Hello,
I am a CAD tools developer looking to transition into the game industry as a programmer. After reading this site and some others, I see that my best bet is to supplement my experience with a portfolio of game-related projects.
My current portfolio is available here: http://www.shacharavni.com
I would like feedback on any aspects of it (website, resume, or code).
Thank you in advance for your time.
Well, the website doesn't look great, but you're not an artist or web designer, so that's totally fine.
What it is, though, is functional, which is great. You showcased three simple but very useful projects straight upfront, and your choice was excellent.
You proved:
1. You have basic networking experience
2. You understand how 3d rendering works (having build a simple one yourself)
3. You can make a basic game.
One major suggestion:
Don't link directly to a PDF for your resume... make it a page, and provide an optional download link for the PDF.
I would also suggest more detailed layman explanations of your research, although I'm already intrigued by your master's thesis.
Hello StarMire,
Thank you for your feedback. It is greatly appreciated.
Don't link directly to a PDF for your resume... make it a page, and provide an optional download link for the PDF.
Thanks for the suggestion. I was actually planning on doing this so I'll give that a higher priority.
I would also suggest more detailed layman explanations of your research ...
I'll see what I can do about making those explanations more approachable.
Any other feedback is welcome.
In general there isn't much to say really. I have to agree with StarMire that it doesn't really like amazing, but you're not an artist and it's far from bad. I also agree with him about the resume part.
As for some other parts that might be of interest:
State what you are, although it's obvious you're a programmer when I see "see the code" at projects, it might be an added bonus to state your expertise. Something along the line of gameplay programmer, graphics programmer or AI programmer.
If you really want to make the site "fool proof" so that recruiters that might not understand GitHub get a better overview of what you did, create a project page for your projects where you can briefly outline the main characteristics of you projects (programming language, features, small summary). It's all there on GitHub and I don't really think it's that big of an issue, but it wouldn't hurt I guess :)
These are mainly just additions though, not something that is really missing. Keep up the nice work! :)
I see none of the major common problems, and instead see lots of personal decisions, examples of code, transferable skills, and showing rather than telling. That is quite good up front.
Like the web site. It communicates well, although it isn't super pretty. I'd call it functional, unless you are going for a web-based ui job.
The site could use videos (or links to videos) in addition to the pictures, but what you've got is quite telling. It has everything needed to make a decision right up front. You let me see the code and see an executable, both are good.
Linking directly to your github account can be a double-edged sword, since it makes it very clear about what you do over time. Seeing you've had 115 contributions, and the work was almost entirely clustered in July and August, I can make various kinds of judgments based on that information that may or may not reflect your work, and I can see how much you accomplish over time.
The resume is two pages, but with your earliest achievement being a scholarship in 2005 that may be too much, but it is a choice you can make. I would consider condensing it down to one page, but the acceptable length is both a regional trend and a personal preference. It feels like it has a lot of white space trying to be a filler to make it two pages, but it is readable and does not appear filled with fluff.
The resume gives a lot of transferable skills and tells me both what you did and how you did it. In that regard it is better than most who try to break in. I'm not terribly thrilled about the colored boxes and don't know how they will react inside fancy HR tools, but that is entirely your call.
Looks good to me, and I would certainly read it over more than once in the initial pruning. (That is the brutal pass where over 90% get thrown out, and roughly half of those get thrown out with about five seconds of looking over the page.)
I have taken the following suggestions from this thread to heart and I will eventually implement them in my portfolio:
Thank you all for your advice!
