[General Discussion] - Your Portfolio Repels Jobs

[Jon Jones]

Hey guys, I wrote another article on being a smarter artist when it comes to building a killer portfolio. Let me know what you think!

Direct link: http://www.jonjones.us/2005/10/your-portfolio-repels-jobs.html

---

Your Portfolio Repels Jobs

I look at game artists' portfolios on a regular basis. These websites are usually designed so poorly that I close my browser out of disgust. They're even bad enough to turn away potential employers, regardless of the quality of the artwork. Tragic!

Most artists make mistakes like these, but fortunately, they're very simple to understand and correct. I've come up with a quick and easy way to help artists think about how to improve their chances of employment by building a better website.

The core truth here is this:

Usability is just as important as content.

A portfolio website should be a simple, effective, uncluttered experience from start to finish that leaves a lasting impression on the visitor. An incredible number of websites fail to do this. And it's always for silly, completely avoidable reasons.

Your website should be focused on one purpose, be easy to use, and offer a clear line of action. Here are three simple questions to ask yourself:

1) What's my website's focus?

Your website exists to get you a job. Its only purpose is to showcase your art and present your contact information for potential employers. You should make your art and contact information so fantastically easy to see that someone find it accidentally. If someone wants to talk to you about a job, don't be hard to find.

Include your name and contact information at the top of every page of your site.

For example, any visitor should understand clearly that you are an environment artist and you intend to get a job as an environment artist. Anything else is confusing. Silly MS Paint drawings, photos from trips you've taken or a blog about your daily life have nothing to do with that, and should be removed. These things are not added value. A portfolio is not a personality test! That's what an interview is for.

The second common mistake is making a website that's difficult to navigate. So ask yourself this:

2) Is my website easy to use?

You might be thinking "but I'm an artist, not a web designer!" This is a poor but common excuse for making a bad website. On the other side of the coin, many artists that are web designers make their website so flamboyantly artsy that it's practically impossible to use.

The first thing a visitor should see on your website is your art. First impressions are formed in an instant. Attention spans can be shut off in an instant. Your top priority should be to make that first instant be compelling enough to keep the viewer looking and to give them what they're looking for. Don't tease... satisfy.

After all, did I go to your website to look at a splash page, or art? The faster I can see your content, the better.

Forget splash pages and news pages or any other starting page that isn't putting art directly in my face.

Your portfolio's highest purpose is to show off your art quickly, easily, and with the minimum of hassle. A good portfolio should be so easy to navigate that someone could view your work accidentally.

Anything that doesn't support that basic goal breaks your focus and should be removed or relocated. Make another website for your personal stuff if you have to, but keep your portfolio clean and relevant. More isn't better.

If it doesn't help show your art faster or sell you as an artist, it shouldn't be there.

Here's a quick list of aggravating features that are common in portfolio websites:

No image branding - Every image on the entire website should have your name, email address and website URL on it. People save images off of portfolios and forget where they got them. If one of your pieces of art finds its way to a studio, how will they find you? Make each image stand on its own, removed from context.

Vague thumbnails - A thumbnail exists to offer a relevant preview of a larger image. Yet I see thumbnails of random parts of a model that give me no indication of what I'm about to see. If I'm looking for medieval characters, how does a grainy thumbnail of the bottom of his foot help me find it?

Multiple layers - It's as if bad portfolios follow a common navigation pattern:

Splash page -> News page -> Portfolio page -> 3D Art -> Characters -> Man with Axe thumbnail -> Man with Axe enlarged.

Do you expect me not to hate clicking through seven pages just to see your art? Flatten your site. Put the art in my face and show me the quickest, simplest possible way of navigating. One page full of art is better than any of the multiple layers shown above.

Multiple popups - A splash page shouldn't even exist, much less stay open when you click on it to enter the website. Neither should a thumbnail opening an image in a new window that I have to manually close. I've been to websites that open as many as FIVE WINDOWS. That's inconvenient, wasteful, and downright hostile toward the visitor. Be a courteous host.

Poor navigation - Every page should offer buttons to go to the next image, to the previous image, and to return to the main page. They don't pop up new windows unless it's for an enlarged image, which should be extremely easy to close to return to the thumbnails. It's convenient, it's considerate, and it's easy to implement. It also encourages them to keep looking forward at more art instead of accidentally closing your site altogether. Keep guiding them along a path.

Small images - Small images convey nothing. Keep it large enough to be easily seen and understood. Also keep in mind that the average screen resolution is usually around 1024x768, so make it reasonable from that standpoint. Also, remove as much dead space as possible. Nothing irritates me more than loading an enormous image that you only used ten percent of.

Bad lighting - Why would I hire you if your work is so badly lit for me that I can't even see it?

