Portfolio

I will be talking about 2 different things this post, creating a portfolio: Where to host and why, and creating level design documents: What to use.

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Portfolios are essential to any artistic related position, level design is no different. Many have different opinions on where you should host your portfolio whether it is on: DeviantART, ModDB, or even your own domain. Well the truth is the best hands down is going to be to have your complete portfolio on your own domain which is normally your name .com or .net. Now the reason why we want to use your own domain to show to employees is to not let them be distracted by other peoples' work. Lets say you host on Deviant Art for your portfolio, it may allow you to show your work in sorted galleries but it also shows other peoples work.

Lets look at an example:

Now, domains can be a little pricey when trying to buy some top quality .com's. So if you run into a problem in which your name.com is already registered than try going for a .net or even a .org. Domain hosts are pretty common, I purchased mine through GoDaddy and haven't had any issues, but purchasing a Domain is only part of the deal, you must purchase Web Hosting, which will hold your portfolio and other files. This is where it can get really pricey really fast. I recommend Eleven2 both UTDTV as well as myself have had fantastic service and 99.99% up time. 

Now next time I will show you some basic portfolio templates that can be used for your website!

By special request I am going to talk a little about what programs to use for designing a level layout and document.

Well, for level design it is all really personal preference, when drawing you can do it either by hand with a piece of paper and pencil or on a program such as Photoshop. Now, I do suggest that if you draw it by hand that you do scan in your paper to a computer program such as Photoshop to clean up your design and finalize everything before shipping it off to your boss! As for your document I would say any word processing tool should work, but specifically Microsoft Word or Open Office.

Networking

This week I will be playing a little catch up, I feel behind on my blog due to school as well as person life and I am terrible sorry about that.

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Networking is a very important part to any career, but more so in the video game industry. Networking is how you are able to get wind of new jobs as well as getting your foot in the door. In the past getting a job heavily relied on your experience, well this is true but with social media growing so fast you are recommended to be active in a social community and normally some game board. Now when I mean a game board, I mean a video game's online forum, posting relevant and constructive comments. For me I have been pretty active on Red 5's game forum, FireFall.


You can find me on there as "Shift`", feel free to add me!

Now back to forums and networking, well-being on a game developer’s forum gives you a limited way to contact the development team. I use the term limited because they are not required to use the forum or to respond to you. But it is a great way to connect with other gamers like your-self, and maybe just maybe catch the eye of a developer. This is one way to start your own connections; another is to attend game conferences and community events. These are normally gold mines for business cards, but just getting a business card doesn't mean that they are okay with you contacting them; it's just a formality really. Which means that you should go out and get business cards of your own! Be sure to include your name, email, and a link to your portfolio. Which I will go ahead and cover in the next post.

Well, I'm gonna go over my word limit here but... As promised here is my LinkedIn profile:

  Unfortunately, my connections were not comfortable with giving their contact information open on the web but I can make specific contacts if requested.
So just a recap for next time we will cover the basics of portfolio making as well as a special request about the process of actually creating level design documents and what programs to use to draw out the designs.