Seeking Portofolio Crits and Advice .

Mohamed Rotab · Feb 2008

Hello all artists ,
1st of all i want to thank all the great artists here on polycount and all their great contribution to this cool community that helped me alot

Here is a link for my online portfolio :
MyHomePage
I hope i can get any feedback about the website and the art work that i have done so far , and if my work is missing something coz i am having difficulty getting any serious remote tasks . Iam also seeking advice about getting remote contracts .
Thank for you time ,
Best regards .
M.Rotab

Ott · Feb 2008

Are you using Max or Maya?

Wells · Feb 2008

ditch the in-line gallery and just put it on the page. it's creating nested scroll-bars which makes navigating a pain in the ass

on a purely aesthetics level, i'd make all the thumbnails a uniform size.

question for everyone here - how do you feel about posting textures in web portfolios? i've heard convincing arguments either way, curious to what ya'll think.

cholden · Feb 2008

Ok, you're art is very good, but your site needs some serious organization.

Two major MUST fixes:

Portfolio page creates a scroll bar within a scroll bar. This is a major headache for viewing your work. Make it one solid page with one scroll bar.

Secondly is portfolio organization. You may have heard this before, "You're only as good as your worst piece". Well, you have a LOT of wips up here and a TON of images of everything. Additionally, there's a lot of "huge awesome piece" then "cardboard box". That's somewhat lackluster next to a big effort piece.

Now to the more nit-picky stuff:

Home page is useless, remove it. I like the samples section to the side though. This should be what your whole portfolio looks like, but actually working instead of taking me to everything (that's annoying).

"How many smiley faces can you put in your about page?" Is this what you asked yourself before you wrote it or was the goal placed on parentheses in general?

Your top logo/banner is a bit oversized.

Sect: you mean the flats? I'm ok with it for construction purposes, but it's not required. I'm a minimalist. One image for each piece, possibly links to others. If they want more I have them. I hate a cluttered, nasty portfolio.

Ott · Feb 2008

Couple things off the top of my head.

1. WAY too many images, especially for the small props. I would cut them all down into 1 or maybe 2 pages and show them off that way. (7 renders of a cardboard box, 7 of a dumpster, 7 of a mailbox...etc.)

2. No real breakups or organization other than the tables. This forces people to scroll through 100 images before they find the end - consider breaking them up with anything specific from environment art or prop art or vehicles...etc.

At the very least you should break up your high res / WIP / architectural stuff with your game art stuff. Right now it's all jumbled together and I don't know what sorta job you want.

3. Your high res stuff is great, but too many WIP's might be telling people "Someone who can't finish a job", especially if you are looking for freelance.

4. You have trees and skys in your glass that is repeative. Fake reflections can look pretty crappy when you see it more than once or twice. Any sort of reflective surface would be done in the engine, and not normally on your color map.

5. Spec maps need work. No color, and they are much too dark.

6. Make your front page your portfolio, and pput the rest of the Blog stuff on your "About me" page (or take it off completely). I don't have time or interest in hearing about your trip to Disneyland or how long you have been married - I came to see your art. Make it easy for potential employees.

7. Your homepage stretches your images and skews them making them appear odd. Again, I would just take that page out, (especially since it all takes you right to your gallery anyway) but if you insist on it, I would at least get a ratio that makes sense and doesn't distort your stuff.

8. Your "Word" format of your resume is a printer killer. Get a simple Black and White, non-fancy version that an HR can actually print without all the fancy bullshit.

You also need to format it better. Fix some of the tabbed text and get some spacing in there. Right now it reads relatively sloppy.

9. Demo Reel link doesn't work - take it down.

10. At the very bottom of your page you have two lines of Copyright text that essentially say the exact same thing. Pick one and get rid of the other.

That's enough for now

Your work is really pretty good...just gotta tighten up a little more and you will be there.

Mohamed Rotab · Feb 2008

Thank you guys .. much appreciated .. you are all right about these crits .i will merge renders with their crosponding wires and remove repeating pictures . I will fix them asap .
@ Ott > I use 3dsMax .
Thanx again guys for your time this will be helpful indeed.
Regards ,
M.Rotab

Mtg_kirin · Feb 2008

ya seems like all great advice. One real easy fix that I didnt see anyone else mention. Is you home page has 1/2cm gap from top as the rest do not. should be easy to fix. Just makes everything jump up when you switch from home

elnady · May 2008

Nice work mate
great gallery i realy enjoy it
keep it up

Sage · May 2008

Some of the renders in the thumbnails seem off, like the camera is to close to them and it has some sort of perpective . Or you just simply non uniform scaled them to math the square size. At any rate right now the begining page is quite annoying because it's just a splash page but a misleading one to boot. You all all the interesting thumbnails that you think you can click on and you'll get to see the piece of work you are interested in looking and you can except it takes you to another page with a ton of work and then you have to dig for it. I like the first page. I think the header is really cool but it's too big. I would consolidate it with navigation bar, but that's up to you. I think if you just made the navigation the the thumbnails suggest to the user, which is if you click on the clock you see a bigger clock and all the goodies for that one model, if you click on the mail box you see a detailed view of that, etc. Right now when you click on the thumbnails in the first page is a waste of time. Then you have to go digging.

Nice work. I don't see why you have that box in there. I get you can texture well from looking at the big garbage can, clock and mail box. Some of the other props don't match in quality so just get rid of them and replace them by texturing some of your higher poly pieces that are more interesting.

Nice work.

Alex

Seeking Portofolio Crits and Advice .

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