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mutata posted:So hey, as long as we're all talking about portfolios, I have some updates in-progress or ready to go for mine, so it's as good a time as any to get some feedback for a design refresh. I really dig your work~ great site layout, too: I like that you list your software skills in icons. Like being able to see your resume right below the fold; including recommendations is something I never thought to do, but would now like to steal from you. As a person who works at a studio that really likes generalists/people who can wear multiple hats , your portfolio feels quite strong- I think it'd be appealing to mobile studios with 3D titles. Checked out the 2D section of your site too - sweet logos. It's definitely worth taking out some of your weaker pieces, even if you don't have anything to replace them with. Your portfolio already has plenty of great stuff in it. Art directors judge on your weakest piece, and all of the ones I've known have had very short attention spans; better to have fewer higher quality pieces than a lot of pretty good pieces, and some filler/older pieces. I'm shakier on the posters in your 2D section, layla/jim kirby, and the character study of the kid in a bathing suit/flip flops; they don't feel as strong as the other pieces on the page. As cool as that blue-haired space lady is, something about the perspective on her face seems pretty off and it may be worth revisiting if you plan to use that as a the first thing someone sees upon clicking your General Paintings and Drawings section. I'd also love to read more context for your images. Just a blurb about the process, challenges, what your responsibilities were, etc. That way when I'm looking at something like "The Dogcart" I'm not wondering "hmm, was this a low poly challenge? What context were these things viewed at?" and I have a better frame of understanding before I look at the dog and go, "It's not round enough!!" Part of it might be showing things a little smaller, and in context, and the other part is providing the context in writing.
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Oct 9, 2015 05:47
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Well good news. After several years, I am finally unemployed. Which means I can once again resume my attempts at getting back in the industry. Anyone know any developers in the L.A. area looking to hire for QA or junior designer positions by chance?
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Oct 9, 2015 06:48
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eriddy posted:Do small/medium sized game companies hire MBA's often? If so, what sort of positions? I don't have any game development experience but I like the industry. I know the huge companies hire all sorts of degrees but specifically in smaller game companies have you guys found a need for MBA's? Otherwise finance, biz dev, corp dev, marketing are other opportunities depending on your MBA concentration but much more rare or one person at small/medium game companies. Edit: In other news, no elbow surgery for me yet at least! Twice a week physical therapy for 2 months, then another evaluation.
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Oct 9, 2015 07:02
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Mr Interweb posted:Well good news. After several years, I am finally unemployed. Which means I can once again resume my attempts at getting back in the industry. Blizzard is hiring for a Senior QA position if you want to hang out in Orange County.
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Oct 9, 2015 07:03
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:Blizzard is hiring for a Senior QA position if you want to hang out in Orange County. drat, that woulda been nice. I'm in the Valley, so Irvine, while a great place, would be quite a trek. Also, it's interesting to see that that posting requires a gameplay analysis submission. Never saw that before. Blizzard doesn't play around, I guess.
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Oct 9, 2015 20:01
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Mr Interweb posted:drat, that woulda been nice. I'm in the Valley, so Irvine, while a great place, would be quite a trek. We get a ton of applicants who are really into playing games but can't communicate, think about them critically, or identify the basic elements of gamplay. The analysis is a good way of filtering that portion out. It also helps filter out the super strident 'THERE IS ONE RIGHT GAME' types who have one view of the world and aren't flexible.
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Oct 9, 2015 21:26
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It sucks that Blizzard is only hiring freelance for their anim departments. It's a hard move to Irvine just for a freelance gig despite it being awesome.
