My portfolio - what do you think of it?

[⌐■_■]

Hi there guys,

I had some free time today and I used it to make a simple and plain leveldesign portfolio. It's simple and very WIP, so please, be gentle on me:

http://www.ripechancewoods.nl/portfoliold.html

Any feedback on this would be very welcome!!

Greets,

~ tomato

P.S: the image size is not discussable since I only have the thumbnails left..

P.P.S: It also says ''dump'' in the browser window, that's going to be changed soon..

[Cybbe]

Hehe. He said dump.

I really have no idea what I'm talking about. A shame about the thumbs...

But it looks fine to me Simple is often good when you're just trying to get the important stuff through. Lessens the amount of noise towards the viewer. That way they won't have to filter through a ton of useless shit to see what you're actually displaying.

[Mazy]

I'd cut all the HL1 maps (or at least the ones you feel aren't an indicator of your current skills). They only add more stuff people have to look at and they wont make you look better. The stuff people say about having less but good quality stuff will get you farther does hold up, since its all about making the impression right away, and what you might have in quantity doesn't always work in your favor.

I found that having around 4-5 maps was the right balance to show off some different stuff. You have way too many similar looking DOD maps going on, I'd cut them :G

/me bounces off

[Zacker]

I got some recommendations:

- Move some of all the history text from your screenshots page to somewhere else. When looking at screenshots I don't want more than 2-3 lines with them.

- Get a link for your screenshots page in your menu. What is up with not having a link to your most important page in your menu?

- Merge the level design and portfolio page. What exactly do want with a level design page anyways if you are not showing off your level design?

- Quit mixing netherlandish, hollandish or whatever it is and english.

[⌐■_■]

Thanks guys,

I'll see how I can change it to the better next time I'll touch it!

[hydeph]

get some anti-aliasing on your banner, it looks super choppy and very bad, the font is fine, just very jagged.

i'd say it looks nice and dandy, altho a little devoid of colour

[⌐■_■]

You're definitly right about the header. I'm still experimenting with stuff, but as soon as I get some things straight that's certainly going to be changed!

Thanks

[⌐■_■]

Ok, I've changed the header and made some other minor changes. I would like to thank you guys for you feedback!

Just so you guys know: I didn't make this portfolio to ''get somewhere''. I just wanted to have a sort of log for things I made in the past few years. I enjoyed making it. It realy gives a good sense of your own progress and it's fun to see how you've changed in the past years. Really, some maps summon old memories!

Anyhow, my site is not about leveldesign. Yes, there's a yet to be filled in section for it, but that will mainly be for the Dutch people (except for my portfolio my whole site is in Dutch) interested in it, since there are too few dutch mappingsites IMHO.

Anyhow, the feedback made me think about a few things and that made me more concious in my choises so that's good I guess

Cheers!

[-Stratesiz-]

Too much scrolling down before you get a glimpse of the maps. Move the text on the side somewhere instead of using such a narrow design or add another link for further info in your menu.

Let the potential site visitor click on the thumbnails, providing bigger and more detailed images. I'm sure you can take new screenshots if you've lost the original image files, unless you never released the maps online~.

Stating that you lost your maps due to formats doesn't really give a very good and representative image of you. In general, the text in the beggining is very heavy to read and repetitive. You should work on that as well.

[⌐■_■]

Thanks! I'll work on that when I have the time! This is very useful!

[Taylor]

Ultimately you’re trying to sell yourself and this isn’t really what your portfolio does. I didn’t read all your descriptions because there’s a lot of it, but the bits I did read actually subtracted from it. This goes especially for the opening monologue: why are you telling people about year-long gaps and breaks in your interest for levelling design? And that you’re not very good at keeping backups? And what does an employer or visitor care about your notebook!? It’s also verging on tl;dr and filled with errors. You really need to cut this down and keep it all relevant and, more importantly, about your good points and ignoring the bad altogether.

This is consistent throughout the document:

This was a map I made for the UBCS mod. Because of the fact I did not have enough time to do leveldesign besides my studie and have a social life, I quit the mod, in friendly conditions.

This map was made as a survivalmap. I wanted it to have a frozen, barren and left atmosphere. I never got to finnish this map. I might have finnished it if my harddrive did not crash. But it did..

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to surmise from this... It certainly isn’t what I was expecting to see; about the only relevant thing is the theme you set for the map. People don’t need to know that you quit this mod and you shouldn’t emphasise things like bad timekeeping and failure to backup work. You also write like your talking casually with someone, opposed to commenting on what’s on display.

The maps look very nice but the screenshots are quite unflattering because you haven’t tweaked the colours and sharpness in Photoshop. Your site is very similar in layout to my portfolio (see signature, though I’m not saying it’s perfect either) but I squeeze in 6 pictures in the space you have one with thumbnails. I know you said this is not discussable but you’d have to give a more convincing excuse – you can, y’know, take more screenshots right? You also have a lot of blank space (definitely emphasised by the black stripes) can’t you widen the text portion of the page more?

Like Mazy said, I’d also consider killing some of the less flattering work; I felt relieved when I cleared out mine, only kept my concussion maps there because people actually play those.

Also: Is there any reason your website cannot open immediately onto your portfoilio? I see a welcome page (with unprofessional (to say the least!) gif images) but nothing of real importance. I’d consider putting this at the front.

Reading that back it sounds a little arsey, which is not my intention. If it helps imagine a at the end of each line!

[⌐■_■]

No sir! THIS is feedback! And I thank you for it.

I will take this all in concideration but I hope not to disappoint your efforts by saying I'm not aiming at anything special here (like 'getting somewhere' with my portfolio). I AM learning a great deal of what a portfolio should be like and for what reasons however. Thanks! This wasn't arsey at all! This is why I like this community so much!

[Zacker]

The maps look very nice but the screenshots are quite unflattering because you haven’t tweaked the colours and sharpness in Photoshop.

Hey, that is just wrong imo. Tweaking the gamma a bit and similiar is fine, but adjusting colours and sharpness in Photoshop is not ok. Your map screenshots should show your map as close to how it looks ingame.

[Taylor]

All screenshots look like shit resized unless you sharpen them ~50%, by colours I did just mean brightness/contrast though.