William Josephy - Level Designer

New portfolio - http://www.willjosephy.com/

So I finally got round to updating my portfolio, ive been pretty absent from the modding scene but am gradually spending more and more time on it. Its hard when you have already spent 8 hours that day working on a game, so in the last 3 days I quickly put this together, its based on the talk by Jacob Minkoff. Feel free to give me some constructive criticism. Im gunna go through and update the pics using the highest settings on my work PC.

http://willjosephy.wordpress.com/

PS is it advisable to post the two games I made during my degree, they don't look amazing but they were made from scratch.

nothing?

I know its not that good, theres gotta be plenty of things to pick holes in.

Quote from Chimeray

I'm still in college and thus not in the industry yet, but I hope my advice can be of some use since I've researched a lot of this when I had to make my own.1) I don't like your frontpage for the fact that it's a "homepage", I'd rather see thumbs pointing to projects, or just put your personal work in my face, as a homepage.

The homepage has 1 screenshot which made me first think that the first page was a showcase page, but... it was not...

Then I was like... ok, so where CAN I find his work? Then looked for some links and there it was, up right.

Basically... It takes too much effort to be able to see your work.

2) Your banner with your name and artwork = awsome.

3) "WILL JOSEPHY | LEVEL DESIGNER The Portfolio of William Josephy, Level Designer at Frontier Developments", seems a bit redundant, you already have the banner for that, right? Not really sure about it...

4) The fact that you can see your contact details on every page is good, but that area is a bit too wide. Your email and the other text don't take that much space so why not make it smaller so you can have larger images of your work?

5) The development shots of Hellingsy are very informative, those clicklinks could've been bigger though since I didn't really see what I was clicking on. And there's too much of it, cut half the frames out so you can make the clicklinks bigger. The steps in between frames is sometimes just too minimal to justify a different screenshot.

6) Inconsistency when clicking on pictures. It took a short while, but then I figured it out, big ones open high res screenshots. Small ones take you to the gallery. I also don't like that those high res versions take me off your website, I like it more when they open up in a different window so I can still browse your portfolio, but perhaps that's just a personal thing.

7) It takes some work, yes... But I'd like to be able to obtain high res versions of all those pictures in the gallery.

8 ) Missing what languages you speak on your resume

Overall, nice work man. I really like the look of Hellingsy and even though I have some remarks on your website, I thinks it's pretty good already. I hope the information proves to be useful, but check with others as well. Alright, cheers.

Display More

Thanks a lot for the feedback.

1. Yeah that makes sense. I was waiting for my unreal map to be finished/the outsider to have a media release to put stuff there, but I guess theres no harm putting more of my current stuff there.

2. thx

3. yeah I got rid of the second bit. I need the first bit because thats what appears on the tab thats open. Thats just how this wordpress theme works dunno if or how I can change it, ill check around on the net.

4. Again thats a word press thing, but ill check around on the net see if theres anyway of defining its width.

5. That's a good suggestion, ill try removing some of the steps and seeing if I can make the thumbnails larger.

6. Ive been looking for a plugin that makes the image popup and fade the rest of the window rather than redirecting to another page. Hopefully I can one that does it for galleries as well, then I should be able to have some consistency.

7. I think once your in the gallery if you click on the image it should take you to a blank page with the image? but again thats not very good, so hopefully I can get a plugin that sorts that.

8. well spotted.

I don't get what you don't get.

Perhaps im looking for another job, perhaps I have a site to get head hunted. There are lots of reasons to have a portfolio.

So im taking new screengrabs of my work, what would people say makes a good design screenshot? Keep in mind these are interior locations mainly with ceilings at about 4 meters.

So ive redone my entire portfolio, the site is now down and ive created a 3 page A4 portfolio instead. I didn't want to go for straight screenshots for a design portfolio because that literally shows nothing, so ive added short annotations to it. I want this to be as short and to the point as possible, the same reason my CV has been cut down to 1 page. Heres the third page (can't show you the first two they are outsider work). Please give me your thoughts, somethings about page 3 in particular im not 100% happy with but you can't work on something forever.

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/Jhr07.jpg]

Quote from insta

Is that the scale it will be? Because I think it's a bit too small, and the text is hard to read as well. Also, maybe not go with a stylized font, something easier on the eyes would be a good choice.

Nah I scaled it down by quite a bit, the actual size is 2400x3600.

Yeah I wasn't sure about the font, but I kinda wanted it to look like they were hand written notes. I might change that.

Quote from arhurt

Its clear that these are not annotations that you made while planning the game/levels presented, and rather some tidbits of info you are adding to further explain your role and work on the projects presented. As such I think a little bit more context as to what the project is and what your role was would help us understand better the meaning of the annotations. For instance, did you design the minecart minigame as a whole? If so your annotations are quite good and convey the basic mechanics of the game. But if your role was of level designer, I think you would benefit more with either a sketch of the level with your though process while designing the level itself, something like:

"here in the beginning there are lots of coins and few obstacles" "this section has several obstacles to make for the most challenging part of the level" "at the end there are small pockets of very valuable coins, to reward players that have gone through the challenging part with a moment of relief".

Again, if you designed the mini-games, then your annotations are spot on explaining the basics of each gamemode, but I still think you should make it clear you where the game designer in those.

And in the personal work section, again, I think just a little context might do wonders to make the annotations meaningful.

Crysis: design of a single player level

Day of defeat: design of a multi-player level

Hal-life 2: environment and atmosphere scene

I'm not sold on the format you have chosen, doyou mean to print and take it with you on interviews or send the document in a PDF? I see value in those, but I'd still try to at least have something online, unless you are not actively looking for a job =)

Display More

Indeed they are meant to explain the basics to people that might have no idea about these games and mechanics.

Yeah I see what your saying about the role. I had total control over the levels in kinect disneyland adventure (as far as Microsoft/constraints would allow it), I hope that that is explained in my CV, I may add an explanation to that effect in the portfolio as well though.

For the personal thing I was thinking the exact same thing last night after I put it up.

Im going to put all three pages together into a PDF and email it with the CV and cover letter. The problem is that I legally can not put page 1 and 2 up online, which severely limits my portfolio.

Thanks for the feedback.

Quote from Puddy

I don't think the notes provide that much insight either. I would go for ordinary screens and use an accompanying, not necessarily long, article explaining your work method and reasoning imho.

I wanted to steer away from an paragraphed notes etc. I think to get an interview you want your portfolio and CV to be pretty to the point, the interviewer probably has to view dozens of CVs and won't spend ages reading your blurb. I'm confident when it comes to an interview I can give a lot more information as to why something might be the way it is. Its why I like environment artist portfolios so much, they are just to the point, obviously with design that's harder as you need to provide some explanation of what you are showing. What I'm attempting (succeeding or failing) to show is a minimal amount of reading that properly explains something.

So have been working on updating my portfolio, still have more projects to add but wanted to check if you guys think the format is alright.

http://www.willjosephy.com/