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Oct 9, 2015 21:32
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ceebee posted:Hey man, I've always been a fan of your site and work. These days now that I'm actively reviewing portfolios the most obvious thing for me would be whether or not you wanted to focus on environment or characters. You demonstrate a good skill in both but it's not clear what you want to contribute most towards, and most larger studios like dem specializationzzz. I think you'd probably do best applying for smaller studios with the amount of variety you have honestly. There's bound to be some indie or mobile studios just waiting for a dude like you to apply. Yeah, specialization has always been a sticking point for me. I understand it 100% and I even will consider that it may be the "right" way to go, but it's always felt incongruous to me personally. As a teenager I learned graphic design and made maps for Quake and I started learning 3D 'cause I liked film and games, but I came across a job listing for Pixar once that had nothing but 2D drawing skills listed as requirements (and "3D experience recommended but not required") so I started taking drawing classes and... I guess my foundations were laid all over the lot so I try to build up on them all over the place. This may be the wrong thing, but it feels true to the kind of artist I want to be. Is that lame? That sounds like something a lame artist would say to dismiss feedback. Haha Frankly, I lean on my past experience listed on my resume when it comes to informing potential employers what I am exactly. I've had 4+ years as an environment artist, so I guess that's what I am! Haha.. I guess it's good I'm not married to the idea of working in AAA. I'd be happy to wear more hats if I had to. By the way, thanks! Hearing you remark that I'm at least *ok* with some character work is really, really cool. Frown Town posted:I really dig your work~ great site layout, too: I like that you list your software skills in icons. Like being able to see your resume right below the fold; including recommendations is something I never thought to do, but would now like to steal from you. These are great points. That 2D/design portfolio definitely has a lot of filler. I did that back when I wasn't sure how quickly I'd be able to find my next full-time gig so I was scrambling to start to get freelance going. I definitely need to clean house and update both that as well as the illustration/design section on my 3D portfolio. Writeups and blurbs I've struggled with. I tried making some explanatory videos in the Infinity section to kind of explain wtf you're looking at, but they are way too long and hidden. I'll look at incorporating some kind of space for text in my next updates. Thanks, friends! Anyone else is free to take a swing at me too.  http://www.worthdayley.com
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Oct 9, 2015 22:06
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Yeah I've always wondered how the whole specialization thing works since every job I've done has never had a fixed role.
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Oct 10, 2015 00:57
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For 3D art at most big studios it's typically: Environment/Prop/Content Artist and Character Artist, occasionally some of the much larger ones will have positions like Texture Artist (Naughty Dog comes to mind). Overall it's mostly just the 2 specializations. It seems like more mobile and indie studios often just advertise as "3D Artist" which I usually assume means they want a generalist. I'd love to not specialize eventually, because with the workload I have, it's not realistic to spend time trying to do Game/Level Design or even FX. All of which I really enjoy doing too, and have at least a basic knowledge of. Most studios with specializations you don't have too much opportunity to dabble in other stuff unless you do it on your own time, which I'm not a huge fan of since I like to have a life outside of work too :P ceebee fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Oct 10, 2015 |
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Oct 10, 2015 02:15
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In my personal work, I like to try to integrate multiple disciplines into a single project. The Piper's Restaurant project on my portfolio is a good example where I found a way to get both graphic design and character design into an environment project. I do freelance graphic design on the side, so as a designer I LOVE video games with integrated graphic design. Stuff like Borderlands' different in-world gun manufacturers all having lore-appropriate brands and corporate identities is like the coolest thing to me.
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Oct 10, 2015 02:55
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ceebee posted:For 3D art at most big studios it's typically: Environment/Prop/Content Artist and Character Artist, occasionally some of the much larger ones will have positions like Texture Artist (Naughty Dog comes to mind). Overall it's mostly just the 2 specializations. It seems like more mobile and indie studios often just advertise as "3D Artist" which I usually assume means they want a generalist.
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Oct 10, 2015 15:25
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Shalinor posted:As has been stated, that'd mean you want a small/mobile studio. Can confirm, just finished my first week as the 4th member of my studio's art team and wearing many art-hats is rad 
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Oct 10, 2015 16:40
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Mr Interweb posted:Well good news. After several years, I am finally unemployed. Which means I can once again resume my attempts at getting back in the industry. I personally would love to have some QA, but my boss considers it an extravagant and unnecessary expense. Maybe eventually enough game-breaking bugs will go live to make him change his mind. 
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Oct 11, 2015 02:20
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Triarii posted:I personally would love to have some QA, but my boss considers it an extravagant and unnecessary expense. Maybe eventually enough game-breaking bugs will go live to make him change his mind. How is that even possible? I mean, he knows Tony Hawk 5 exists, yeah? QA is expensive, of course, and there is diminishing returns on your QA dollar, but to honestly and truly believe that it's unnecessary is pretty ludicrous.
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Oct 11, 2015 03:00
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Yeah I'm wondering how that's even practical. Even the most ultra simplistic games for the DS I worked on took at least 3 of us with months of testing to complete.
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Oct 12, 2015 06:39
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Well it's a mobile game, so if we break something with a patch then we can just put out another patch to fix it, right? Right? Worst bug released so far: game hangs at boot screen, can be played by literally 0 players
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Oct 12, 2015 07:30
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Triarii posted:Well it's a mobile game, so if we break something with a patch then we can just put out another patch to fix it, right? Right? Your boss is all kinds of stupid.
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Oct 12, 2015 15:48
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Triarii posted:Well it's a mobile game, so if we break something with a patch then we can just put out another patch to fix it, right? Right? Presumably you don't develop on iOS then? That would make this attitude even more unbelievable. Unless you've got patches downloading on app launch I guess.
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Oct 12, 2015 15:56
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Mobile, where 1 bad update means the utter death of your game.