Obscure web plugins - Don't make someone download a plugin to view your website. This will ruffle some feathers but I find Flash websites to be obnoxious and unnecessary, and most aren't worth the time to navigate. There are a lot of people that don't even have Flash. Do you want to risk losing a great job opportunity over that? Just keep it as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Hiring managers look through dozens of portfolios every day. All the portfolios they see blend together. It's just a job. You are either on the "Portfolios To Review" list, or you're not. A poorly designed website makes this poor hiring manager's job a little more annoying. Accordingly, he is less likely to invest the time into looking at your entire portfolio. And he certainly won't read your blog. Is he hiring a Metallica fan or a level designer?

Imagine that your target visitor is a tired, indifferent hiring manager whose only desire is to find the shortest path possible to looking at your art. Nothing else matters. So design your website for him. Give him what he wants. Remove what he doesn't care about. The clearer your message, the better.

For example: "I am Phineas Fogbottom, environment artist. This is my art. Email me at mastapimp420@yahoo.com" (mastapimp420@yahoo.com)

That's all he needs to know. Keep it simple.

3) Do I provide a clear line of action?

This is also important. Sadly, good art doesn't sell itself. It's one thing to present art, and it's quite another to funnel them toward offering you a job. First you serve up the art, and then you show them that they should offer you a job, and here's how to contact you. The easier this is, the better.

Here are two huge mistakes people often make along these lines:

No stated desired position - The desired position usually isn't obvious. Most artists feel the need to put all their 2D art, 3D art, animation, illustration, paintings and even poetry on their website. That makes it impossible to divine what kind of position you're looking for! Be specific. Companies do not set out to hire generalists, they hire specialists. (Whether or not they ultimately USE them as specialists is another matter entirely.)

If they're hiring a character artist, seeing you say "I do everything!" isn't going to make them think of you for the job. It's easy: Be the guy they're looking for by being specific. If they're looking for a character artist, the more ways you can match the pattern they're looking for, the better. A good place to start is by saying "Hey, I'm a character artist." /images/graemlins/smile.gif

No contact information - If I like your work, how am I supposed to contact you? Keep it visible at all times and don't make them hunt for it. If you're concerned about spambots farming your favorite email address to add to spam lists, make a new email address solely for job solicitations and just deal with the spam.

That's all there is to it, really. It's simple enough if you think about it, but that's the problem: Most people don't. If you start thinking about it, you're already ahead of the game!

[MoP]

Very useful article, Jon. Thanks for writing this up - I hope everyone takes note. I know my own website needs an overhaul, and I'll definitely be keeping this stuff all in mind when I redesign it.

I'm also rather impressed at how you made the bullet points appear in the green column on the left of the forum /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[JDinges]

Great write up Jon. Very concise and to the point.

[ewooz]

Really helpful insights there Jon. Hmmm, I felt guilty in many ways. Got to make my website more clear I guess.

[Striff]

Very insightful read man, thanks for posting. =)

[bearkub]

Excellent article Jon and well written. If you don't mind, I am going to give this a stick.

[Mark Dygert]

Great write up. I think you hammer a few points home which sounds like you get pretty frustrated with certain types of portfolios, understandable when people don't keep things easy to nav. Some (not much) frustration came thru in the write-up. It could be a good thing though; if people see your frustration and understand that alone might cost them the job hopefully they will be able to make the needed changes.

K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) whatever you do and life is always easier, for yourself and others. It's not something people tend to think about when putting a portfolio together. Normally they start out with something really complicated and they need to remember the position they are filling is not for convoluted web design, its for an art job. Show art, not convoluted web design. You give some great ideas/feedback most of us never get to hear. I never thought about someone trying to track me down from an image someone else saved off my site.

Normally the only kind of feedback we get is from an empty inbox or blank answering machine, so this kind of stuff is gold. Thanks a bunch! I have some rework to do =)

[poopinmymouth]

Nice write up Jon. These are great tips.

Another note to remember, which parallels the "flattening" that Jon mentions, is that most HR people decide whether to close the window, or stay for further viewing, in the first seven seconds of viewing. That's why having the fewest clicks possible is a good practice to have.

If you are actively applying for jobs, aim for a one click experience. Typing in your URL, or clicking on the link you provided in your email, should take them directly to your page of art, and one click on a thumbnail should have them viewing the full blown image.

[Sectaurs]

Excellent points all around. Glad to see the title doesn't refer to a specific portfolio /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

how important is having a unique addres/paid hosting for portfolios? is having some sort of free hosting just scream 'don't hire me' ?

[MoP]

I'm currently working on a redesign now, which keeps the general look of my existing site ('cos I like it!) but makes everything easily accessible and viewable.

Oh, and it's going to be entirely done with CSS and fully XHTML 1.1 compatible!

[Jon Jones]

Thanks, everybody! /images/graemlins/smile.gif) Glad to see people are digging it. I love writing these.

Sectaurs, I'd suggest getting your own hosting, and getting a very simple URL. One that's easy to type, easy to remember, and can be communicated orally without misunderstanding the spelling.

[Rhinokey]

hosting is dirt cheap nowdays, and it comes off as you are serious in what you do

[Kevin Albers]

Thanks a bunch! Great writeup, indeedy. You bring up a couple of excellent points I hadn't thought of.

