the 1st thing I would fix is the overall chunkyness to all the lines in there, it loks like it was drawn with the pen too but with no real curves utilized to get a flowing edge.
also the name GCMax......at 1st glance it looks like a misspelling of CGMax which would kinda be more applicable to the field you are looking to work in :P why not just go with your name and the Digital artist underneath like you have now. employers will be able to remember it quicker than some website name.
the color scheme is good, good to see the 2 colors used throughout keeps it simple and easy to read. the bottom one with orange being the predominant color is easier on the eyes and looks better I think. hope some of this helps mate.
If I'm paying any kind of attention to this logo, then the rest of your portfolio isn't doing its job. Unless you're going for a design job, less time spent on site design, more time spent making 3D... =P
With that said, they're the same... go with either.
This is a render from max using splines at level 1 interpolation, so they look a bit clunky!
Actually there's a story behind the name there, GCMax. At first I started a small company called Genius Creation - building servers and high end pc's for designers, selling them locally. Then I got into 3ds max more and decided to drop the company and merge the titles.
Appreciate your crit, glad to know the reason behind you favourtism too, really helps as I was just so stuck not being able to see from someonelses perspective.
Ok will use the grey for high poly non colour models and the colour for textured low poly stuff, something else is bothering me more though...
This has probably been asked lots of times before but I can't seem to forsee what size would be appropriate for a website so that most monitors could cope without having to scroll. Was thinking 1024x768 or 1280x800, can anyone give me any pointers on this?
This is a render from max using splines at level 1 interpolation, so they look a bit clunky!
Actually there's a story behind the name there, GCMax. At first I started a small company called Genius Creation - building servers and high end pc's for designers, selling them locally. Then I got into 3ds max more and decided to drop the company and merge the titles.
Appreciate your crit, glad to know the reason behind you favourtism too, really helps as I was just so stuck not being able to see from someonelses perspective.
Thanks PixelMasher :thumbup:
if you gotta explain it then its not working
like I call myself chillalex but people know when they meet me im icy cool like your boy mr freeze, so it explains itself.
As for your layout
I'd work on an assumption that people view at around 1280x1024 or whatever that res is. The old assumed res was 1024x768 though I'd assume (hope!) that's been out dated. I think thats what I did.
For designing websites I normally follow something similar to the 960 grid system. http://960.gs/
It basically makes the largest division or table(eww) a width of 960. This allows for a lot of freedom when designing he rest of your site as 960 is a flexible number and allows for a good combination of columns to fit inside the main div tag.
For the model presentation template, I would either scale up the render of the model so it uses more of the JPEG, or crop down the JPEG so it just fits the model. Right now having a small render of a model in the middle of a large image wastes quite a bit of screen real estate.
While I understand the purpose of this thread is the graphic design of your portfolio's presentation, it seems like you are more concerned about the graphic design of the website, instead of your actual 3D work, and are designing your folio presentation around that aspect; it should be the inverse, design your website and presentation around your artwork.
The warm orange/red hues in your theme are nice, but also can be very distracting from your artwork. I think I prefer the current 'temp' site that you have linked in your signature (just add thumbnails to your images and call it done); seems more confident sans the orange bars framing the site. I've always tried to subscribe to a minimalistic school of folio presentation so I'm biased against anything 'flashy'.
shit i just had something typed up and went and closed the browser.. i don't feel like doing it all over again so I'll keep it short.. don't mind if i sound snappy.
THE SITE
your image is 1024 x 768 but in reality you only have something like 960 x 600 inside the browser window. you can get taller but the most important info should fit in 600 pixels.
currently you're using up about a third of the screen space for the design and logo, which is a lot.
