Feedback on Portfolio Site!
Hey all --
One of the many on the roller coaster ride that is finding employment - I thought I would go ahead and post my site in hopes I get a feedback to help make it better!
PERSONAL SITE: www.danmartinezart.com
Any feedback at all no matter what it's about, is HIGHLY appreciated!
Thanks for the time, and good luck to those on the job hunt as well.
One of the many on the roller coaster ride that is finding employment - I thought I would go ahead and post my site in hopes I get a feedback to help make it better!
PERSONAL SITE: www.danmartinezart.com
Any feedback at all no matter what it's about, is HIGHLY appreciated!
Thanks for the time, and good luck to those on the job hunt as well.
Replies
@DudeinCA - Oh! Nice catch -- I had them set up as a gallery instead of just straight images. I'll change that! Thanks.
@Dan! - It got blocked?!! As far the loading time, perhaps I do need to go back and crunch some of the images a little more to lessening load time. I'm in the process of going back and bumping my texturing, as well as, creating a better more clear presentation overall! Thanks for the crit!
Also -- I see you're in Orlando at Full Sail? I'm in Kissimmee currently - are there any classes or anything of the such regarding 3D modeling, figure, or sculpting going on this summer? Would love to try anything local I could perhaps join up with.
Also -- What alternative could I use to remaking the site without the flash? I know a little bit of dreamweaver but it's in my best interest to try and use something that is easier to use. Thanks again.
I was in the same boat as you, needed to make a site and really wanted to keep the url simple and without .wordpress or .webs etc in the name so i got my domain name and my hosting all set up and did what was in my best interest - i learned dreamweaver, or at least enough to get me by and get a functional site
i knew nothing about the program before hand so already you got a jump on me but really its not that hard to figure everything out, one solid night of ready up on tutorials, linking your hosting to domain, and trouble shooting and you should be set - highly recommend it, i haven't had any complaints about slow loading times on my portfolio (hope i don't lol) the contents on the other hand... lets just say i need to do some updating :P
goodluck if you change your mind and attempt to master dreamweaver !
As you seem to know, your attention should be on finding a job and polishing your portfolio, not learning a skill (web coding) that has nothing to do with your field. And, even if you were to spend a week doing nothing but coding and learning, you're still probably not going to produce a perfectly usable, robust site free of errors or potential problems or weirdness. Especially not one easily modified for when you need to polish things or make changes.
Try finding a CMS, content management system, and installing it to your site, and then customizing that base to your liking. My site, find it in my footer or user page, is built on CMS software called INDEXHIBIT, but there are a lot of good ones out there. It was easy to install, easy to customize, works great, had a supporting community while I was getting it up, and it took me about half a day.
Realize that I'm not saying MY site in particular is great (I'm not that egotistical) just that the system behind it is going to be more robust and quicker to get up, easier to customize, and less frustrating than learning to code for this one task.
As for your portfolio, the design is looking okay, if a bit generic. I personally am not a big fan of dark websites, and I dont understand the game artist instinct to always make them black or dark gray -- it works in a lot of cases, but in others it just seems dark for no good reason, since it's easy to highlight content at either end of the shade spectrum. You have some good content. Maybe you could use a bit more, but a small amount of good content is better than a lot of mediocre content.
Good luck on your job search.
EDIT: I wanted to add that a CMS system behind your site give you access to tools that can help you in your job search. One I find useful is the statistic tool in INDEXHIBIT, which lets me see where people are coming to my page from, what keyword searches are finding me, which pages people go to when they are at my site. On example is that I have learned that the first place people go after my opening page is to anatomy, and then to project breakdowns. It helped me get rid of needless categories that nobody was interested in, which was useful for cleaning it up. There are lots more open source tools available as well, all which do different things.
but to each their own
Also, when linking the html home page to a host site, like GoDaddy -- is it as simple as just using a browse button on the host site and pointing it at the HTML page? That's the only thing I'm a little fuzzy on.
@ysalex - When trying to install the CMS, what were you using to build your site before? I am using Wix currently, and I don't believe I can install anything to it seeing how its being edited through my browser window.
As for the color, I think you are right and I will get on trying to add a little bit of life to it and not keep it dark. My reasoning behind it was just it makes the characters pop against the background but it can get a little too generic, I agree.
The first thing I did was code it in HTML. I bought my site, yurialexander.com, and a hosting plan from godaddy, then uploaded the code and my images. I'm sure you've gone through a similar process. Then I started to hate my coded site, and decided to install indexhibit and built it through there.
INDEXHIBIT works like this:
You upload THEIR code to wherever you are hosting your site, through whatever host you are using, in the same way that you uploaded your own files. Then you "install", I'm using that word loosely, by following a specific URL. it's usually YOURSITE.com/NXDZ-STUDIO/install.php -- or something like that. There are very easy instructions online. This sends you through some information you need to fill out, and answer some questions about your hosting plan, and then you're ready to go.
Then when you want to make changes, you log onto your site through YOURSITE.com/ndxz-studio, you'll put in your password and username, and you'll have access to everything. You can check out your statistics, upload new content, rearrange your site, add new pages, edit existing pages, etc.
It's very, very simple.
As for the color, I think you are right and I will get on trying to add a little bit of life to it and not keep it dark. My reasoning behind it was just it makes the characters pop against the background but it can get a little too generic, I agree.
The following is a rant, feel free to ignore it.
Please, take the above with a grain of salt. I do not hate black pages in general, I just don't understand why they are the default for game portfolios. People give random justifications like 'It makes your content stand out', or 'its easier on peoples eyes', but neither of these, or any others I've heard, are true in any important sense. You can make anything 'pop' against any color background by using an appropriate contrast color, 90 pencent of all websites you go to are white, and they are hardly 'taxing' on the eyes, etc.
I remember when I made my first page and asked for feedback, someone wrote something about "white backgrounds are gross."
I remember thinking, google is gross? Reddit is gross? Amazon, wikipedia, facebook, twitter, yahoo, youtube? Then I check out the top ranking pages, and realized that every page in the top ten (ranking wise) are white, and only a handful in the top fifty are anything BUT white.
So of course, like an idiot, I replied and asked, "White backgrounds are fairly standard, aren't they?"
Wrong thing to do. The very next comment was, "you don't tell PERSON white backgrounds are fairly standard. gray is fairly standard but if you don't want to take criticism, that's you."
___________
Anyways, the point of this long message is that, black works, and it seems to be working for you. But it's not the ONLY thing that works. White, gray and colored sites all work the exact same. One does highlight content better than another, IF you frame the content in a way which works with the background you've chosen, same as if you were using black.
If you look outside game art portfolios, you'll notice that actual designers use a good variety of colors for their personal portfolios, there is no standard, just good design. So don't feel like you are tied to any portfolio convention mentioned here 'just because'. Most of the conventions are there for good reason "Just your best stuff, content upfront, smaller header", but not all of them.
Anyways, rant over. And like I said before, good luck with your hunt.