# Final Portfolio Presentation — 25 points **Week 15 — Friday, December 4, in class** **The largest single grade in the course** --- ## Format - **7–8 minutes** presenting, plus 2 minutes of questions (exact time confirmed in Week 13 once the roster is set) - **6 to 10 pieces** - Presentation order drawn by lottery in the room - Your site live on screen; showcase piece embedded and playing - **Bring an offline copy.** Room wifi fails at exactly the wrong moment. Your Week 13 conference is a timed dry run of this. Come to Week 13 with a script. --- ## How to present — narrate the decision, not the process The instinct is to walk through how you made it, chronologically. Nobody wants that. **For each piece, four beats:** 1. What the goal was 2. What constraint you worked under 3. **One decision you'd defend** 4. One thing you'd change now That's it. It's fast, it's specific, and it's what a lead is actually listening for. The fourth beat reads as maturity and costs you nothing. **Rehearse each piece at two lengths — three minutes and forty-five seconds.** In the real world you won't know which you get. **Never apologize for a piece while showing it.** If it needs an apology, it shouldn't be in the portfolio — which is a Week 15 problem you should have solved in Week 2. **If you're asked something you don't know:** say so, then say what you'd do to find out. That's the answer being tested for. --- ## Rubric — 25 points | Criterion | Pts | What I'm looking at | |---|---:|---| | **Originality** | 5 | Is there a point of view here, or is this the tutorial? Did you make choices, or follow steps? | | **Range** | 5 | Does the set prove the target role across more than one situation — not the same piece three times, and not five unrelated disciplines at intermediate depth? | | **Technique** | 5 | Craft at or above entry standard for the role you named. Topology, texel density, timing, weight, lighting, comp — whatever applies. | | **Presentation & aesthetic** | 5 | Sequencing, breakdowns, role statements, thumbnail crops, *and the spoken walkthrough.* How you talk about the work is graded. | | **Completeness** | 5 | 6–10 pieces, everything finished, nothing left in for volume, nothing that needed an apology. | ### On "Range" The most common way to lose these points is the generalist trap: five disciplines at intermediate depth, hireable for none of them. The target is a **T-shape** — one specialization deep enough that someone can hire you *for it*, plus adjacent literacy that makes you useful on a small team. Range means proving your specialization across different problems, not proving you've touched everything. ### On "Completeness" Six strong pieces beat ten uneven ones. A portfolio is judged closer to its **weakest** included piece than its strongest. If you're at eleven pieces, cutting one will raise this score. --- ## Common failures - Running long, then rushing the last two pieces — which are usually your best - Narrating the making-of instead of the decision - Apologizing for work you chose to include - Reading from the screen - Dead wifi and no offline copy - Presenting pieces that contradict the stated target role - Being unable to say what part of a team piece was yours --- ## Related - Week 13 page — timed dry run, and where the presentation script is due - Week 15 page — session order - **Website Final** and **Showcase Piece Final**, both due the same day