New Portfolio site - Interview - 180 TCOS screenshots

    Been quite for a while, I have been preparing a whole lot of things.

    Brand New Portfolio site

    http://www.hourences.com/portfolio

    More in line with my other site - http://www.hourences.com/book/ - less text, and more polished. I have decided to move the whole Skills section out of my resume so it gets more focus, as I am trying to get away from the perception I only make levels. I want to grow as a professional, and take on a growing and more varied set of responsibilities. This new design should help with making that intention known and clear, I hope. We will see how this works out anyway.

    I now have two fully developped websites - http://www.hourences.com/ - with a consistent design and over 90 pages of content and 78 000 words!

    The Chronicles Of Spellborn

    The game has finally been released. It took them 4 years to do. I have designed very very large parts of the game world, and I had a hand (or a full body) in almost all environments of the game and I did a good bit of tech and art direction. Exactly what I did for what parts can be read on my portfolio.

    [Blocked Image: http://www.hourences.com/portfolio/work/spellborn/slywood14.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://www.hourences.com/portfolio/work/spellborn/lower14.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://www.hourences.com/portfolio/work/spellborn/rafta4.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://www.hourences.com/portfolio/work/spellborn/raftb5.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://www.hourences.com/portfolio/work/spellborn/glaiveraft5.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://www.hourences.com/portfolio/work/spellborn/citadel9.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://www.hourences.com/portfolio/work/spellborn/arena1.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://www.hourences.com/portfolio/work/spellborn/greendistrictday11.jpg]

    Unfortunally it prolly looks a little outdated, that is what you get from spending 4 years on a game :/ It is MMO though, which is a bit more forgiving.

    Huxley

    I have added one Huxley level to my portfolio. I actually made 5 or 6, but this is the only one that is in the open beta at the moment and thus free of NDA. It is not my best level, but it is pretty ok. I have made one level for Huxley that I am really happy with personally, so I hope to show that next month.

    This level takes place in a city after it has been struck by an earthquake. The game takes place on a plaza, teared open by three large crevices (forming the boundaries of the playable area). The player can see how the earthquake revealed an underground garage, and a subway tunnel.

    [Blocked Image: http://www.hourences.com/portfolio/work/huxley/crevine2.jpg]

    Interview

    Modcenter (IGN) has interviewed me about The Ball and other stuff : http://www.modcenter.com/cgi-bin/tutori ... ot_id=1343

    Lectures

    I have given lectures to swedish game dev schools, about Unreal and level design. I will continue doing this in the future. I am also interested in more offers regarding this. I am also considering giving private tutoring a go, one on one, if anyone happens to live nearby...

    Silo

    I am gathering support for Silo Unreal and low poly game art support. Silo is a really efficient, slick, fast, and professional 3D modeling app with a very pleasant price tag of only 159 USD. However, it isn't very good at low poly game stuff really. It doesn't support smoothing groups/edges for example, as it is really focused on high poly subdivision based modeling. So I am trying to persuade the makers to add support for that, and for Unreal exporting (ASE).

    Please vote:

    http://nevercenter.uservoice.com/pages/ ... ions/66908

    http://nevercenter.uservoice.com/pages/ ... ions/66892

    http://nevercenter.uservoice.com/pages/ ... ions/66893

    http://nevercenter.uservoice.com/pages/ ... ions/66904

    http://nevercenter.uservoice.com/pages/ ... ions/65188

    Your work is great, your page is not so much (imho!).

    I've a pretty large screen and still I open the page and the only thing I see in the beginning is a big Header and only text (the Index Part). The Header constantly keeps catching my eyes and I have to refocus on the text. There's no welcome message or anything but it's like I look into a Manual "For Informations on how to repair the lawn-mowner goto page 15". If I scroll down I see some thumbnails which have absolutely no context until then. All Button-Texts are without anti-alaising and the font is much to impact and bolt to be read instinctivly.

    The second page is the first thing someone will see then start browsing the portfolio and wow - that's only text. It's great what you have achieved but I open this page and it looks like I could read the Encyclopedia Britanica in the same time I need to read through this page. Esp. the paragraph about chronicles of spellborn is without any space between the lines and reads as one big block.

    Page 3 is nice structured but the AA-missing Bolt-Textes make it a bit clumpsy and the first two screenshots (which I'd center instead of heaving them on the far right because they reflect your skill much better than any text could do) seem to have Doener-King-Filter applied much too heavy.

    The Level Pages sorted by years is a nice idea but I don't think it works out: It's a great showcase for people who know you but if I'm a recruiter I'll click on it and see a bunch of 1999 levels first. It's a cool Idea of showing your progress but it's not so cool if I have to click trough 100 portfolios a day and i stop reading after 1999 and leave with the wrong impression. Also: I've to scroll through all the page. There's no 5 screenshots sum up at the top of the page. This way I scroll down, see a bunch of thumbnails per row, all in the same color-set and it really seems from the thumbnails that the level has no contrast within them (If i take the time to see every picture in big size ofc I'll see much more but the first impression is different).

    Some of your thumbs even give me a 404 - not cool either.

    The books are cool but why do you post them so late in the portfolio? Until I reached that site it took me 10 Minutes and I won't spend that much time if I'm a recruiter.

    And on the js-popup pictures: If I have such a pop up over my screen at least allow me to click on the picture to close it and not have to search for a close button all over my screen.

    Well - great portfolio none the less and I really like it as is, just though I'd share my 2cents

    You can also close the popup by clicking on empty space, anywhere.

