Hey folks! thought that I would finally place my portfolio up here!

a few minor things need added but shouldn't take long! =)

www.pixelmaniac.co.uk

Your portfolio apart from the title doesn't really scream tech artist.

Tech artist roles are different at all studios but all you mention that is really relevant is kismet and uScript but show no examples, and while useful seems more like a level scripter role. You also mention cascade and have an example of hologram shaders, while cool is FX Artist territory.

Where is the scripting Python, MEL, Max Script? Even simple scripts that you may have put together to aid with art creation would be a step in the right direction.

@darth: Your website takes quite a while to load/times out.

@m4dcow - Thanks, I see what your getting at.. I've began to look into maxscripting and hopefully will start being able to come up with handy tools to aid with asset creation

@haiddasalami - Might have just been the server being meh... loaded fine for everyone so far

While the site loaded fine for me, the top 2 portfolio images on the main page are 270k+, maybe use a bit more compression on those.

Hey scott, got a couple of things. I don't think the thumbnail links do your UT3 character justice (the pictures that you click to get onto the model picture, or the texture maps), and I'm not keen on the green on the texture image. Improving these may mean people click on them more?

Another thing I've got to ask is, why pixel maniac? I thought that would be something a texture artist would use, or someone focusing on handheld games or pixel art.

Keep up the good work scott

Okay fair do's :p I will compress my jpegs when I'm back on my PC.. First time making a site from scratch so I guess it won't be perfect first time!

Don't know maytch :p just cropped up in my head... When I think of pixels I just generally think of a computer screen etc.. Gonna relook at my beauty images and try compare to other people's work.. Should definately lay it out a bit better!!

Thanks for the crits guys! Does help a lot

I gotta say, this doesn't read as a tech artist's website.

There's a rig in there, some shader stuff... and that appears to be it for the technical side? I'd expect to see more scripts for 3D progams, more advanced rigs/interfaces, more complex shaders, tools, etc.

Gonna agree with people here. Get on to scripts. Also I wanted to check out your rig stuff and took me 3 clicks to get there. If you're going for tech-art job this stuff should be in the front. Maybe get that fighter plane as a playable vehicle? Still think Erik Larsson has the best tech art portfolio in terms of layout.

http://www.eriklarsson.net/

I agree with the technical stuffs.. As it's a 50/50 job I currently have more on the art side.. Like I said, I'm in the process of learning scripting so hopefully will have something to show soon...

Currently I'm only showing my good work on this site... I have done some small uScripting before but not posted on this...

Thanks guys

I wish some of the Chinese applicants had a folio like this...

Thanks I am trying to broaden my skills range into ore technical skills!

Got my first max script working and now starting to work with custom shaders

Hey folks..

One year on and I thought that I would rebump my thread with an updated portfolio..

http://www.pixelmaniac.co.uk

Still not got much on the way of scripts but that's now my main focus.. I was hoping some of you guys could maybe point me in the right direction?

Many thanks =)

I like your work man!

Few things to note.

1. Lose the purple text and and purple/pink highlights around the title text. It makes it hard to read.
2. It would be better if the text under the thumbnails were not embedded in the image. Search engines won't pick up on that.
3. The About Me and Resume pages don't load anything for me. Just a 404 error.
4. I would zoom in on the sculpture so you don't have a penis shot on your front page.
5. The Environment section is a pretty weak compared to the rest. I would probably get rid of it.

Hey! I think the webserver went down for a couple of minutes because it happened me too! but it seems fine now!!

Good points!! I'll sort out the bad colour and blur or pan away from his willy.. My html skills is pretty bad but I'll try get the text in there!!

thanks for the help

- I would leave the junior from your title. So Only "Technical Artist"
- Every time you open a thumbnail, the text/description is at the bottom. I personally would like to see that text on top of the video because I can not scroll atm to make it more comfortable for me to read the text.
- Like Monster mentioned, leave the purple.
- The solid grey and block colours are quite boring. A really subtle gradient could do miracles.
- I see some really bad skinning on the mocap screens on the arm.
- I like the fact you have a video for every piece of your portfolio. I have not seen them all, so I cant really comment on that.
- Your sculpt screen is squashed.
- Not sure what you header picture is.
- The blue links in your "about me" are a bit hard to read.

Thanks! Made some adjustments!

Gonna try to add a gradient tomorrow, took the insane text out of the index page so it's kept to the individual pages.

Thanks again guys for the fresh perspective.

your resume is the hardest thing to read ever. I know that sounds dumb but ease of read for a cv is king. too many words with a bad font and wrong color

I'd remove the zbrush guy, based on my own weird perspective. I feel if you have art on a folio, even as TA, then it should be close to production standards (sure, a nude male model is probably something of the highest difficulty). I think everything below that standard, even if they viewer keeps reminding themselves "yeah, he's just a TA" still drags the folio down.

Doesn't stop you from putting ZB on a resume - as TA leader I would quiz you a bit about ZB concepts so I know your way around (I'd be really impressed if I see Z Scripts!) but you'll not be expected to model a character anyway. OR show specialized ZB workflows you discovered. Sculpting is something everyone can do. But some of the new workflows recently introduced are very very powerful and they're just waiting for clever people (TAs? ;) ) to mess around with them and give some ideas to the production artists how to use them.

Otherwise the folio is a nice mix, good for a junior position, at least at my place, where juniors should be familiar with all kinds of things, because they'll start out in a support role until their strengths and weaknesses show and they're ready to specialize. My first impression by your folio would be env/fx/engine (udk, cryengine, etc) specialization or something with animation.

What else is missing? The environment part - I wish there'd be more Unreal stuff. Lots of people can model env assets, but it would be cool if you show stuff that lots of people cannot do. i.e. put your assets in Unreal, add atmosphere, lights, water, animation, fx and show you know what it takes to bring stuff together, and that this knowledge lets you assist, for example, the level team so you know what problems they may have and that you can then dig deeper to solve them.

Have pictures AND videos. If there's many folios to check, people may not have the patience to sit through every video. Add some pictures to raise interest, so some hurried people may change their mind. And if they don't watch the video, then there's still the pictures. win-win.

I'm also missing some piece where I'd really go "wow, that's neat - I wish we had this script/tech in our company!". (yes, the char modification is nice but not everyone does that in their game). I'm thinking more of a little helper tool that's either incredibly neat looking, or powerful, or nifty or all of that, or clever workflow. I remember seeing an ultra cool rock generator script somewhere for maya with a really neat UI which I'd love to have. Or some other guy made a super intuitive pose library... something that makes me go, I want that!