.

    The SWAT car and computer terminal should be bumped to the top of your Website. They are much more impressive pieces. Nice job on those!

    When you finish your Abandoned Town, you should replace the Abandoned Bathroom with it. Your skill is clearly way beyond what it was when you did the bathroom scene, so I don't think it has a place in your portfolio for much longer.

    Hope this helps
  • ScottHoneycutt
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    ScottHoneycutt polycounter lvl 13
    I agree with the portfolio comments above. The bathroom materials aren't well defined, but the SWAT car and computer are much better. It's really disappointing when you click a folio link and immediately see COMING SOON right in front of you, but I'm sure you will get that piece done and placed in there eventually.
  • lamar McHaney
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    lamar McHaney polycounter lvl 9
    First, I will answer your questions; after graduating you should put any type of experience that is related to your field or closely related, even something simple like you tutored people in Maya or Max. Student projects are OK, employers expect you to work on some student projects while you're in school and it's still considered experience.

    Now, when it comes to you portfolio you,

    First, get rid of the coming soon image. The first thing I want to see when I come to your site is your completed work. I don't want to see a coming soon image. Kill it, you only put finished work on your portfolio site. If you want to put things like coming soon or WIPs get a blog.

    Second, Your bathroom seen is not bad however you need to show your texture sheets and optimize your polys better. I can tell you right now that you can kill most of those polys on the toilet bowl and still get the same quality. The truck also has polys that can be reduced.

    Third, as djose you need work on your material definition. This is something I had some problem with myself but you can study the PBR theory guide on the Marmoset site. Study and practice, you'll get it in no time.

    Fourth, your resume is 3 pages and one page has nothing on it. Make your resume one page and make sure to fit everything on the page. You want the employer to see your experience quickly without scrolling.

    And Last, Your presentation needs a bit of work for your website. You don't have to do anything fancy but it does seem a little bit boring. I would say Google some environment artist websites to see how they display their work.

    All in all I think its a great start, I was in the same position as you once and I'm giving you the same knowledge that was given to me.
  • JGreentheRookie
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    JGreentheRookie polycounter lvl 10
    Thank you for all the great CC. :)

    I'm working on all the points you guys pointed out ATM. :)

    I also cut the bathroom scene out.

    Cheers
  • Ademm
    djoexe wrote: »
    You made really good progress since i've seen your stuff at the beginning, great job so far.

    One thing though, is you have sometime too much edge loop where not needed. Your normal map can handle it pretty well instead of adding those useless loop and pumping out your tri count.

    I would also get rid of the coming soon teaser thing...that is not relevant at all, it's not a full game retail and what not that we are eager to see, it's just your portfolio. I'm not seying this in a negative way but just give you my point of view regarding this.

    Great stuff man

    Oh and one thing you should focus more is your material definition. The swat truck is looking good, but most of your pieces don't read well and are too dark in their diffuse.

    Keep it up

    Agreed. Looking good especially the computer. You do have too many edges though. Some of them just run all the way around when they dont need to. The nice thing about hard surface game meshes is it is really easy to terminate edge loops on flat surfaces, no need to carry them all around!
  • xChris
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    xChris polycounter lvl 9
    I think the your page needs to be formatted a bit more nicer, it's a little too much when I first looked at it. Maybe place the finished image at the front page, and than the textures etc. on a different page?

    Here's a link to one of my professors blogs from school, he worked at Midway for awhile, some of the stuff is pretty useful about portfolios

    http://methodj.com/quick-portfolio-site-tips/
    http://methodj.com/game-art-portfolio/

    Someone already mentioned this, but make that resume into 1 page!
  • JGreentheRookie
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    JGreentheRookie polycounter lvl 10
    just updated the page.

    Please tell me what you think. :)

    I must add, I have no idea how to make a second page.

    I would prefer to have the texture sheets on a second page.

    And the layout would look like this.

    the swat truck texture sheet would lead u to the textures.


    O5KUFop.jpg

    Is it possible to write page 1 and 2 in a single html file or do i need 2 seperate files.
  • Bartalon
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    Bartalon polycounter lvl 12
    Hey, looks much better now! I would still recommend putting Education at the bottom of your resume, it's not as important as work experience and relevant skills.

    You could create a link to a texture breakdown, but I would avoid using an image to do so, especially if it's the only clickable image in a stream of pictures, it could be easily missed as a navigation point.