(if you would put this in a 960 x 600 space you'd only have something like 380-400 pixels for content. which isn't a lot)
the color scheme and typo are pretty decent, nothing too BAM! and not stale either.. just make sure the font is for headers only and not block text.
flash is bad. it's not meant as the main part of a site, if all you have is text and images just use html. flash is most likely only useful for: overlayed info on center pieces, video, something very interactive like a 3d viewer. and always make sure there's a fallback (put a still jpg behind the swf for people without flash)
the 960 site is pretty useful but probably overkill for a portfolio site, it's more meant for sites that have complicated and highly varied content. it's a good tool though so you can use it.
THE WORK
- bigger renders
- info about textures, polycounts, wires?
- the image's grungy style doesn't match the clean site
- go with the brown BG for all work. the highpoly render gets lost in the gray, the brown will make it pop more.
Thanks for all the comments guys, still no clue as to what I should put on the home page though, it looks a bit blank atm. Was thinking maybe use home page for 3d thumbnails but then there would be little point in having a link on a navi bar to it.
some thoughts:
- the ghetto font looks like you are targeting certain teenagers
- the scaled font (to wide,- its obviously tweaked either by you or the font creator) is hard to read horizontally (the way your menu is oriented) and it makes it difficult to distinguish between the elements from a visual typographic view.
- brown/ orange = 70's ?
- red font = usually screaming, aggressive attention or danger. It usually hurts the eyes thats why people use it as warn signs, besides that it often bleeds out on colored backgrounds, often very difficult to control.
I would go more minimalistic, it looks like you tried some screen design or webdesign (fancy fonts, fancy color combinations) but what really should shine through is your content or so I believe.
Try to scrap all the elements you do not really need and reconsider everything (text, sub headline?, footer?, logo?, color?, shadows, effects,....).
Maybe consider to pick a more modest font, something that does not STICK out- because what you have right now sticks way to much out. Same for the colors,- try something minimalistic, something that does not scream for attention.
Only highlight or support elements of the website that are essential and need attention from the visitor,- like core navigation elements and the images itself.
I would go for using the 3D page for the Home Page, simple and sweet. Less buttons to push /navigate and you will get straight to the point of what your portfolio is being used for.
On a further note, if you have a digital 2d art page you might want a link that leads back to the Home/ 3D page.
renderhjs - Cheers, sticking to arial now as it looks clean and neutral. Hey, about brown and orange, they're my fave colour combination and being born in the 70's means :poly129:
Slingshot - Advice taken
Cheers Vig, reunwrapped and retextured that desk because the uv's were too unique so I thought when textures are sized down for realtime they will end up looking blurry/poor.
Latest design... (it's minus one object which I'm working on now)
Just trying to get a nice setup in Photoshop to transfer into a web editor but having a few problems though, where to have the links as they don't seem to look right anywhere
I like the new layout, it's very clean. I think the decorative font is a little too much still - have you thought about using a more traditional sans serif font like Twentieth Century: http://www.identifont.com/find?font=Twentieth+Century&q=Go
Presentation in that render looks good. Nice and clear and sharp.
For the layout I probably wouldn't put the "profile | contact" text links in the middle of the 2 thumbnail rows, it's more natural for them to go at the top near the title (either under it or to the right, I'd recommend).
That way you can have a nice grid of thumbnails, too, without any interruptions.
Also, what's "Profile" going to contain? Shouldn't you have a r
MoP, thanks for the tips, will make those changes as suggested
3DLee and chaosquack, thanks for the links, had a quick browse but will check it out properly.
Gallows, their not everyones cup of tea for sure, I was going for colours already present in the models or a nice match but a bit desaturated and not too contrasty...
You are missing a lot of wear out places.... unless u want it to look brand new.... which is probly not since u have those chipped places on the legs of it... look for real furniture and think the places that hands and elbows rest the most are the ones that wear out the most.. that should be reflected in your model... at least it makes the model interesting and aged.... if that is not what u want then ur getting there... maybe a little more work on the spec... so it shines like lacquer. good job tho.
About the handles - their using alphas and displacement value of 1, more than that and the shape distorts but without it their as flat as a pancake heh. Boosting the normal map distorts also but probably because it's a render and not an in game engine screenshot.
