Help: Creating a good looking portfolio

[j0k3]

Edit:

To everyone who are looking for some guidelines of how to create a good portfoliosite I recommend you to read trough this article:

http://www.thejonjones.com/2005/10/07/y ... pels-jobs/

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Original message:

Heya everyone!

The last couple of days I've been thinking of sending an appliction as a leveldesigner to a gamecompany, but I know the competition is high, so I asked a friend for some tips and he said I should improve my portfolio site before sending anything.

Then he gave me a link to this forum and i did a search for Portfolio sites and checked out some of yours, and well, they are all looking alot more professional than mine.

I would appreciate all kind of tips, shall I dump the really old stuff that doesnt really look good? I really dont have much images to show at all, and many of the ones I do have are similar to each other, just different versions of the same map.

http://www.J0k3.se <- there you can have a look.

[Markus]

I'd recommend reading the following article by Jon Jones: Your Portfolio Repels Jobs. Not only that, but I'd REALLY recommend retaking the screenshots in a more artistic manner rather than straight out of the players' view. Good luck, mate.

[j0k3]

Thanks Markus, I will read it right away!

Quality or Quantity? Should I add more pictures from my Source map and remove the old ones?

[Markus]

Quality before quanity, but make sure the quality is good as well.

[Acumen]

the 2 major things that bug me about your site wanting to be a portfolio are

1. its too personal - with you congratulating your sister to her birthday - that should be kept on a different site of yours.

2. your nickname just screams cs-kiddie to me :/ i think if you want it to be professional use your real name. if you don't wanna completely lose the nickname on your site then make it like Joakim 'J0k3' Engfors but in the big header, not just tiny underneath it

imo you have faaaar too much text on your project site. i don't think any possible employer will ever read the entire sand of war story. you gotta keep that way shorter and only give basic info...and its your site, so talk about you, and not michael zacker schmidt

your tetris game and that table....throw it out. im sorry to say that, but that wont get you a job anywhere

considering you want to apply as a leveldesigner somewhere soon, your site just doesnt display that....its under "other work" as if its only of minor priority for you.

i think you should really redesign your page and get rid of lots of the categories. your site is way to busy for a portfolio site. for example get rid of the tagwall, blog, spoon (wtf ? ) stuff.....

contrentate on the leveldesign aspect. you say you have 3dsmax skills. there's only one object that shows basic knowledge of max, on your site, imo. you should offer some more on that, otherwise i would take that out of the "skills-section".

having created a tetris clone isnt something i'd put in my portfolio, even though it may have been hard work for you. neither the "team member of the month" - just sounds a bit weird. fills up the category, sure, but sounds only confusing, in my opinion.

the preview screen of that map...... wow, put it out. what do you expect people to say, when they see that picture ? nobody but you can recognise anything on that picture

http://www.j0k3.se/gfx/leveldesign/sow_nbz201.jpg

i can only see 1/3 of a map here. that image doesnt display any of your work quality

to be really really honest, and even though it hurts, i know, none of the older hl1 maps should be in that portfolio, imo. maybe in an archive-thing but not on the frontpage of your leveldesign stuff.

i think with the kind of work you show on your site it should be hard to find a job, right now. you really gotta jump into the current-gen stuff, at least source should be your choice of media to display your work, since you're familiar with it. i think you have a long way to go. first working on some quality maps for source that are worth being displayed on your portfolio and then building the actual portfolio site.

please don't take that as offending or hurting, it's just that i did a kinda similar thing and applied to many many companies with my kinda low poly model work and got denied because it was just not appropriate in a time where normal mapping came up. so i think its safe to say, you applying with lot of hl1 maps as reference would be kinda the same thing, that is doomed to failure right from the beginning.

but if you decide to go the long way and build a nice portfilio im sure youll end up at a nice company to design levels for in a decent amount of time

[j0k3]

Haha yeah, after reading the article Markus posted I realised my site is not a portoflio site at all, it is my personal website and does not show what I am capable of at all when it comes to leveldesign.

Acumen, ofcourse I do not feel offended or something like that, I wouldnt have asked here if I didnt want your honest oppinion. And I have been thinking about removing alot of the things, I guess I should start with creating (and finish) some stuff before building a website to show them.

I know there are like a million other people who are alot better than me but damn im in the mood to show people that I dont suck

Thanks alot for everything Keep it comming.

I've decided to remake the whole site, but first I must make some stuff that really are worth to show! And for those who havent read that article, do it, its a good one.

edit: the spoon part rocked didnt it? ;D

[Acumen]

haha yeah

i felt like that smiley

for leveldesign advice you're just on the right forums. these guys can really help to push you doing extraordinary work

should be nice to see what youll show here in the near future.

hope to see some of your work here more often o/

[teeluu]

Goddamn j0k3, i always wondered where you disappeared, i'm the former Swifty- from csmapping channel, you probably remember. Welcome to mapcore!

[requiem2d]

Check out our spotlight articles, we have an article dedicated to creating a good portfolio as well as a complete forum section. Good luck

[j0k3]

Heya Swifty! Ofcourse I remember you pal, i signed up at this forum ages ago but the account didnt get activated before today Some guy mailed me and said he fixed it ^^

will do requiem2d !

[alexroyce]

If you feel the need to build stuff fast, I suggest just building single scenes and varying all of them quite a bit to show what youre capable of. Building a level usually takes a month or more (at least for me, anyways). The single scene thing really helped me make lots of stuff in under a month, but make sure that you have some real levels made as a lot of places ask for demo levels.

Frankly I think portfolios should be nothing but:

Contact information

Picture

Picture

Picture

Picture

..

[Zacker]

Welcome to Mapcore J0k3, I am glad you finally made it here:)

The comments here can be a little harsh, but it's worth it.