    A common format would be to have a separate page for each piece so the projects don't blur together half way down the page. You might be able to keep everything a single HTML page with some super fancy coding, but I'm no expert.
  • JGreentheRookie
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    JGreentheRookie polycounter lvl 10
    I just updated my page. Let me know what u guys think :)

    How do u like the About page?

    i would appreciate one last impression/critique from u guys before sending out applications :)
  • JGreentheRookie
  • Bartalon
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    Bartalon polycounter lvl 12
    I think you might be able to get away with not having an About section at all. The description sounds more like part of a cover letter than an "about you."

    Other than that it looks good. Nice to see you trimmed your content down to your best work.
  • AlexCatMasterSupreme
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    AlexCatMasterSupreme interpolator
    I think you need an environment, more interesting and non generic props, as well as more complex models, your high polys are not super complicated models and don't show off all your skills. I think your texturing is pretty good and one of your strongest points.
  • JGreentheRookie
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    JGreentheRookie polycounter lvl 10
    Just updated the site, got my environment done. :):)

    final thoughts welcome.
  • slosh
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    slosh hero character
    Nice work man...I think it might be worth the effort to make those trees in that env you created. Shouldn't take that long and then you can really say you made everything. Also, when I click on the environment, a new window opens...that's fine. But when I click the back button in that new window in your env page, another new window opens going back to the main page. Now, there are 3 windows open...very annoying. Either have it so new windows never open, or so that the env window just closes and puts you back the original window with the main page.
  • JGreentheRookie
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    JGreentheRookie polycounter lvl 10
    slosh wrote: »
    Nice work man...I think it might be worth the effort to make those trees in that env you created. Shouldn't take that long and then you can really say you made everything. Also, when I click on the environment, a new window opens...that's fine. But when I click the back button in that new window in your env page, another new window opens going back to the main page. Now, there are 3 windows open...very annoying. Either have it so new windows never open, or so that the env window just closes and puts you back the original window with the main page.


    Thanks :) will fix that.
    I did create one tree. The one in the far front which I duplicated all over :), but I know what you mean :)
  • AlexKola
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    AlexKola polycounter lvl 9
    I think the text on your site could use just a little typography to make it looks not so Wordpaddy. Have a look at the text at sixmorevodka.com to see what I nean. Nice environment work tho, keep going.
  • JGreentheRookie
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    JGreentheRookie polycounter lvl 10
    AlexKola wrote: »
    I think the text on your site could use just a little typography to make it looks not so Wordpaddy. Have a look at the text at sixmorevodka.com to see what I nean. Nice environment work tho, keep going.

    what would u suggest
  • BagelHero
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    BagelHero interpolator
    Just fyi, on my phone your site turns up as a blank tumblr blog. You might want to look into breaking the automatic mobile redirection, or seeing if you can replace the redirect with your own mobile code. Not a good look.
  • JGreentheRookie
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    JGreentheRookie polycounter lvl 10
    BagelHero wrote: »
    Just fyi, on my phone your site turns up as a blank tumblr blog. You might want to look into breaking the automatic mobile redirection, or seeing if you can replace the redirect with your own mobile code. Not a good look.

    thanks for pointing that out :).



    It was just a on/off switch i had to change, should work now.
    Please let me know if it works for u :)
  • BetaRazer
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    BetaRazer polycounter lvl 6
    I'm glad to see you've made a lot of changes from the above comments. However, there's a few more changes you could make here.

    I like a lot of the work you've produced, and you've cut out the weakest from the portfolio. The Thompson 1928 looks really nice and realistic, but it needs a seperate web page of it's own. Otherwise I have to scroll all the way down the index/home page just to see the Thompson to it's end image. Give it a page of it's own, and make the images tell a story. Start with the beauty shot, then a few different camera angles, then wires & texture sheets etc.

    Same with the Computer Terminal. Really nice, but again; it needs it's own webpage. Maybe keep all your props in that one page.

    Your Resume; it loads up a dropbox page. Slightly irritating to some. Suggestions wise; use a link leading the viewer to a PDF instead, without opening up a new tab/browser. Then anyone could still read it, all without ever leaving your website.

    And try and maximize the space on your page a bit more. The top left or right hand corner could have some details on it; even show off the portfolio link first. That might score soem point during a recruiting process. Otherwise, the formatting is good. Clear and concise, no waffle at all. No problem with that.

    Otherwise, keep it up =]
  • JGreentheRookie
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    JGreentheRookie polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks for the critique :smiley: 
  • JGreentheRookie
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    JGreentheRookie polycounter lvl 10
    Just updated my folio :) please let me now what you think
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