[kleinluka]

Agreed with everything that was said. Nice article. Will be helpful. May I post this on an other forum? The more people read and understand this, the better /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[ScoobyDoofus]

Honestly, all that stuff was pretty common sense to me. Not that it doesnt help to hear it.
I also really wonder about some of those site designs I've seen.

[Jon Jones]

kleinluka, absolutely. You're all welcome to repost it just as long as you can include the direct link back to the page at the top of the article. I'm all about spreading the word and educatin' where I can. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Scooby, I agree. It is common sense stuff, but it's so common and so obvious that no one thinks about it. /images/graemlins/wink.gif Most people won't take the time to write these things down, and having a simple framework like this to check your portfolio against can be helpful and prevent overlooking a point or two.

[oXYnary]

Like the bullet list.. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[shotgun]

where is arshlevon?

i have to say, at the end of the day mate, whats gonna get your name out there is your portfolio, not your presentation. imo its better to spend your time getting better and let your work speak for itself rather than wasting so much time on the presentation. it just doesnt really matter.

that aside, tho, its good writing shine.
now lets see some fucking models!! /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[MoP]

shotgun: What? "wasting so much time on presentation"? Maybe you're missing the point! It really doesn't take any effort at all to present a nice portfolio. In fact it probably takes less effort to make a more effective website than it does to make a more intense, convoluted one.

To be honest if you've spent ages working on your models, textures, drawings and whatever, you'd be stupid to do them the disservice of making a crappy site to put them in.

[shotgun]

no, you are absolutely right, it really doesnt take much at all like you said.. i dont see why this subject has to be discussed to death i mean how many portfolio websites have you seen recently that were so bad you just closed the window?

like, geocities popup banners with some horrible midi blasting our of your speakers.. most pages are 'okay', some less some better, it doesnt really matter. just get your work done, get it good, and shut the hell up.

which is exactly what i should do!

[Daz]

I might be wrong, but I believe that what shotty might be driving at is that if your work is absolutely kickass awesome, and that along with a resume on your site, it speaks for itself, and presentation isn't *quite* as important in that case as opposed to for people trying to break into the industry. Arsh's site being a prime example. We are not webdesigners for the most part, our field of choice is 3D Art.

That's not to say that I don't agree with all of Jon's points. I do and thanks for taking the time to write this up Jon. The image branding stuff is a great tip. I actually have on many occasions closed a site and been entirely put off by poor presention or bad or overly complex navigation before I've even got to the body of work. Simpler is quite obviously better. A page with some awesome work on it speaks way more volume to me than some wanky overdone flash shit. You're in danger of looking like you're attempting to dress mutton as lamb in that case.

[MoP]

By the way, I hope mastapimp420@yahoo.com doesn't get a whole load of spam emails as a result of this tutorial. Poor guy!

[poopinmymouth]

I read a sentance on someones hiring page that comes to mind. They said, "If John Carmack applies and misspelled "blinn shader" we would still hire him, but we would giggle while reading his application, and the less giggling we do while reading your application, the better".

The biggest priority and importance is your body of work. Period. From there you can do things that help or hinder your work, and spending a little bit of time on presentation can go a long way towards making your stuff approachable. You don't have to follow all these rules, and it's still possible to get a job, Arsh's MSpaint frontpage, and my URL are good examples, but if you are just starting out, you should do as much as possible to help your chances.

[PaK]

yeah, it's all good info from my perspective.

I like the bolded headers, designed for skimming...well written and organized info dude. I'm gunna send alot';ve people here to this thread.

-R

[ElysiumGX]

great artwork, great presentation > great artwork, poor presentation

If you're 3d is so great, then your ability to create a simple 2d layout and navigation shouldn't be far behind. I wouldn't strive to follow every point made exactly, but they're good guidelines. Everything else depends on the company wanting to hire, and your attitude.

[thomasp]

nice read, just-in-time for my portfolio revamp. jon, what's your opinion on the amount of stuff to present? similar to video reels where you limit yourself to a few minutes?
say you have created a majority of the characters for one or more videogames, as an artist you might want to show the diversity of your work and may have a hard time deciding which work to put in and which not. assuming the work is consistent in standard, it's hard to go by the old "best piece" rule.

would you consider it helpful to separate stuff by category (modelling, texture flats, animation movies) or rather by project and year?

also, is there a standard for resume's listed somewhere? i might be looking to leave my country and invade the british islands like my ancestors tried to do /images/graemlins/wink.gif
i know how different resume's are over here and in the US but where can you find tips on what to include and what to better leave out in general to find a job in the english speaking world?

[poopinmymouth]

If you have a great deal of art to show from one game, one good thing to do, is to put your 2 or 3 best pieces on your main page, with a link to an extended view of all art assets for said game. This way you can present a clear concise main portfolio, with the ability for the viewer to see more if desired.

