Today was the portfolio surgery. Unfortunately, there were no video game developers invited. Because of this, I decided to chose a surgery with Plum Digital Media. I am familiar with them because I went on a work experience interview with them and it was the sort of small company that I would like to work in. There was the choice to attend two surgeries but as no companies were majorly tailored to what I wanted to do, I felt I should just go to one to get some general advice on improving my portfolio and use the other time constructively on work.
The surgery was with Gary Hinton, the director. I came in wanting to know the best way of presenting myself as a creative person with original ideas with an interest in developing interesting styles. I feel that this is important in the games industry.
I presented my work to him straight from my pen drive. I chose not to develop a fancy interface for this because I wanted the focus to be on which work I should have in my portfolio to give the impression that I want rather than my ability to create a nice interface.
I asked him whether his small company did any games design. He told me that sometimes they get work to create publicity games on micro-sites. I found this surprising because the company was such a small size that I wouldn't expect them to be able to deal with that. I also asked him if my work gave the right impression. He said it did as it showed that I had quite personal ideas. He did suggest that I need to show my work-process a lot more. I showed him one project blog and he said that blogs are often seen as a little geeky and not as easy to use as flicking through a sketchbook. I agree with this. He put a lot of emphasis on people showing how they work and how they get their ideas. He feels that it is more important to see the thought process and the ablity to lay down clear ideas as they can be explained to clients easier.
From my personal portfolio presentation, I came away feeling that the work I have in it gives the right impression but that I need to supply more sketchbooks to explain the thought process.
I also watched one other person's presentation. His interest lied in graphic design and animation so it was a little different to what I was interested in. However it was still interesting. Because he wanted to be a graphic designer, his work was criticised more than mine. This makes sense because graphic design is about giving the right impression and feel. He also did not have much supporting work and was told that he should bring some more.
When concluding the interview, Gary started to discuss ways of getting noticed. He suggests developing something interesting and mailshotting it to employers and other people to draw attention to yourself. He also suggested finding a way to draw attention to myself at the degree show this year, even if it is by doing something like playing loud music. I think that playing loud music would show a disrespect to the other peoples space and work but it is definitely a good idea to find some way of draw attention to my own area.
In all, the session was really useful. It made me feel more confident about showing my work and gave me lots of ideas on how to improve my portfolio presentation.