Here's the diffuse map shrunk down a bit...
and a wireframe...
glottis8, it's mirrored down the middle and some of the drawers are mirrored also in an attempt to retain detail when the map is shrunk down, for this reason adding dammage wouldn't look right.
I don't like the 45 degree which steels all the attentions (I hate that on other posts here on PC as well). If you want to go for something like that make it at least just horizontal or vertical - or show just an extraction with all 3 next to each other.
But then again I do not always care about texture shots because if the end result looks good its all that matters.
In the past artists used to hand these out only if a person of interest contacted them directly otherwise they would only show the final pieces.
Not keen on the 45º either, just seen it so many times before that I thought it was the standard < even though I detest having to follow the herd! Cheers guys, just finished looking through everyones [portfolio] here for purely site design tips, narrowed the selection down to these four...
Need to find out how to use Dreamweaver properly, barely scratching the surface atm, all I want is a design that will adjust with the browser and some basic html rollovers, not much else.
There's just so many things wrong with it I don't really want to list them all. the shadows shouldn't be straight flat lines, there's no perspective, the lava should be should be emitting light and getting wider as it "gets closer to the viewer". All of the shadows are going in different directions and there's never a shadow within a shadow unless there's 2 or more lights, but right now you were just using the sky. With the sky so overcast there would be no harsh shadows anyway.
There's just so many things wrong with it I don't really want to list them all.
Really? I call bullshit and if not, why would you say that in a forum that prides itself on honest critery? I'm here to learn and help others if I can. Good point on the lava though. Will fix the shadows and the anomoly on the tower lhs and fuck with the foreground a little.
Have to stop procrastinating! Will try keep it relevant for this thread from now on.
So, thumbnails! They are still being a headache, the site design I changed quite a bit but this web design business is extremely frustrating, can't wait till it's done.
btw if anyone is interested and wanting to learn photoshop to dreamweaver or other adobe apps, go here http://www.tutvid.com/
There is a tut^ for Photoshop CS4 which tells you about using slices which makes a document suitable as a start to a site template for use in dreamweaver. I'm up to there but unfortunately the follow on tut in dreamweaver is for cs3 and there is some missing funtionality for tables so it looks like I will have to downgrade
ps: It seems alot of web design folks are pretty pissed at "Layout Mode" not being present amongst other things that I've yet to stumble upon.
Ok, hadn't really considered that due to the slice method I was going to use, will see how it looks without borders because now you mention it they do look a bit ugly aswell. Cheers.
This may not apply as much to the slice method, more to the html with images method, with are pretty much the same anyway. Rounded borders are fine as long as you are using a solid background color, because you can save out square images with the background color in the corners. However, if you use a tiling background pattern, square borders are better because you don't have to use super expensive png files to get clean rounded corners with an alpha.
Also, that legal disclaimer on the front page seems very unnecessary. People who would steal your images and reuse them are going to ignore any legal ramifications anyway. Everyone else, from employers to people using images for inspiration, don't need to be told that they can download images. It has the side effect of making you seem overly protective, and I don't think that is a good image to present.
To be a bit harsh, the logo is sub-par as it is now. I would suggest you to either redo it more stylishly, or do text-only. Keep a contrast, both in size ratio, but also saturation and colours.
Also, the light background is distracting from the content. If you want to showcase images, use a dark colour, if you want to showcase text, use a light colour. Again, dark makes colours shine more.
Anyway mate, I was procrastinating a bit, so decided to give a suggestion a whirl in ye olde photoshop:
Looks good. It's easier to use CSS to render the thumbnail borders. CSS 3 makes rounded corners possible with border-radius, but I don't know if it's worth a damn. They would look better square anyway.
colors and effects are not to my taste and I think you played to much with the effects. I count 7 different font styles (color variations included) which is just overload.
All in all I think you have to much of many things, so my get rid suggestion list:
Links and legal, serious who cares. If you care about legal information put it instead on the copyright note
Welcome message, thats so yesterday, you don't welcome a visitor with some bla bla text but instead impressive portfolio art!
