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.