3D Animation

Keeping My Website Up to Date

December 29, 2008 December 29, 2008 A common complaint among 3D artists is about our website and demo reel: “Well, my website is out of date because I haven’t had time to make new pages recently,” or “I put a demo reel together last month, and it’s already out-of-date, but I don’t want to take the time to make a new one yet.” It seems that artists’ professional representation – their website and demo reel, what other artists, enthusiasts, and potential employers see – is almost always out-of-date, “under construction,” or simply given up upon. When we were required to create a professional website at CDIA, many of my classmates and I started discussing these problems with sites and demo reels. Maintaining a demo reel is too time-consuming, having a gallery website isn’t representative of the client- and project-based work we do, and coding new web pages every time we want to update the site is a pain, especially for the majority of 3D artists, who don’t happen to double over as web developers. I decided a few months ago that it was high time to tackle this problem of being constantly out-of-date. I started working on some website software that would allow me to upload new images, descriptions, and other information to a project database very quickly, and the database immediately display the updated work on my website. The goal was to be able to finish a project, send it into the client, take a few screengrabs of it, hit a few buttons on my website, and have the information be online. At last, my site wouldn’t be permanently under construction, permanently out-of-date: It would be a up-to-date representation of my work and projects, within about five minute accuracy. After working on this software on-and-off for three months, I finally put my website live a few weeks ago. I’m finishing up the software now, making it robust and user-friendly in hopes that I can sell it to other artists who would benefit from this streamlined system (I’m already working with my first client, a former CDIA classmate of mine).  Of course it’s important to have your portfolio represent you accurately and show your most current and best work – you never know when your dream job might be checking you out! You can see my new professional website, and the software in action, at jonoforbes.com.