Respect the artist.., because its useless and not professional. Just make sure on each of your pictures your name or website url is present and images are not available to high res.
See more thumbnails... Just show them all, and only include your best stuff, don't make users follow a odd webdesign or interface design
I really like the direction bbob went; because its simple, clean and to the point. It doesn't irritate with all that meta info (copyright, respect the artist, links, legal, ....
The key for any job hunting, CV and cover letter is to make things short and straight to the point.
So maybe change yor welcome message to something short like:
This is the portfolio of 'enterYourName'. I am a game artist and seeking employment in the game industry.
Thats it, you said everything that really matters with just a few words and by that made sure that more people actually read those characters.
Oh yea, I forgot to mention that you should say straight out what you are, either in the header, clearly in the logo, and in prominent text in a super short intro. I.e. Environment Artist, or Character Artist, etc.
Thanks for all your comments and especially bbob for the paintover, I tried to take as much of what you all said into consideration and alter the design. Been through a few possible versions so i thought it may help to post them here;
...about the logo and your suggestion bbob.
I see this two-tone lettering only style everywhere, it looks cool and is easy to read but so many companies use it that in the end it seems to be difficult to distinguish them. I just wanted something unique that people will remember and be able to say, o yeah that's "this persons" work.
..about the thumbnails.
This was going to be a dummy link in order to try and leave it open for a future second thumbnail page, if it's a bad idea or totally unprofessional then I will consider removing it.
I know you guys are probably thinking less filler, more thriller and despite me actually agreeing on this I find myself battling against the layout, filler seems to be the cure < frustrating!
Replies
also the name GCMax......at 1st glance it looks like a misspelling of CGMax which would kinda be more applicable to the field you are looking to work in :P why not just go with your name and the Digital artist underneath like you have now. employers will be able to remember it quicker than some website name.
the color scheme is good, good to see the 2 colors used throughout keeps it simple and easy to read. the bottom one with orange being the predominant color is easier on the eyes and looks better I think. hope some of this helps mate.
cheers
With that said, they're the same... go with either.
Actually there's a story behind the name there, GCMax. At first I started a small company called Genius Creation - building servers and high end pc's for designers, selling them locally. Then I got into 3ds max more and decided to drop the company and merge the titles.
Appreciate your crit, glad to know the reason behind you favourtism too, really helps as I was just so stuck not being able to see from someonelses perspective.
Thanks PixelMasher :thumbup:
This has probably been asked lots of times before but I can't seem to forsee what size would be appropriate for a website so that most monitors could cope without having to scroll. Was thinking 1024x768 or 1280x800, can anyone give me any pointers on this?
like I call myself chillalex but people know when they meet me im icy cool like your boy mr freeze, so it explains itself.
As for your layout
I'd work on an assumption that people view at around 1280x1024 or whatever that res is. The old assumed res was 1024x768 though I'd assume (hope!) that's been out dated. I think thats what I did.
http://960.gs/
It basically makes the largest division or table(eww) a width of 960. This allows for a lot of freedom when designing he rest of your site as 960 is a flexible number and allows for a good combination of columns to fit inside the main div tag.
Take a look at the demo
http://960.gs/demo.html
While I understand the purpose of this thread is the graphic design of your portfolio's presentation, it seems like you are more concerned about the graphic design of the website, instead of your actual 3D work, and are designing your folio presentation around that aspect; it should be the inverse, design your website and presentation around your artwork.
The warm orange/red hues in your theme are nice, but also can be very distracting from your artwork. I think I prefer the current 'temp' site that you have linked in your signature (just add thumbnails to your images and call it done); seems more confident sans the orange bars framing the site. I've always tried to subscribe to a minimalistic school of folio presentation so I'm biased against anything 'flashy'.