[arshlevon]

[ QUOTE ]
where is arshlevon?

i have to say, at the end of the day mate, whats gonna get your name out there is your portfolio, not your presentation. imo its better to spend your time getting better and let your work speak for itself rather than wasting so much time on the presentation. it just doesnt really matter.

that aside, tho, its good writing shine.
now lets see some fucking models!! /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

the main reason i dont think a website matters is i dont give employers my website..if i did i am sure it would be a whole other story.. if they stumble upon it and offer employment (wich seems to be happening a lot lately) then yippy!! thats great, i prefer to present everything in a zip.. no web adresses, no color scheme,no worries whatsoever.. the more varibles you start putting into the equasion the more likely you are to mess something up.. there are a ton of things to consider (as you can see) when it comes to presenting something on the internet. i would rather spend my time polishing my 3d skills than learn dreamweaver or flash and webdesign. if you are using a site as means to sell yourself then by all means take the time to present it in a concise manner.. thats one reason i have a page with just all the artwork on it and nothing else.. no bars no banners no text.. i send this to people who want to see my work.. no employers but friends and family..and people seem to like that a lot. so i am sure if you just slapped some contact info on a page with no filler and just art it would also be something nice to present.. but i am probably the last person that should be giving info on the topic.. i dont look at portfolios for a living... BUT!! (this is good,and bad) we use to always get together at work and laugh really hard at the bad ones.. when we would scout conferences and stuff we would always come back with a million DVDs and there were some real gems in there.. the most horrible crap in the universe.. and everybody would love to watch those..

[Sinistar]

Wow these are some good tips. I'll keep that in mind when I update my website next. :P

[Slayerjerman]

ONE ADDITION:

If you worked on a project or piece with someone, SPECIFY what your involvement was. If you only modeled the character, let everyone know thats ALL you did.

I just had an instance where we were going to hire an amazing background painter whom turned out to be the GUI artist and not the BG painter artist at all. If only he had SPECIFIED what his involvement was on the art piece was it would have saved him and us alot of time and awkwardness.

[arshlevon]

i think a better rule of thumb would be dont put ANYTHING that you DIDN'T do in your portfolio.. if you only modeled it dont show the texture, if you only did the interface, dont show the background.. its pretty lame to put anything by someone else in your portfolio..

[poopinmymouth]

Hear Hear. I think the most annoying perpetrators of that rule are environment artists. Instead of showcasing the stuff they did in isolated scenes, or remaking a new scene using only stuff they did, they'll just take a screengrab from the level and say, "I worked on this", when it might be only a few isolated assets that were theirs. It makes it super frustrating to try to analyze their abilities.

I'm not saying all enviro artists do this, or that character artists never do, it's just a trend I've noticed.

[perna]

I've gone through a bunch of portfolios that were literally unusable. At times I haven't even been able to figure out how to view peoples art.

I have 3 html files in a zip: resume, 2d and 3d. No thumbnails. A very small amount of pieces (most portfolios include sub-standard work. Why?)
The web pages have no images, just text and very simple tables.

It's all you need, in most cases
suckers

[Isis' Minion]

Interesting. Thanks for the tips, i will definetely keep those in mind when i make my portfolio.

[cholden]

Good write-up, Jon. We've been talking about all this for what seems like years now. Great to see one of us finally wrote this article, and I'm glad you beat me too it. Nice piece for a sticky.

Did anyone mention music on a site? Please don't put music on your site that plays without the user purposely activating it. I was supposed to look at some LD's site today and it was instant annoying music. I closed the browser as fast as I heard it.

[Joshua Stubbles]

[ QUOTE ]
If you're 3d is so great, then your ability to create a simple 2d layout and navigation shouldn't be far behind.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think it's a matter of not being able to design it, at least for me. I simply don't have a lot of knowledge in HTML (and certainly no knowledge at XHTML/FLASH/PHP). It's not like I can drop $400 on Dreamweaver or some similar app.
I use 1st Page 2000 (http://www.evrsoft.com/download.shtml) mainly, since it's free.

But like poop and others have said, the work is most important. My site could be painfully simple, but as long as the work is good, then it's okay. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Zergxes]

[ QUOTE ]
i think a better rule of thumb would be dont put ANYTHING that you DIDN'T do in your portfolio..

[/ QUOTE ]

I think that is why it is important to have shot breakdowns. Honestly, some people can't help that thier best work was among a highly integrated team (like a particle guy at ILM). I'm guessing that might be the exception to the rule.

On the flip side, I heard a story about a guy who applied at Blue Sky with animation that he claimed to have done that was a clip from Alien Resurrection. I guess he didn't realize that Blue Sky did the effects for that movie, and to make matters worse, his tape was reviewed by the guy who originally animated it. Sweet justice.

[ebagg]

Great read, thanks for posting.

I have one question for all. I'm not arguing against your point about flash, but I would like to see a show of hands, how many people don't have flash on a computer that has the internet? From the past few years the only computer I've encountered without flash is my own when I had to reformat.

[MoP]

It's not that I don't have Flash (because I do!), but it's that only one in a hundred Flash sites are every worth using Flash for. Nearly every time I visit a Flash site, I think "couldn't this have been done just as easily and successfully in HTML/CSS"?