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Oct 12, 2015 16:01
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Look at the positives, if there are 0 players, there will be no one left to complain about bugs. Or you can switch to full jobber mode, just there to collect paychecks.
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Oct 12, 2015 16:20
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Fellblade posted:Presumably you don't develop on iOS then? Great place for a bug 
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Oct 12, 2015 18:03
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Fellblade posted:Presumably you don't develop on iOS then? iOS is the primary platform. And if by "patches downloading on app launch" you mean "a popup that tells you to go download the patch from the app store," we've got that! Serenade posted:Look at the positives, if there are 0 players, there will be no one left to complain about bugs. Bug reports WERE definitely down after that patch. Sadly this is the game at the company that we feel is most likely to actually be successful, so none of us working on it want to just give up on it, but the shoestring budget is sure making it hard to get things done right.
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Oct 12, 2015 18:22
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On a lean, cash-strapped team dedicated QA people are an extravagant and unnecessary expense. But doing some QA with the people you have, or using test flight for a limited beta group, is not.
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Oct 13, 2015 05:25
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I don't know if any of you guys worked on colorplay (I seem to remember some here worked in the house of mouse), but after 2GB of download and 3 days of installation, I have NEVER seen my children flip out like that over software. When the princesses jumped up out of the coloring book, I mean, let's just say that was a bad choice for a before bedtime experiment. And that was on a phone, I can't imagine it on a tablet.
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Oct 13, 2015 12:46
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DancingMachine posted:On a lean, cash-strapped team dedicated QA people are an extravagant and unnecessary expense. But doing some QA with the people you have, or using test flight for a limited beta group, is not. I'm doing work at an outsource QA team at the moment. We charge by the day and are so hilariously flexible - like, put in a bug, get a call from devs being like 'yeah, this is hosed can we have a few hours to fix it?' and then say we can hold off testing (and thus using more of their pre-booked time) until later. They keep the time until they're ready, we move onto another project, everything gets shuffled. It's hectic but we do it on a budget and you'd be hella surprised how good we 've gotten at it.
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Oct 13, 2015 20:55
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That's a pretty nice contract QA setup. We have a group of internal QA and then we have our Publisher's QA. But it's definitely good that we have our internal guys, even if they're not really compensated well, most of the time there's room to move up if they're willing to put in some time and effort into adding to their skillset (Producer/Art/Design/Code/Marketing/Community Management). At my previous two studios it was ridiculously hard for QA to move positions. It also helps that we regularly do playtests of our game (daily usually), so even the devs can catch bugs as they come up and fix them ASAP.
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Oct 14, 2015 04:18
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Not sure if anybody knows them or cares, but Raleigh game studio Vicious Cycle let go the vast majority of their staff yesterday, and seems to be headed towards a complete company closing. They were owned by Namco up until last year, when they were purchased by Little Orbit, who apparently did just a super great job.
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Oct 14, 2015 15:09
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Think Epic will try to scoop them up?
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Oct 14, 2015 20:55
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Quick question, how are my portfolio's colours? I finally got rid of my old bloated piece of poo poo website that I clung on to for ages just because I put so much time into writing fancy annoying poo poo for it and ended up making a new one in a couple days. I'm not looking to make any more drastic changes at the moment, but someone said it was a bit off-putting. They're complimentary colours, but they are pretty bright and saturated, which I wanted to stand out a bit from the million black and white portfolios and because I just like those colours. Is it fine as it is, or should I maybe desaturate the background a bit, or just swap the colour scheme out entirely? I made sure the colours were pretty easy to change and experiment with, but it's pretty annoying how there's no tool in Dreamweaver to automatically replace multiple defined CSS values.
