My suggestion would be to lose the iframes. I find only being able to see one of six lines of thumbnails is annoying and feels cramped. The thumbnails themselves barely / don't even fit in the frame, making scrolling tedious and distracting from actually looking at the art.
Also, I would suggest testing your page at multiple resolutions and with multiple browsers. The front page frames don't have the proper height when the page is viewed in Opera, and at higher res (I run 1600x1200), your text blurb at the bottom spans the entire window, whereas the rest is limited to the left half of the screen, looking rather incongruous.
I thought you had 2 pieces of work until I noticed that scroll bar.
All those iframes are horrible, juse use some nice divs to lay everything out.
Here are my nasty comments
The logo -I have to say it looks rather amateurish, like you realised you need a logo so you made one as quickly as you could. The rollovers look nasty. I'd revisit that.
All the large text looks weak. The font is all wrong. Why not just use big text? That'll load faster and will look better and will be easier to change. Don't force the users to download an image that is just text.
And you might want to take the "pagebuilder" out of the titlebar.
And the counter - a counter is used to say "Look how unpopular my site is!" Do you REALLY REALLY need to know how many people are visiting? Then add an offlike counter, one that gathers all the stas but displays them on a stats page for your eyes only.
Not many people know, but many search engines use the contents of the title bar to help categorise the site. Keywords are hardly ever used, and the most important thing is the keywords it finds on each page in the actual content. Everytime you ue a frame yu are breaking this functionality.
I'd be a liar if I said the page wasn't rushed. Yeah, I have to agree with everything you guys posted. I'm on it.
Tested it in IE and Firefox. I hadn't realized many people were using Opera. Are there others I should think about as well (Safari is the only other one I can think of at the moment)? My largest concern is the size of my demo reels, at 20 and 28 megs. The hosting service offered that counter, I guess it really is tacky.
Get rid of the frames.
Remove counter.
Post bigger showreels.
Remove rat, weird A-Z thing, wood plane and machine from the model showreel.
Remove (or lower the speed) on the running and very jerky ferret.
Look over your traditional section, top row and the ferrets are great, the rest could be axed.
Put the each of the models and their accompanying textures on a single link with polycounts and texturesizes.
[ QUOTE ]
I'd be a liar if I said the page wasn't rushed. Yeah, I have to agree with everything you guys posted. I'm on it.
Tested it in IE and Firefox. I hadn't realized many people were using Opera. Are there others I should think about as well (Safari is the only other one I can think of at the moment)? My largest concern is the size of my demo reels, at 20 and 28 megs. The hosting service offered that counter, I guess it really is tacky.
Thanks all!
[/ QUOTE ]
Opera is third down on the list, I think? I'd like to see more people using it now that it's free, but Firefox has the advantage and with its plugins will probably keep that lead, I just like the feel and functionality of Opera more. Other than IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari, there's also Konqerer and what Linux browsers you have. Probably not that important, but you might be able to check with a quick boot of Knoppix or other boot-from-CD distro, but that's sorta going out of your way-- I've certainly never done it. I doubt anyone in a position to hire you is running Linux :P
As for your reel size-- .mov isn't the best, but it'll do. It's compression is lower than standard, and it requires the rather large download of a custom player, but anyone who looks at this stuff should have it, and your host seems fast enough (110k+ download speeds for me). Just to be sure, though, I would probably still go with... divx or whatever the thing is nowadays. I don't really keep track of codices as long as Defilerpak covers it.
Regardless of what video compression you use, though, I suggest links straight to the files rather than embedded content. It's important for it to be easily saved and passed around the network-- or just so they can view it in the player and resize the window.
.mov IS the way to go, as divx or xvid requires you to have the codecs installed. EVERYONE in a games studio will probably have them, but they will certainly have Quicktime installed.
Tried that a while ago, seemed to skip a lot, does it work better now? Still, unless you link to it on the page, it doesn't mean much (In fact, even if you do, I doubt many would notice.) Anyway, I'm only trying to help. You asked about codices and I gave my opinion ^^
[edit-ish] That QT alternative is 10 megs in and of itself anyway, not exactly small either ^^
Regardless, I did say, as Rick, that most would have it. I only suggest Divx because the filesize is smaller, and I'd think they'd have that too. Listen to Rick though, he's certainly got more experience than I
Should be a little better now. Oranization and reel changes will have to wait for later this weekend.
I really like Divx compression, maybe I'll make that an option. I like things to play automatically for people out there who may be in HR but not computers. So then I make iframes so you cant see my content. Swift.
I'm not going to bother repeating what's been posted above, a lot of good feedback. I would just emphasize that you change your title image. I think you have stronger pieces in your portfolio.
On a technical site, every link on your site pops-up in a new window in foxfire. Really didn't like having to download your demo reels in the browser to play them. A direct download link works better, for me, because I can download, watch, and watch any other time without having to load it up on your site again.
I like the animation reel best, though the some animations, mostly the running characters, seemed jerky and stiff. In the model/texture demo reel, the first few things seem to spin too fast. Anyway, the anims reel seems to show off your abilities the best.
Traditional section isn't of much value to you. It's all sketchbook stuff, not really for a portfolio.
3d Stills section could be better organized. All the images for one thing could have one thumbnail that links to a page with all the images. For example, those five car pictures could be on one page linked from the first car picture. You may also consider dividing the page between high detail and game art. It's a bit of a confusing page overall. What exactly are group_bore and pigpaint supposed to be? Those are two confusing images.
Yeah, Im reworking those thumbnail pages, and everything else. I frankly have no idea how to build a site without each of those popping up in a new window without using something like iframes or flash. Rick said something about divs, other than what google has told me about them I know nothing.
It's funny, but I used to get crits that my stuff wasn't "snappy" enough. Maybe I went overboard.
