Level design / environmental portfolio
polycounter lvl 3
Hello everyone!
I've been working on a portfolio lately and I'd love to get some early feedback on layout etc. The website is undergoing constant changes and many of the pages aren't completed, but I'll slowly expand it with more content.
http://maurorobertvos.wix.com/portfolio
Currently the home page defaults to recent work
All criticism is very welcome...
Thanks in advance
I've been working on a portfolio lately and I'd love to get some early feedback on layout etc. The website is undergoing constant changes and many of the pages aren't completed, but I'll slowly expand it with more content.
http://maurorobertvos.wix.com/portfolio
Currently the home page defaults to recent work
All criticism is very welcome...
Thanks in advance
Replies
I'd also get rid of the Recent Work page and just put what you think are your best 3 or 4 pieces on your folio.
The Contact page is missing the menu and it's awkward to just have a Go Back link there. Also why is the "Want to se more?" linking to the contact page?
Most images aren't linking anywhere and I know your still setting things up but personally I'd put them there only if there's actually something to see.
Now on the actual content itself. The only page i could visit were the LINE 18 level and the modular Wall and Gate.
On both of them what strikes me most is the lack of material definition. For the Wall and Gate the materials look like a bunch of photosourced textures passed through NDO. From far away they don't look bad but they're not holding up when seen up close.
Still on the Wall and Gate page about the third wide image, is that your reference or is it showing the set used in a context? It's not really clear.
For the LINE 18 level, again the material definition is kind of killing it. Everything looks mostly the same and the lighting is not helping either. It's pretty uniform and color could be used better.
Even on a gameplay driving perspective, you could use area of light to focus the player attention and make the difference in colors actually matter.
Textures are a bit blurry and definetly too black. This probably wasn't your concern as it's listed in the Level Design stuff and you didn't specify if they're made by you or not.
Hope I didn't sound to harsh and it somewhat helps
You're right about the thumbnails, most of them won't link anywhere until the templates are finished.
The third image is the walls after usage and lightmapping. I will have to improve my descriptions as I do wan't it to be clear to the viewer. I wanted to keep the amount of text down but I'll definitely improve that.
The metro level is almost entirely based on materials that come with the editor, so there's not much I can do to change the shading there other than editing the screenshots. But the map primarily has a dark cold blue hue which is exactly the way it looks ingame.
In terms of material definition, what do you think of this page?
http://maurorobertvos.wix.com/portfolio#!advanced-shaders
Except that the police is rather small. I thing nothing ever should be under size 12. This is really personal but i don't like the gradient grey to red it only make me feel like i'm watching at the kind of powerpoint we did when we were 10.
I don't think you should put a recent work section either. Put your best work that's it.
About section is way too small can't read anything, well i could but i don't want to break my eyes trying to. It should be x2 times bigger, and no black text on dark grey. Also you can put the contact form in the same pages.
I'm a minimalistic person so I'd stick with one style in the folio and stay with it.
Have you considered tossing wix and just using artstation? Ive never heard good things from wix in general. Especially since it promotes itself on your website.
Very hard to read some of the text on your site, pump the font size up at least double. The background conflicts with the text as well.
I do not know if you are but I will make a generalization here. You are not a web site designer so do not focus so heavily on adding flashy bits in the site. Focus on your art and yourself rather than red pulsing lines at the top, flashing text, etc. Just my thoughts.
Nice work though, I like the modular fence pieces.
You have a lot of good art here, but the organization is also hurting the presentation a lot. Remember, your site doesn't really need to be complex at all. Actually, the less you have to click, the better.
I'm a big advocate of having one giant scrolling list. It may not be flashy, but it's super useful if you're a recruiter to just be able to scroll down a list to see your entire portfolio, and not even have to think about where I'm going, or do any 'hunting.' There's zero chance that something will be missed, because it's all in one place.
You also want to show your workflow. There's a lot of nice shots of the final result, but we don't get to see your wires or textures or any other breakdowns.
A fairly tried-and-true format is to show a finished shot, then maybe a detail shot of a specific prop or two, and then immediately follow that up with a breakdown of those props or modular pieces that you built to show how you made them (wireframes, maps, shaders, etc).
I'm definitely familiar with artstation and was planning to register there, but I'd still like to have a personal site. Do you guys have any suggestions, squarespace perhaps?
@3dReaper: You are totally right, I am not a web designer and only have some basic html knowledge. I'm definitely going to try and simplify the site, but that will also be based on moving away from wix.
http://jermilex.blogspot.com/
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=artstation#