Also, Flash comes with a bunch of things that many web designers seem to forget about, like integrated Back button support, or image saving... there are just so many pitfalls that people overlook, which don't even exist if you didn't use Flash in the first place.

Basically, I'm not against use of Flash in a webpage if it's used with justification and skill. Anything that doesn't absolutely need to be Flash, shouldn't be. IMHO. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[_Shimmer]

Right now I just know one single portfolio site that uses flash in a sensful way, which is http://www.peterboehme.com and this, _just_ for support and to enhance the site a bit. The rest is written in HTML, you can save the pictures, navigate easily and I can use my mouse gestures which always drives me mad on flash that I cant.

I toyed with the idea of making a showcase on my site with flash as a banner. Thank god I dropped it. heh, though its still intergrated into the php script of my site to disable it.
Its useless...
Also, Flash just makes sense if you can really handle it like the guys from http://www.rock-star.co.uk.
Great site, but they are focusing on animations...

[Badger]

I have to kinda disagree with the blog/pictures thing. Based on what Jason Manley said about portfolios. He said he found it useful too see links to threads about how you respond to feed back. I'm not saying link all your images to the threads you posted them in. But how you come across socially is something to bear in mind. It'll show how easy you are too work with in a way. If it's just another button at the bottom of your nav bar.

NO FLASH, can't agree more.
-B-

[Inition]

Very useful information, I'm guilty on some (most) of those topics! Back to the drawing board.

[jipe]

I recently finished creating my "portfolio" website for my intro to digital art class (I put it in quotes because I have so little work to show that I would hardly call it a portfolio), and I tried to adhere to the guidelines posted here. Let me know how bad I did after checking it out here: http://digitalarts.bgsu.edu/portfolios/jlevass/

Two things that stand out right away are the lack of readily available contact info (requires two clicks, and its location is not immediately apparent) - which I noticed halfway through and couldn't resolve fitting it in gracefully on every page - and the semi-wacky navigation bar which features a link just for the artc201 class (this was a requirement by the teacher, although i fought against it on grounds of usability). Anyway, I'm sure there's more that I missed, but that's what I noticed right away. Please do critique it, even if I have no plans for companies to see it for at least a year or two...

[Jon Jones]

Not bad.

1) Why not start on the 2D or 3D art page by default? Whichever one is most important to you, make that the starting page, and have a navbar guiding you wherever else.

2) 'About' should ideally go last... but in this case, with that silly 'artc201' link you can't do anything about, that should prboably go last, with 'About' behind it. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

3) On the '2d art' and '3d art' pages, why not go ahead and load your first and best image as soon as you load the page, and have the 'click on the thumbnail to the left' message at the top of that page, below the navbar?

4) Having images load for all the text on your site, while ensuring a consistent look, seems like overkill. It takes longer to load and makes your already very streamlined and simple site seem like it takes forever to load, since text is usually the first thing to pop up before images.

5) Next\previous buttons at the bottom of each piece of art couldn't hurt. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Overall, definitely not bad! I see nothing on the page that irritates me. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[cholden]

I've recently been going over this site

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

It gives tons of details good for any site designer, and pretty much everything Jon said is covered there. Great info about getting your content right to your users.

[ScoobyDoofus]

What is most entertaining to me is that the site you linked Cholden looks like total crap. These guys have the balls to criticize other peoples websites, when they cant even make a page that doesn't break its formatting with google ads.
And be ugly to boot. Oh the irony.

[moose]

cool stuff man, nice /images/graemlins/smile.gif

read mention of the art blogs - i honestly hate those things. They are so annonymous and bland i get turned off from them every time i see one. Its your art, take pride in it and make your own domain /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[NoSeRider]

What about nepotism?

Frankly, I don't think they're going to hire you based on your portfolio alone......unless it's drop dead talented work that can't be duplicated by other people.

[Jon Jones]

[ QUOTE ]
Frankly, I don't think they're going to hire you based on your portfolio alone...

[/ QUOTE ]

Right, that's what an interview is for. This is just a guide on how to make the most of your portfolio to make the best possible impression.

On top of that... most companies don't even hire the best. They hire the best they can get. It's not an ideal world and companies go with their best possible option. No barrier to entry is too high and mediocre people are frequently hired without a second thought. It's not a matter of being the best... it's a matter of being perceived as the best.

If you can be perceived as the best, then you've probably already won. But if you don't want to be a soulless piece of crap that deserves a boot in the face, you'd best be busting your ass to BE the best, too!!! /images/graemlins/smile.gif

It's two sides of the same coin. It's about integrity. You need to work the perceptual \ political side of things, AND you need to genuinely be committed to being the best you possibly can, or die trying. If you're only going to try to SEEM to be the best but won't put in the time to make yourself better, I wish you humiliating failure.

And if nepotism were in play, why even read my guide? /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Snuggles]

This'll be incredibly helpful for the site I've got in the works. Thanks a million for posting this.