I'm axing a bunch of the more confusing images.
I can cut the traditional section too. I got the vibe that some places wanted to see that I could think with a pencil. Maybe that isn't the norm.
I looked at your code, open your HTML in notepad, search and delete every occurance of target="_blank". This is on all your hyperlinks, and it's what causes them to open in new windows.
OHIO!!!!! love the buckeye.... i would use some type of brightly colored backgound that fashes in a seziure inducing way.. so you page screams "look at me!!! look at me!!" also is always good to have a few popular animated gifs in there.. like the dancing baby.. some type of really catchy song is also good to have jamming in background.. dont give them any volume controls, its your page, your vision.. for more on way awesome site design i recomend going here for inspiration
Replies
Also, I would suggest testing your page at multiple resolutions and with multiple browsers. The front page frames don't have the proper height when the page is viewed in Opera, and at higher res (I run 1600x1200), your text blurb at the bottom spans the entire window, whereas the rest is limited to the left half of the screen, looking rather incongruous.
I thought you had 2 pieces of work until I noticed that scroll bar.
All those iframes are horrible, juse use some nice divs to lay everything out.
Here are my nasty comments
The logo -I have to say it looks rather amateurish, like you realised you need a logo so you made one as quickly as you could. The rollovers look nasty. I'd revisit that.
All the large text looks weak. The font is all wrong. Why not just use big text? That'll load faster and will look better and will be easier to change. Don't force the users to download an image that is just text.
And you might want to take the "pagebuilder" out of the titlebar.
And the counter - a counter is used to say "Look how unpopular my site is!" Do you REALLY REALLY need to know how many people are visiting? Then add an offlike counter, one that gathers all the stas but displays them on a stats page for your eyes only.
Not many people know, but many search engines use the contents of the title bar to help categorise the site. Keywords are hardly ever used, and the most important thing is the keywords it finds on each page in the actual content. Everytime you ue a frame yu are breaking this functionality.
Tested it in IE and Firefox. I hadn't realized many people were using Opera. Are there others I should think about as well (Safari is the only other one I can think of at the moment)? My largest concern is the size of my demo reels, at 20 and 28 megs. The hosting service offered that counter, I guess it really is tacky.
Thanks all!
Remove counter.
Post bigger showreels.
Remove rat, weird A-Z thing, wood plane and machine from the model showreel.
Remove (or lower the speed) on the running and very jerky ferret.
Look over your traditional section, top row and the ferrets are great, the rest could be axed.
Put the each of the models and their accompanying textures on a single link with polycounts and texturesizes.
I'd be a liar if I said the page wasn't rushed. Yeah, I have to agree with everything you guys posted. I'm on it.
Tested it in IE and Firefox. I hadn't realized many people were using Opera. Are there others I should think about as well (Safari is the only other one I can think of at the moment)? My largest concern is the size of my demo reels, at 20 and 28 megs. The hosting service offered that counter, I guess it really is tacky.
Thanks all!
[/ QUOTE ]
Opera is third down on the list, I think? I'd like to see more people using it now that it's free, but Firefox has the advantage and with its plugins will probably keep that lead, I just like the feel and functionality of Opera more. Other than IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari, there's also Konqerer and what Linux browsers you have. Probably not that important, but you might be able to check with a quick boot of Knoppix or other boot-from-CD distro, but that's sorta going out of your way-- I've certainly never done it. I doubt anyone in a position to hire you is running Linux :P
As for your reel size-- .mov isn't the best, but it'll do. It's compression is lower than standard, and it requires the rather large download of a custom player, but anyone who looks at this stuff should have it, and your host seems fast enough (110k+ download speeds for me). Just to be sure, though, I would probably still go with... divx or whatever the thing is nowadays. I don't really keep track of codices as long as Defilerpak covers it.
Regardless of what video compression you use, though, I suggest links straight to the files rather than embedded content. It's important for it to be easily saved and passed around the network-- or just so they can view it in the player and resize the window.
There's always QT Alternative http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm
The last 2 places I have worked prefer quicktime.
"and it requires the rather large download of a custom player"
There's always QT Alternative http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm
[/ QUOTE ]
Tried that a while ago, seemed to skip a lot, does it work better now? Still, unless you link to it on the page, it doesn't mean much (In fact, even if you do, I doubt many would notice.) Anyway, I'm only trying to help. You asked about codices and I gave my opinion ^^
[edit-ish] That QT alternative is 10 megs in and of itself anyway, not exactly small either ^^
Regardless, I did say, as Rick, that most would have it. I only suggest Divx because the filesize is smaller, and I'd think they'd have that too. Listen to Rick though, he's certainly got more experience than I
I really like Divx compression, maybe I'll make that an option. I like things to play automatically for people out there who may be in HR but not computers. So then I make iframes so you cant see my content. Swift.
I like the animation reel best, though the some animations, mostly the running characters, seemed jerky and stiff. In the model/texture demo reel, the first few things seem to spin too fast. Anyway, the anims reel seems to show off your abilities the best.
Traditional section isn't of much value to you. It's all sketchbook stuff, not really for a portfolio.
3d Stills section could be better organized. All the images for one thing could have one thumbnail that links to a page with all the images. For example, those five car pictures could be on one page linked from the first car picture. You may also consider dividing the page between high detail and game art. It's a bit of a confusing page overall. What exactly are group_bore and pigpaint supposed to be? Those are two confusing images.
It's funny, but I used to get crits that my stuff wasn't "snappy" enough. Maybe I went overboard.
I'm axing a bunch of the more confusing images.
I can cut the traditional section too. I got the vibe that some places wanted to see that I could think with a pencil. Maybe that isn't the norm.
chipping away at the mess...
www.paperrad.org
probably the best website ever designed.... ever..
Few more changes...