artistinabox.co.uk

[artist_in_a_box]

Ben Watson

This is my new website. What do you think? Any crit or comments are most apreciated.

Ben

[megalmn2000]

Too much text (and they are too big too). People want to see the pictures first, then the descriptions.
Focus on the content itself. Also, take out the "WIP blog", people only want to see finish projects. The Links section isn't necessary too.

[artist_in_a_box]

thanks for your input man I really took it on board and fixed most of the issues and more or less redesigned the whole thing. I think this works a lot better now.

One thing that I am stuck on now however is the work itself, you're only as good as your worst piece so to this end I am not sure if i should remove some of my work or not, some quick crit would be apreciated on this as I'm hoping to apply for jobs soon.

Thanks for checking it out. Also Minh Nhat Le your portfolio has been added to my portfolio bookmarks some really inspiring work. The Mass Effect weapon especially is great work really masterful use of the normal maps.

Ben Watson Portfolio

[RedAppleIvy]

I'd either completely remove the stroke around the images on the front page or reduce it to 1px as its overpowering the actual images.
I'd also consider saving the banner images, buttons etc as gifs instead of jpegs to reduce the compression artifacts your getting - its a pretty minor thing but you want the front end to look as crisp as possible

Remove the bookshelf page, like you said it was created ignoring polycounts and texture sizes so it makes no sense having it in a portfolio of a game artist

I'd call the monitor page WIP and finish it off improving upon what you have done already, dont mention it was made for a contest you couldnt finish and then display it in a realtime engine building upon what you learnt for the jurassic park piece

I'd consider re-rendering all your high poly assets to a higher quality using something like this ARTEM VOLCHIK | 3D ARTIST dont render onto a pure white or black background either

Place links back to the front page at the bottom of each page

All the images seem to have been saved at a less than maximum quality from your original source images for the udk you can use the tiledshot command to render out enormous images

Give more focus to individual assets in the Jurassic park piece similiar to how you presented the dumpster

Phew! Think thats everything - hope that helps somewhat

[artist_in_a_box]

Wow looks like you really went into everything, thanks for taking the time to do that man, apreciate it. I will try my best to sort out the issues you mentioned, though I dont think I will be able to sort everything out. The page was created as a photoshop psd and imported so to sort out the buttons would mean a lot of pain, though I will certainly give it a go.

As of now before I call it a day I have altered the border on the thumbnails, removed the room and desktop pieces and am considering removing the P90 and SA80 pages. The problem here is that I dont have the original files for the P90 and SA80 as they are pretty old pieces and I recently suffered a bad hard drive failure.
I will see about upping the image quality on everything and will put a 'return to top' button on th epage bottom.

My question now is, should I remove the desktop entirely or should I instead upload the moniters as individual props and just not use the rest of the scene until it is finished?

Cheers

Ben

[RedAppleIvy]

Ah that sucks about losing the original data, for the desktop I would post up the monitors mentioning the scene is wip and post up the desktop when its complete

[artist_in_a_box]

cheers pal, will get on that today, thanks.

ben

(just to point out, I have sorted out the issues you mentioned, just not uploaded them yet )

[artist_in_a_box]

Updated what I can now. Changed most of what you mentioned and I am gonna start applying for work in a few days. I only hope im able to get an interview at least.

[NautalusX]

I think you should add more color to the main page, and on each of the menus make it light up when you hover over them, and over the thumbnails like a slight white glow around them. Also I'd add some color on your smiley icon and all the menu options.