[- FredH -]

Great Article. The point about useless thumbnails touched my heart! When I visit other artists websites, and they have these small annoying thumbnails that depict lord knows what, it frustrates me to no end. It is basically like going through the site with a blind fold because you have no clue what you are pressing on to see.

Otherwise, great article:)

_FreD_

[Sett]

Here is an idea that I've been thinking about: word resume in gif format.

I seen a few peeps trying CSS for their res. page I tried messing with it but like most new things you can't just do a little. You have to jump in both feet. Sick of learning new things for little effect.

So res.gif dumb?

[cholden]

I've been on a lot of interviews lately, and I've been watching how everybody looks at my site, how they navigate it, etc.

Gallery > Resume

That's all we ever see in that order. Everything else you put on a web site is for you or someone that isn't going to hire you.

The simple portfolio is greatly appreciated.

[egoncalo]

Great article! I've been meaning to put together my portfolio website and after reading this I just decided to do so. Soon as it's online I'll link it to you. Thanks for the advice!

[Jon Jones]

Happy to help. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Marine]

this was posted on Newsarama (http://www.newsarama.com) and most of it seems relevant to us too.


ONE STEP: PORTFOLIO HORROR
by Jim Zubkavich

This bi-weekly column is meant to give advice from me and eventually other people in the industry about how to break in as an artist. This will include tricks for the formal submission routes as well as a bunch of informal elements you may not have realized.

Although I’d given critiques to students at an art college in Calgary where I worked from 1999-2002, nothing could really prepare me for giving feedback to hopeful comic book artists as a Project Manager at Udon.

Once my boss realized that I could do some pretty sharp critique of people’s portfolios he enthusiastically handed the reins of looking over submissions to me. At first I was honoured to be given such responsibility. That happy glow quickly faded. Now I have so much more respect for patient and polite editors at conventions because I have a clearer sense of what they’re going through.

Okay, here we go. Your portfolio should NOT include:

Scary Anime: I think I’ve seen every terrible anime-style portfolio imaginable. Pictures of giant breasted devil women or ridiculously submissive innocent girls who look like they’d blow over in a stiff breeze, designs traced from famous Japanese artists, over-sexed anthropomorphic anime animal people - the works. After an exhausting convention day I sometimes go back to my hotel and utter a silent curse at every Japanese artist who influenced these people.

I had a lady show me smeary crayon drawings on lined paper that she’d done of Sailor Moon and the other Sailor Scouts. This wasn’t some 13 year old looking for artistic encouragement; this was a woman in her late twenties genuinely wanting to know if she could leave her current career to find work as an artist.

Porn: Unless you’re showing a porn comic publisher your work, you should keep the porn out. Opening up a portfolio and seeing (almost always terribly drawn) huffing and puffing between characters does not inspire or titillate. Here’s another hint sort of connected to that- if you’ve never actually had sex before you probably won’t be able to draw the act convincingly.

As if regular porn wasn’t bad enough, Udon’s reputation for sexy anime-centric art means I get to see the portfolio of every terrifying anime porn artist in North America. Trust me when I tell you that it’s not edgy or impressive, it’s actually just sad. I wish they could change the ‘Adult’ category that people use to define porn to something more fitting like ‘Juvenile and Incredibly Annoying’.

Demons and Angels: Okay maybe it’s just me, but no matter what combination of horns, wings, claws, hooves, tails, fire, auras of energy, flaming weapons and fangs you’ve come up with – it’s probably not as cool or ingenious as you think it is. Just leave the demon and angel stuff alone. 99% of those pieces come across as derivative and lame. Even if it’s well drawn it tends to come across as “been there, done that”. I’m tempted to add “Wolverine wannabe claws” to this category as well.

Ego: Having confidence is good. Being an egotistical prick is not. If I’m taking time to look over your work while our booth is hopping and we’re moving product and making money, it’s probably not a good time to act like it’s my privilege to see your artwork. Negative bonus points if you interrupt other conversations I’m having to thrust your portfolio in my face. Extra bad points if you come around the table at a con without being asked and proceed to use one of our boxes full of inventory as a seat.

Giving negative feedback and critique is stressful for both sides of the evaluation equation. Getting angry, scowling or pointing out flaws in work we’ve published isn’t going to bring me to your side. Practically crying when I point out problems in your work also makes things pretty darn awkward.

Promotion Whoring: Tying in to the ego thing above is ridiculous self promotion. I know you have your own story and character ideas; Many of us do. Having 30+ drawings of your “cool” character’s many, many costumes comes across more obsessive than useful. Insisting that your creations are the great new heroes of this emerging millennium also doesn’t have the impact you think it does. Neither does a Power Point presentation outlining the movie, video game, toy and merchandizing opportunities for Cool Character X or whatever his name is. The fact that these characters invariably involve demons, angels and badly done anime art to boot is really just icing on the cake.

If you want to make an even scarier impression, make sure you dress up like Cool Character X while presenting your portfolio.

