What are peoples opinions on Artstation websites?

Pirax

I'm interested to really hear the thoughts on Artstation websites, from two perspectives really.
Artists who use them themselves, how is the customisation for you? The ease of use? Are there advantages to other hosting sites for you?

And then from recruiters. Without meaning to offend I remember having guests come in to our university and slander websites like squarespace and carbonmade for professional purposes, is this valid criticism? Do the Artstation sites fall outside of this bracket?

For me as an artist I'm definitely swaying towards the PRO subscription as its all very streamlined with a blog and a website, and it conveniences me to have somewhere that will output to my other social media platforms on a per update basis.

Thanks for any input anyone may have on this topic

zachagreg

Are you a web designer? No? Then why are you designing a website? I experienced the same. My professors would tell me to get a domain and a design a website, industry vets would tell me to just use Artstation. If someone looks at your designed website and it looks like crap it ends there. There is no look at your art. Recruiters simply have to sift through too much from what I've heard.

Basically you don't want to give anyone looking at your portfolio any reservations about you. You don't specialize in web design or graphic design, many people pay for those things for good reasons. It takes time and effort to learn and do those things well. Like any art. Focus on your art and let Artstation's hired specialized employees worry about the design of your website.

If you want you can buy a domain to make the URL cleaner if that's your thing but make sure it just redirects to your Artstation Pro site. Also like you mentioned it's streamlined. You do the uploading/blogging once and it is carried to both your artstation social and your Artstation website.

For the customization, there are enough things available that it is perfectly usable. Plenty of templates IMO and the ability to add custom script if you want to. Adding pages is a breeze the only gripe I have is the way their menus are laid out in the website builder. I don't believe page editing should be separate from the website builder like it is now. It's confusing and unneeded. If I want to edit the website I want to edit the website that is it. I don't want to just have generalized settings and then actual page settings in another interface.

Squarespace and Carbonmade are great for other professions where Artstation really isn't applicable to them. Like if you're an storefront or a chef, or you make shoes or something you know? Like that isn't what Artstation caters to so you need different things. But we as CG artists have a suite of specialized things for our portfolios/storefronts/blogs so I say use them. Spend time on your art not worrying how it's being assembled.

FourtyNights

I prefer the default ArtStation layout for the portfolio page. It's same for everyone and it's easy and fast to navigate between different artworks of an artist. Even grouping their artwork to different categories on the default layout can be a bit annoying too. That's why I always select the "All" section to see the portfolio as a whole and check out the best works of art from that person.

Customized portfolio pages in ArtStation are just simply slowing down the pace of going through the portfolio itself. Same with portfolios outside ArtStation nowadays.

The blog feature with PRO seems great though. If you find an amazing artist, it'd be great to see their next work in progress through their blogs. Usually if the artist is interesting and skilled to bother that.

Pirax

Completely agree about the blog feature, currently its the main appeal for me personally. I suppose i was looking at it for longevity and from a freelance perspective also.

I'm also happy to hear so far the consensus is that its the content on the canvas and not the canvas itself.  From what @zachagreg said its easy to customise. Appreciate the response from you both.

Happy to hear from more about their experiences!

Panupat

I don't mind at all. When sitting down together I even prefer the applicants to give me links to their Art Station or anything that lay out thumbnails for me to easily see and pick to talk about. Even simple Blogger gallery template are miles better than Square Space or most of the drag-drop website creators actually as the latter tend to be full of Javascripts doing fancy stuff that won't even load properly on my browser.  (I'm a very technical person and have ALL javascripts blocked by default. )

Artstation looks just as beautiful with or without Javascripts, something I'd like to point out.

Blogs are nice when I want to learn more about the applicants or to follow artists I like and I'm totally OK if it's hosted somewhere else. Personal website tho I found very unnecessary.

zachagreg

Panupat said:

 Even simple Blogger gallery template are miles better than Square Space or most of the drag-drop website creators actually as the latter tend to be full of Javascripts doing fancy stuff that won't even load properly on my browser.  (I'm a very technical person and have ALL javascripts blocked by default. )

Brings up an excellent point. At my work all computers have Javascript and fancy web page scripts disabled for security reasons. So you've made some kind of neat scrolling portfolio and flying images I see this,