    The button text is just text, it is not an image, and I dont know how to AA regular htm text? For that mather the title itself, and all larger fonts are also not AA..

    I know that it is a lot of stuff, but I just have a lot of stuff and there is no way to speed that up without removing stuff, and I am not doing that because my amount of work in itself is one of my strong points. By cutting that down it may become more accessible, but it also loses value so it balances out. No gain imo.

    It is perfectly clear that levels from 1999 prolly look outdated by now, if they are only interested in new stuff, they can just go to the 2007 page right away? There is a menu for a reason.

    If a recruiter doesnt want to spend more than 10 minutes on what I do, I am not interested in hearing from them. I am not going for entry jobs where I would be grateful for every minute a recruiter would have to spare for me...

    There are 20 or so screenshots on the very first page to sum it all up. I don't see why I would need to make a small screenshot summary per level page, and per every other page. That's way more confusing imo. Even more content that way.

    A welcome message would add even more text to the site and it is just wholly unneccy. If you got to this page, you probarbly know what I do. The 20 screenshots + half a page of opening text there are the welcome message. I could possibly move the screenshot to above the little sitemap though. Or split it up in multiple rows of screenshots and add some more.

    I will add pics of book on the index page to make them stand out a bit more. I am having trouble making stuff stand out because there is so much stuff. The Ball is also grosely underrepresented, need to work on that too.

    The missing pics are bad, can you tell me which ones? Its very difficult to keep track of all 600 or so screenshots so I didnt test all of them, maybe 10 percent of them at best...

    Looking into those. I added a small headline thingy on the first page to make it more clear what I do the moment you enter my site. Also added even more pics to it. Will replace some of the less cool ones later when I got more The Ball and Huxley stuff up.

    World domination is set for late 2009. In the mean time I will focus on a small new book, The Ball, and some side projects such as a photo website, and real life.

    Aha, The Chronicles Of Spellborn. It has ben now over 2 years that I was in the studio in den haag. Nice to see its finally out now.

    And cool to see an other silo User. It's good that someon finally tand up for low poly modelling. Silo is a great modelling software and cheap.

    I hope they will add the support.

    Quote from JeanPaul

    Wait why is a Rankin shot posted under the level design section?Did you fucking make that map?

    Of course he did! Bad boy, you didn't read his level design book! Otherwise you'd know it!

    Congratulations hourences, your skills amaze us all! Your a great inspiration mate!

    I gotta agree with some of the posts here on the core about your webpage tho, you should start thinking about a cleaner and better layout and color pallet for it.

    Being brutally honest, those colors kinda keep me away from your website, and they are not appealing at all!

    Yeah I made Rankin

    Thanks all.

    So what colors do you want to see then.

    -It has to be red/orange since those are the colors I have used since ages

    -It has to be dark for the screenshots sake

    So unless I mix in dark blue, which would kind of clash I think, I only have dark red/orange/yellow to work with, commonly known as brown.

    The only thing I could do besides that is just go for gray, but thats prolly rather boring? Havent tried that yet though.

    Quote from Hourences

    So what colors do you want to see then.

    -It has to be red/orange since those are the colors I have used since ages

    -It has to be dark for the screenshots sake

    So unless I mix in dark blue, which would kind of clash I think, I only have dark red/orange/yellow to work with, commonly known as brown.

    The only thing I could do besides that is just go for gray, but thats prolly rather boring? Havent tried that yet though.

    I think the color set is ok, not the best but quite original and recognizable so I understand you want to stick with it.

    If you want to hear my opinion, I think you just use too many variants of these colors next to each other. I'm talking about the lines in the header and the yellow dots and lines in the menu.

    I also think you overcomplicated your header. Something simpler would look better and maybe not have this repulsive effect on people who don't appreciate your color choices.

    I were you, I'd simplify just the header and menu (for instance, the yellow bar under each menu item doesn't seem necessary, you've got other feedback giving features there, and adds to the noise). I'd also ton down the central div background color a bit, I think the brown is too bright (better have more contrast for the shots to stand out and text to be readable)

    [Blocked Image: http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/1678/37475388qr2.jpg]

    Yeah well, It's really hard to point out what really looks odd about those colors, but I guess that It's probably the overuse of brownish colors, or at least the wrong tone of brown. All the colors on your website blend in pretty nicely, but maybe that's it's main problem, it doesnt have any contrast or "zone highlights" if I make myself clear.

    Here's some suggestions of color usage that look way much more appealing, to my eyes at least.

    http://newdawn.paynereactor.com/index.html

    http://fc46.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/ ... no_erd.jpg

    http://fc57.deviantart.com/fs18/f/2007/ ... lbudah.jpg

    http://fc07.deviantart.com/fs23/f/2007/ ... xpture.jpg

    (Forget about the theme of the pics, just look at the colors, and how they "play" with each other on a layout)

    Tastes and opinions are a very complicated matter, what can look awesome to me, may look terrible to other person eyes, so it's all very relative, and this post is just to point out my personal opinion.

    PS. Oh and yeah, those lines on the banner really are annoying and unappealing.

    I will implement a number of those things over the next few weeks, such are much more subtle lines, thanks

    I will also try with some gray.

    Edit: http://www.hourences.com/portfolio/index.htm

    Added very subtle gray in the top graphic and as bgcolor of some small tables

    Downscaled colors of the top graphic a lot

    Dark red instead of dark orange background for the tables

    Removed line in between

    Im not sure about the gray?

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