Erwin Heitzman's Portfolio

[ID Conceptart]

Hi there!

First of all, thank you for taking some time to look at my portfolio.
I made this website about 3 weeks ago and wanted to get some comments/critics, from people who have experience with building a portfolio as someone that tries to get a job in the games industry.

I'm planning to add a new project soon too.

I hope you all like it and if so, please do share your thoughts (this is the same if you don't like it of course).

Erwin Heitzman's Portfolio

Again, thank you for your time!

[IchII3D]

I like how you have structured your website and its nice and easy to use, but the content needs a lot of work. As an environment artist or level designer a key skill to have is the ability to setup and ground a scene in both lighting and design, none of which your scenes have. Many are lacking contrast and any clear choice of colour tones and mood. I would highly recommend doing some quick references to colour theory and what colours theoretically work better together, then setup a simple scene and work on getting it to look and 'feel' as you want it to.

Moving forward I would work on your modelling and texturing ability if you want to make it as a environment artist. If you want to be able to model and texture confidently I highly recommend working on single props until you have the knowledge and confidence in doing so, then push into scenes working with both lighting and texturing to create atmosphere and mood.

[JMChristopher]

I like the design with the big splash image. You also make it immediately obvious who you are, what you do and what this site is for. This is great, but I have some suggestions that may make it better:

1. Your website title(the one that appears in your browser tab) is in all caps, kinda seems like your yelling.

2. Your title image could be better. The pic with the rocket launcher is not as eye catching some of your other work. Take your best picture and set that was your title image. You also have that same image for every page. It might be better if you use an image from each project. Also your page is wide enough that you could forget the thumbnails and just do larger images, so visitors would not have to click and wait for it to load, it would load as they would scroll down the page.

3. The large blank space at the bottom could be used as additional navigation. You could put thumbnails of your work so instead of clicking on projects and then a specific project, they would be right there at the bottom of the page ready for the viewer to go to the next project.

4. The descriptions of your projects could use a little refinement as well. It may be a little nitpicky, but they don't need to be a story. I want to know about your work, not how you ended up working on it. I think any description of a project you have should tell who, what, why, when, how as fast and specifically as possible, a little bit like the headlines in a paper. Just tell us what exactly this piece is, why you did it, how you made it, and what it was for. You want to grab the viewers attention quickly, so I would even go as far to say that you should put the descriptions below your thumbnails, or in the empty space to the right of them.

5. Your headings, just below your title image have such a small margin around them. It may look better if you indent the text about 5px and move it 5px down so there is a nice border around it.

6. The images in your gallery and your screen shots are aliased and look quite rough. When you take screen captures, you should have some sort of anti-aliasing on so they look smooth. Frame rate doesn't matter if you are just taking still images, so crank up the resolution and filtering so you have some shiny high rez, high detailed images to show.
You may also want to watermark them in case poeple decide to save them to their hard drive.

I know some of these are rather nitpicky, I just think that presentation is a big part of your work. If your presentation is "half assed" then it kind of implies that you don't care about your work; Like your saying "its not worth the time and effort to make it look good." You did do a great job of making it fit perfectly in a 1024x768 rez monitor which is nice.

I hope this wasn't too harsh and you found this advice useful. You may also want to look at this. for some portfolio site formatting suggestions.
and this for a great example of a portfolio site. He does pretty much everything right and has a top notch presentation of all his work.

Good luck and keep at it, hard work and perseverance
will pay off!

[ID Conceptart]

Hi IchII3D and JMChristopher,

IchII3D: I had a hard time creating the latest project and I can't call it finished too, BUT I think it would be a shame not to show it. If you disagree, please do let me know!
Also to learn more about the Unreal Engine I really dug into the program and didn't do some modeling for some time, I indeed do need to pick up the modeling a bit again now I have knowledge of the Unreal Engine.

JMChristopher: First of all thank you for your complements. I find your comments really helpful and will certainly check all of the things you said. One thing though, I find it a bit difficult to understand how the "Yelling" effect bothered you, or could bother someone else. That's about the only think I found a bit picky.

Thank you both for your comments and I hope that a lot more will follow!

[JMChristopher]

Originally Posted by ID Conceptart

Hi IchII3D and JMChristopher,

IchII3D: I had a hard time creating the latest project and I can't call it finished too, BUT I think it would be a shame not to show it. If you disagree, please do let me know!
Also to learn more about the Unreal Engine I really dug into the program and didn't do some modeling for some time, I indeed do need to pick up the modeling a bit again now I have knowledge of the Unreal Engine.

JMChristopher: First of all thank you for your complements. I find your comments really helpful and will certainly check all of the things you said. One thing though, I find it a bit difficult to understand how the "Yelling" effect bothered you, or could bother someone else. That's about the only think I found a bit picky.

Thank you both for your comments and I hope that a lot more will follow!

Its not so much that it bothers me, it just seems unnecessary. You wouldn't type the heading of a cover letter in all caps, but its ultimately up to you. I understand how it is nitpicky though.

[ID Conceptart]

Hi all,

I've taken every word of advise and changed a lot of things and updated the site.
The website has more open spaces and feels much better in my opinion.

I would like to see some more comments though

[JMChristopher]

I like it much better than before. Besides some minor grammar errors in the descriptions you should be good.

Now you can focus on the artwork and make some more pieces for your portfolio. Good luck.

[ID Conceptart]

Originally Posted by JMChristopher

I like it much better than before. Besides some minor grammar errors in the descriptions you should be good.

Now you can focus on the artwork and make some more pieces for your portfolio. Good luck.

Thank you and I think I fixed the grammar errors (could only find two at the Cave project page).

You seem very active in this part of the forum Chistopher
I was thinking to put a minor border around all the project images, do you think this would be better? (Just like the border around my website itself)

Anyone has some more suggestions and/or critics?

[abrs]

User-friendly and easy to use. Maybe you could spice it up a bit. A little more colors maybe?

[ID Conceptart]

Hi abrs,

Thank you for your reply, I'll see if I can add some in the near future cause I agree it could use some colors

More critics are always welcome