Toby McCall - Level Designer/Scripter

[tobymccall]

Hi all,

What a great resource!

My portfolio redesign is up at http://www.tobymccall.com.

Any feedback is welcome.

Thanks

[Furyo]

Hey Toby, welcome to our forums

Quick feedback:

- Categories don't stand out as simple small text, try and make them more obvious

- All coming soon things should go out of there until you are ready to show and tell something

- All pictures should have your name and contact info watermarked on them.

- You separate individual projects and team projects but never mention exactly what you did for either of them. Maybe they could be grouped and that description would make the difference

- Drop the contact and resume section and simply put up the LinkedIn, Gmail and PDF icons up on the right instead of your email address. Much more accessible right off the bat, and you can have even less categories

After all this is said and done, drop the about me and you're left with no categories whatsoever, and that makes your portfolio fit on a single page before people that are interested click and discover more. But at the very least they should get the full picture on the home page. The about you can be on your LinkedIn profile.

[2d-chris]

A map called crate factory! Brilliant gets my vote

Seriously I like your work, often here at mapcore it seems like everyone crits your web development skills rather than level design/art I got a job with a simple white page and 5 pictures Youtube videos are a great touch, we don't usually have much time to download peoples maps and try them first hand

[tobymccall]

@Furyo

Great feedback. I really appreciate your time. I'll work on integrating your feedback today.

@ 2d-Chris

Thank you too. It's always good to hear that people appreciate your work. I figured that most people wouldn't download the maps, but we (Guildhall graduates) are told to include the map files. I guess it doesn't hurt to have them up there.

BTW, great work coming out of both of your studios guys. Congrats!

[tobymccall]

@Furyo

I've made the changes you suggested and a few more. I've also removed the team game section because our current game is in production and I don't think a 2D game really does much for my portfolio. All that information is on my resume anyway. What do you think?

[Furyo]

I like many of the changes you've made. You could still drop the Individual Projects title now that there is only one category and particularly because your header already sends people back to your home page. This will help shave off a bit of the down scrolling.

Within projects pages, I like the info you provide, but try and bring the screenies before the description (but after the bullet points info). Draw the viewer in, then let him read the description if he wants to rather than force him to pay attention to the text only to see screenies. If that makes sense at all.

[tobymccall]

As always, much appreciated. I've made those additional changes. I definitely see the point of putting the screen shots up before the descriptions. Do you think the people viewing the site will know to use the header to go back to the home page? I'm trying to make the navigation as simple as possible. It's intuitive to me. I just wonder if others might get confused.

tob

[Corwin]

As always, much appreciated. I've made those additional changes. I definitely see the point of putting the screen shots up before the descriptions. Do you think the people viewing the site will know to use the header to go back to the home page? I'm trying to make the navigation as simple as possible. It's intuitive to me. I just wonder if others might get confused.

tob

I would also think it's intuitive enough, but if you want to be sure, you can always add a navigation menu on top of the project info (above the link to the video), with a link going back, a link going to the previous project, and one to the next. < ^ > You can keep it small too, so it doesn't push your page farther down. It's always a good idea to allow to browse content without having to go back to the index too many times.

BTW, there's a typo in the GOW level description: Uniuqe roller coaster structure. I also think you use that Unique word a few too many times (twice in the Fallout 3 bulletpoints for instance)

[tobymccall]

Thanks Corwin. I'll get that fixed today.

*Just added those < > links and I really like it. Thanks for the idea.

Again, thanks to all. This site is a great resource.