Glaring Weaknesses: Making sure every character in your portfolio pages is wearing a mask because you have trouble drawing faces and expressions doesn’t instil me with confidence that you can be a reliable comic artist. Doing 5 pages of sequentials without a single background other than a starry sky also tends to jump out at me as a problem.

Photos: Your comic art portfolio should contain artwork, not photos – I know this comes as a tremendous shock to you all.

Photographs of your fine arts installation exhibit is not useful to me. Photographs of horror make up you’ve applied to actors in B-Movies is not useful to me. Photographs of your graffiti art is not useful to me. Photographs of tattoo designs you created are not useful to me. Photographs of you standing next to famous people is not useful to me. Photographs of you looking cool wearing sunglasses and a trenchcoat is not useful to me.

Out In Left Field Material: If you’ve come to a comic convention and are showing around your portfolio, expect an editor to want to see the kinds of material they publish in your submission.

I had a guy bring up a portfolio full of movie star caricatures all done in pastel. Some were good, some were middling, but I still had no use for any of the stuff he brought up. When I explained to him that Udon publishes comics and that many of our books have an anime flare to them, he sealed his fate with “Oh man, I totally hate that Japanimation crap.”

Art doesn't have to be your job at all. It can be just fun doodling your favourite things, 100%. But if you're going to make it your job and your life then it's going to be judged compared to your peers. The fact that so many would think the above stuff is what an editor would want to see, let alone the basis of an art career, amazes me.

See you again in two weeks.

[Jon Jones]

Well, the boards are all funky now and I no longer see the 'Edit Post' button anywhere, but I wanted to post an updated URL to this article:

http://www.thejonjones.com/2005/10/07/your-portfolio-repels-jobs/

Very bad things happened to my old domain and I may never get it back, so there's the latest valid link to the article. Sorry for the trouble.

[JZak]

Wow! This is some great information. After reading this thread, I'm looking to improve my own site. Thanks! -J

[indian_boy]

I was just looking through this page to get myself aware of mistakes i shouldn't commit in the future...
it says that i shouldn't use frames in my website. I was just wondering why that would be a bad thing? i don't think frames necessarily cause a problem...

the site:
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/does-my-web-site-suck/does-my-web-site-suck-checklist-part-two.html

[Rick Stirling]

Don't use frames.

Frames were a hack to keep navigation on screen.

Frames make it hard to bookmark a page - because you always locked into a frameset and the page you want to bookmark isn't what you get.

There. Let that be an end to it. No frames. Don't use them.

[GCMP]

Some great points and interesting perspectives here, useful stuff :) No-one seemed to mention contrast, for me it's important to have the right amount of contrast between the subject matter and the background so the two can be distinguished rather easily but still flow together. From seeing a quite a few folio sites I found that alot had backgrounds which were purposely made to try and blend with the art content, this made things stand out less and failed to have that impact that is required to atrract the right level of attention.

[Quokimbo]

My portfolio repels people...Hah!

I don't mean to sound rude, but your portfolio is really lacking in what other artists probably send (Company name removed). If you really want to impress them, your gonna need to push your artistic skills a little further.

I am still working hard though! :)

[Harryscary276]

Excellent post man, I just built my port sight and thought I knew a few of these things already, others I didnt know, I will defently take this to heart and work on my site more before I finally site back and say "finished"

[Lee3dee]

glad to see you listen to my advice :D

[Quokimbo]

glad to see you listen to my advice :D

Me?

[Junkie_XL]

That's a shame you don't like flash Jon. I was trying to keep mine as 'simple flash' to get right to the point. And I chose it because I could expand the art tailored to any resolution size the viewer has when you "click to zoom".

[Justin Meisse]

Junkie_XL: there's no way to right click and save an image from your site.
The load times are annoying, yes they are short but it still took 7 seconds longer than my portfolio
(no I won't link it, it's full of old crap but it did get me a job)

[arlrex]

Good thing I didn't put a flash image gallery option on mine then, heh. Thanks for the info, showed me some things that didn't seem right to me on my site but couldn't quite identify them.

[Junkie_XL]

Junkie_XL: there's no way to right click and save an image from your site.
The load times are annoying, yes they are short but it still took 7 seconds longer than my portfolio
(no I won't link it, it's full of old crap but it did get me a job)

okay good point about the right-click save-as. The loading at the beginning is only 166KB or so. Is that what took a while for you?

[Spinks]

junkie: the way flash rescales the images turns them into a jaggy aliased mess so I wouldn't call that an advantage. You also cant middle click to bring up links in a new tab, wich I like to do while browsing.

[o2car]

How important is it to have hi-res images in the gallery?
Im thinking about whether or not to add it and how to solve it technically.
i really like this single page idea without having to click stuff.
(actually did it before reading this thread)

take care

[AshleyTayles]

Thanks for the tips, I've bookmarked this page for when I come to set up a website. Is it a good idea to have galleries of different years to organize it a bit? EG. 2007 Work - 2008 work - ect.

[monkeyboy_garth]

I'd say for someone looking for their first job, there isn't really any point in splitting your folio into years. You should only show your very best work, and you really don't need to show large volumes of stuff that would warrant arranging your folio into years.

