Test my temporary Portfolio website

tristamus

Hey there guys,

I wanted to post this and see how it works for you guys.

For me, it works on and off, and I'm getting very mixed reviews.

This is not my primary portfolio website, but I wanted to try out Wix's options. While it looks good, it has serious issues when I want to edit the website itself, or even just viewing it from certain browsers.

Anyways, here's the Wix website...

http://tristamus.wix.com/aiello

My carbonmade website...

http://www.tristamus.com

What do you guys see / think?

FractaL

Wix kinda looks unprofessional, as does carbonmade..

What I'd do is get yourself a cheap webhost and install wordpress on it, or some other custom cms!

MattQ86

I think the carbonmade website looks much better and loads faster.

Ace-Angel

Many of us don't have the skillset to make a website look good or functional, even with custom press sets, and cheap doesn't always mean 'good enough', especially for control or service for the providers end, so you might want to be very wary.

As to if they can be improved, they can be, but since I don't have any technical knowledge on what can be and not be changed, I'll leave that to other people.

Lastly, I have seen plenty of talented artist use the exact same scheme as Carbonmade on your paid site, so that surely means something?

The comment I have on topic is that alot of the stuff you're showing doesn't need to be shown.

For example, your concept for the Japanese Garden is need to go, shoo! Since it's not drawn too well, and not referenced from another artist, so that can go and save some clutter space.

Alot of your images are fragmented, you could have the first two images put into one image, with a little space in between, and a little bit bigger in size (try to aim near HD), since alot of what you're showing is the same, and all mutiple images are doing is adding more clicky time.

Same with close ups, you could consolidate those two into 1 image.

Smaller pieces can be put together under a Misc title, like Misc-Props, Misc-Environment, etc, especially for stuff like rocks, you can sculpt the most amazing rocks, but if they're low poly and aren't main pieces, not many people are going to spend time reading up the detail about them, or clicking mutiple images about them.

Wireframes are also no go, any wireframe that has triangles in them can get confusing pretty fast (especially to the untrained eye), try and render out a wireframe version, in grey or white in your app of choice like Max or Maya and use that instead, it will be much cleaner.

You can also try and put your texture samples with your wireframe image, and call it a tech-sheet. Try also and name your texture sheets on the image itself, since it will be easier to read, and be a sorts of watermark if you will so the guy doesn't have to hunt any info about it.
Try and to keep your texture sheets like you did for your bridge, basically segmented, I know it might take you longer to make it look nice, but it's much easier to process for the brain, and again, cleans up the clutter.

Try and make a quick note of your name in one angle of the image if possible, and if needed write some quick stats in one corner, like renderer (UDK or Marmo), how many vertices, etc, don't make it bloated, just small tidbits in your tech-sheet that will be quick and easy to spot. The text in it's current form (written below the image) has to go, no one is going to spend time squinting to read that text (sorry, but it's true usually).

Try and keep separate sites for your work types. Put your strongest pieces in your folio, and try to focus it, don't post WIP's, put those on a blog.

Also, try and avoid blaring colors for your other stuff, at 2AM of this post, I almost had a heart-attack in my dark room when I clicked on your Resume since the white killed me, infact, my ghost is typing this message right now!
Try and keep gradient colors in the 10-90% range of colors for stuff like that, make it calming for the eyes so they don't strain.

Overall, you have nothing bad, it's just the lack of organization and too many 'clicky' images which are bringing your down.

PS: In all the examples above, I'm talking about the Carbon site. The other one is simply too confusing and has no structure, not to mention, the previews aren't big enough to look good, and you need to click text which is not visually indicative of what type of work you're clicking on.

S_ource

I also like the carbonemade, faster, better layout (the other site is a bit overwhelming wit small images everywhere). i like scrolling away and just taking one images at a time. And also i think you should change or remove the background for the resum

Snader

As a binary choice between the two, the carbonmade one is better.