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Oct 16, 2015 18:07
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Megaspel posted:Quick question, how are my portfolio's colours? I finally got rid of my old bloated piece of poo poo website that I clung on to for ages just because I put so much time into writing fancy annoying poo poo for it and ended up making a new one in a couple days. I'm not looking to make any more drastic changes at the moment, but someone said it was a bit off-putting. They're complimentary colours, but they are pretty bright and saturated, which I wanted to stand out a bit from the million black and white portfolios and because I just like those colours. It's definitely pretty garish, although the colors are probably not hurting as much as the design itself. I know you don't want to make drastic changes, but that might be a good idea. :\
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Oct 16, 2015 18:23
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This looks like an advertising website for a snake oil pill that will help me lose weight AND make me more attractive to women all for 20 easy payments of $9.95 call now. Edit: Ok, whoa, your website is by far the least of your worries here. mutata fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Oct 16, 2015 |
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Oct 16, 2015 19:00
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Megaspel posted:Quick question, how are my portfolio's colours? I finally got rid of my old bloated piece of poo poo website that I clung on to for ages just because I put so much time into writing fancy annoying poo poo for it and ended up making a new one in a couple days. I'm not looking to make any more drastic changes at the moment, but someone said it was a bit off-putting. They're complimentary colours, but they are pretty bright and saturated, which I wanted to stand out a bit from the million black and white portfolios and because I just like those colours. Dude it is hella offputting. You have some noxious shades of pink and green. When colors oppose each other on the color wheel, putting them next to each other adds energy and intensity. This is bad for somethign that's supposed to fade into the background and let your art shine through. You've further muddled things by adding a bad text effect that makes your text hard to read, and a violently thrashing gif that pulls all the focus away from your art. Finally, you've chosen thumbnails that don't show anything cool for your youtube video or your other images. Your Baman rig is actually pretty loving awesome, getting that nice jelly motion on a 3d rig is pretty impressive, but the thumbnail for the rig isn't showing anythign cool despite being animated. Finally, your work varies in quality pretty heavily - knowing how to be self critical of your work is pretty important, and just jamming every project you've ever made in there shows you don't have a good internal filter. Kill the colors and go for dark backgrounds. Kill the text effects. Kill the GIF. Replace thumbs, cut content. e: oh man watching your demo reel it is gross as hell. FYI, when showing range of motion on a custom rig, you should show motions that are attractive / functional. Thalia or whatever is just as melty as Baman, but Baman is supposed to look like loose flash interpolation jelly. Sigma-X fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Oct 16, 2015 |
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Oct 16, 2015 19:30
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Chasiubao posted:Think Epic will try to scoop them up? Maybe some? Epic tends to be sorta elitist, and these dudes were working in a borderline sweatshop. If they didn't, they'd probably literally double or triple their salaries.
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Oct 16, 2015 20:29
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Megaspel posted:Quick question, how are my portfolio's colours? I finally got rid of my old bloated piece of poo poo website that I clung on to for ages just because I put so much time into writing fancy annoying poo poo for it and ended up making a new one in a couple days. I'm not looking to make any more drastic changes at the moment, but someone said it was a bit off-putting. They're complimentary colours, but they are pretty bright and saturated, which I wanted to stand out a bit from the million black and white portfolios and because I just like those colours. You have dozens of things here that are offputting. Your objective is to look talented and professional, not to be funny. Also, and I don't mean this in a harsh way, but the places you're trying to be funny/wacky? They aren't funny.
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Oct 16, 2015 20:32
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I think I'm being headhunted. In a good way.
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Oct 16, 2015 20:50
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Megaspel posted:Quick question, how are my portfolio's colours? I finally got rid of my old bloated piece of poo poo website that I clung on to for ages just because I put so much time into writing fancy annoying poo poo for it and ended up making a new one in a couple days. I'm not looking to make any more drastic changes at the moment, but someone said it was a bit off-putting. They're complimentary colours, but they are pretty bright and saturated, which I wanted to stand out a bit from the million black and white portfolios and because I just like those colours. Those colors need to go, they're garish, and working against you. In fact, you can do yourself a huge favor and just go on over to Artstation.com, setup a profile, and put your art up there. If you want to get in to the business of being a production artist, you need to realize that your time is valuable. Spending that time loving around in Dreamweaver when a perfectly fine and free option exists already is a waste of your time. Take that portfolio design time and spend it on improving the content in your portfolio. Edit: Also, many of your rollover text descriptions have spelling errors, you might want to double check those. In addition to that, I'd recommend trimming down your content to only your very best work, and getting some pieces in there where you had more than a day to work on them. Gearman fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Oct 16, 2015 |
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Oct 16, 2015 21:37
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Megaspel posted:Quick question, how are my portfolio's colours? I finally got rid of my old bloated piece of poo poo website that I clung on to for ages just because I put so much time into writing fancy annoying poo poo for it and ended up making a new one in a couple days. I'm not looking to make any more drastic changes at the moment, but someone said it was a bit off-putting. They're complimentary colours, but they are pretty bright and saturated, which I wanted to stand out a bit from the million black and white portfolios and because I just like those colours. Nuke it and start again. Really sorry. It's dreadful. I'd start with a boilerplate bootstrap vertical scrolling template and go from there. Ditch the animations! Edit: And just show your best stuff, some of the content really needs chopping. Quality over quantity, friendo. Kippling fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Oct 16, 2015 |
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Oct 16, 2015 22:21
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I think it really needs some of those spinning siren animated GIFs. Maybe an UNDER CONSTRUCTION sign. Also kind of needs more use of the [blink] HTML tag.
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Oct 16, 2015 22:45
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Edit: Nevermind, he gets the picture.
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Oct 16, 2015 22:54
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