Also, don't just put a date on your work so you can show how far you've come since <insert year>.

[nome_sane]

I've been recreating my portfolio site as I'm on the job hunt again.
And after reading this I could see a lot of painful flaws in my old site especially on the navigation front.
I decided to use this....
http://www.carbonmade.com/

It's not perfect but the main advantage is that it has an interface for adding images and editing the layout. My old site was all hand written html/php and it was a pain to change things then add the files over ftp etc.

So I thought someone else might find it useful and like I say it doesn't tick all the boxes like a site you do yourself but it's a massive time saver.

This is my new site btw http://www.patrickanderson.co.uk/
(shameless pimping)

[PolyHertz]

no I won't link it, it's full of old crap but it did get me a job

Not like it matters sense your site is just a big 'under construction' sign atm :p

nome_sane: You've got some really nice work up on your site, but as is you can't right click to save any images, and the loader seems to hang sometimes which wouldn't be a huge issue if it weren't for the fact that you have to load the images in order to go through and see the rest.

[Lee3dee]

good article on the Bungie hiring process
http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=12496

[Justin Meisse]

Not like it matters sense your site is just a big 'under construction' sign atm :p

yeah, I took the old gallery down because it was full of lame! I could update it but everyone would start crying about not posting flats or wireframes.

[MattW]

I have 2 questions, if we aren't suppoed to use iframes anymore, what's the accepted method?

Second, I can't post wires of 99% of my work. It's all arch vis. Is this much of an issue?

[StJoris]

I have 2 questions, if we aren't suppoed to use iframes anymore, what's the accepted method?

Second, I can't post wires of 99% of my work. It's all arch vis. Is this much of an issue?

Personally I think Dynamic HTML is a great way of doing practically all you would need
http://www.w3schools.com/dhtml/default.asp

[Justin Meisse]

you know what? I effing hate making websites, is there anyone that would make an easy to update website for cash? It seems like all the plug and play solutions are less than optimal. I could google it but everyone and their cousin says they are a web designer and chances are they know less about web design than I do.

[Yozora]

Stop being so lazy :( I can make some basic thing for free if you want, but you'll need to specify how you want the navigation to be like -
a big page full of images, no buttons, just scroll
or seperate pages for each piece
or use lightbox (the image popup script thingy)
or a mouse-over-thumbnails-to-change-image style
or something different

I doubt you want a big page with no buttons though since you'd be able to make that quicker than reading and replying to this post -.-

[brokendragon]

Really liked this thread. I'm a senior in college going for Game Design and I'm taking Portfolio classes right now. We've addressed most of the things that are mentioned in this thread, but it's comforting to see them validated.

[Karmageddon]

Anyone have any insight to this trend I'm seeing of Simpleviewer to display a large amount of images? I'm personally not a fan, but it is very upfront and to the point. I was just curious.

[man_o_mule]

I still think Pior's website is the best portfolio site ever. just a page of thumbnails. when you click on a pic it just opens it. So simple, but if your art is good, i t will stand out. watch out though if your at work. he's got some nudes up there so it might not be work safe where you are. www.pioroberson.com/

[ae.]

piors site is pretty good i kinda took his approach on things :P

[Jeff Parrott]

Pior's site is great. He has a megaton of work so it's probably best to set it up with a page for each piece. I've overhauled my site about 4 times in the past year. I think I've finally gotten it to a point where I like it and I don't have to use flash, scripts or much else. www.environmentartist.com

[00Zero]

holy shit, you actually registered environmentartist.com? props

[Pope Adam]

lewlz nice

[MoP]

henning (sa74n) cut it down a bit with www.envart.com ... also his is a great example of a portfolio site imho!

[GCMP]

Some nice artwork on those portfolios, maybe it's just my opinion but some presentation would have been nice instead of a blank white background and basic text.

[ioster]

Hi - I built a template portfolio for just this kind of thing. If you need a job application level portfolio site that's really easy to update and doesn't look all that bad (if I do say so myself) you can grab a copy with all the source files for free from my site. I'm using a slightly modified version, so you can see what it looks like and how it works up front. Feel free to ask any questions or post and comments or crits.

www.isaacoster.com (http://www.isaacoster.com)

[Seaseme]

edited.

[Mark Dygert]

You can also use PhotoShop Bridge > Output > Web Gallery

Or you can do it the oldschool way, Photoshop > File > Automate > Web gallery.
If you have CS4 or 5 you'll need to download and install the additional plug-ins to get those options that where in older versions normally.

CS4 additional plug-ins
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=4048&fileID=3767

CS5 additional plug-ins
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4688

[Vinterdragen]

A really nice article! Thanks!

[11croe]

thanks, this really helps.

[Jessica Dinh]

Thanks for the article, and this turned out to be an awesome thread!! I will be deleting my splash page now, ahaha.

[Ryswick]

Fantastic article, thanks!

[josephsmeadows]

Hi


Thank you Jon for sharing such article with us, i found great point from your article.