Context 2 Assignment 2 - Portfolio - Initial Ideas & research

For the next 5 weeks or so, we have our second Context 2 assignment to complete in conjunction with our lectures and seminars with Danny. This task is linked with the last assigment on networking with companies, as now we are making a portfolio of our work and development, which is a useful part of showcasing your work online, as well as being an often vital part of applying for work or placements in the industry or multimedia.

To start with in this project, my first idea was the obvious of just producing a demoreel/showreel of some of my work so far that would follow the assignment structure given in the brief:

- Title splash page

- Finalised work section

- Work-In-Progress section

- Design Development Process section

- Contact Me section

Now I have thought more about this and researched other practitioners in my area of virtual environments, I have found that is often more suitable to have a website containing a number of pages to show both stills/development and final work and showreel videos. Although, sometimes a Vimeo account with my work and showreels may be enough to show people my work, I feel that an update to my website is needed anyway, and that this could be the perfect opportunity to do this and to make my online presence more professional. As I am not an interactive media student, however, I think it is important to produce a simple but effective design, rather than making it too technical or busy.

Here are a few practitioners' web portfolios that I found in my seminar yesterday that I thought were pretty interesting in simple but effective styles:

David Astley - 3D modelling portfolio  ( http://www.davidastley.net )

This was my favourite of the designs that I researched - a simple colour coded, quite plain webpage of just links to different images of 3D modelling (textured and wireframe development). I think this is a very successful layout and quite simply coded webpage with a professional finish. I think I could produce something similar to this in layout and style, but that also shows videos/demoreels as well as stills and development to show I can do animation as well as just modelling (for now!).

Paris Mavroidis - 3D artist/programmer portfolio ( http://www.parismav.com )

This is another very simple design I came across in my research - a website consisting of one consistent layout, with only 3 separate pages showing off the artist's best and most recent work and demoreels in the main content section in the centre of the page. I also like the simple use of colour and font in this example, keeping it simple rather than too busy. It also features a sort of "title splash page" as given in the brief, where a still/promotional shot of his/her most recent work as the front page of the website.

Sarah Petherick - 3D visualisation portfolio ( http://www.3dmice.com )

I chose to look at this website due to how only two shades of grey and white typography can be used in a basic style, but can still look quite effective when put together. This website also features a flash feature, however, with rolling/animated images down the side, which is something that I wouldn't put time into doing when I don't specialise in web design, but think it can add interest to a simple webpage. This site is also quite small in size, centred in the browser, rather than filling the whole page, which I think is a quite interesting way of laying out a portfolio too.

Stuart Smith - Visualisation/web portfolio ( http://www.stuartsmithdesign.co.uk/portfolio )

This webpage is the least simple of the examples I have looked at, and seems to use many more complex web techniques that I am not quite sure how to use or produce (flash, javascript, etc.), but have looked at the layout of showing images as to links to information and more detail on that project, and think it is a design feature to consider if I was to produce a webpage with more pages in the future. However, the design of the navigation/banner at the top is still very simple with just shades of grey and white, which is something I would like to experiment with.

I am now going to produce a couple of quick wireframe designs based on this research to try and make a decision on what sort of layout and style I want my portfolio to have.