THE SITE
your image is 1024 x 768 but in reality you only have something like 960 x 600 inside the browser window. you can get taller but the most important info should fit in 600 pixels.
currently you're using up about a third of the screen space for the design and logo, which is a lot.
(if you would put this in a 960 x 600 space you'd only have something like 380-400 pixels for content. which isn't a lot)
the color scheme and typo are pretty decent, nothing too BAM! and not stale either.. just make sure the font is for headers only and not block text.
flash is bad. it's not meant as the main part of a site, if all you have is text and images just use html. flash is most likely only useful for: overlayed info on center pieces, video, something very interactive like a 3d viewer. and always make sure there's a fallback (put a still jpg behind the swf for people without flash)
the 960 site is pretty useful but probably overkill for a portfolio site, it's more meant for sites that have complicated and highly varied content. it's a good tool though so you can use it.
THE WORK
- bigger renders
- info about textures, polycounts, wires?
- the image's grungy style doesn't match the clean site
- go with the brown BG for all work. the highpoly render gets lost in the gray, the brown will make it pop more.
- the ghetto font looks like you are targeting certain teenagers
- the scaled font (to wide,- its obviously tweaked either by you or the font creator) is hard to read horizontally (the way your menu is oriented) and it makes it difficult to distinguish between the elements from a visual typographic view.
- brown/ orange = 70's ?
- red font = usually screaming, aggressive attention or danger. It usually hurts the eyes thats why people use it as warn signs, besides that it often bleeds out on colored backgrounds, often very difficult to control.
I would go more minimalistic, it looks like you tried some screen design or webdesign (fancy fonts, fancy color combinations) but what really should shine through is your content or so I believe.
Try to scrap all the elements you do not really need and reconsider everything (text, sub headline?, footer?, logo?, color?, shadows, effects,....).
Maybe consider to pick a more modest font, something that does not STICK out- because what you have right now sticks way to much out. Same for the colors,- try something minimalistic, something that does not scream for attention.
Only highlight or support elements of the website that are essential and need attention from the visitor,- like core navigation elements and the images itself.
On a further note, if you have a digital 2d art page you might want a link that leads back to the Home/ 3D page.
Slingshot - Advice taken
Latest design... (it's minus one object which I'm working on now)
Just trying to get a nice setup in Photoshop to transfer into a web editor but having a few problems though, where to have the links as they don't seem to look right anywhere
Cleaver looks great btw!
"the ghetto font looks like you are targeting certain teenagers"
:poly127: twitch... resist.
3DLee, that font looks rather nice but it's to buy only? Can't seem to find it free anywhere
For the layout I probably wouldn't put the "profile | contact" text links in the middle of the 2 thumbnail rows, it's more natural for them to go at the top near the title (either under it or to the right, I'd recommend).
That way you can have a nice grid of thumbnails, too, without any interruptions.
Also, what's "Profile" going to contain? Shouldn't you have a r
You can probably find something similarly clean for free on there.
Seconded, there are some great fonts on there! The one I posted was just a style suggestion.
3DLee and chaosquack, thanks for the links, had a quick browse but will check it out properly.
Gallows, their not everyones cup of tea for sure, I was going for colours already present in the models or a nice match but a bit desaturated and not too contrasty...
About the handles - their using alphas and displacement value of 1, more than that and the shape distorts but without it their as flat as a pancake heh. Boosting the normal map distorts also but probably because it's a render and not an in game engine screenshot.
Here's the diffuse map shrunk down a bit...
and a wireframe...
glottis8, it's mirrored down the middle and some of the drawers are mirrored also in an attempt to retain detail when the map is shrunk down, for this reason adding dammage wouldn't look right.
This object also has a decal so there's 2 sets of textures, was going to seperate everything but I'm not really sure what would be the most fitting.
//sorry for the double post//
But then again I do not always care about texture shots because if the end result looks good its all that matters.
In the past artists used to hand these out only if a person of interest contacted them directly otherwise they would only show the final pieces.
Other than that this is coming up nicely
http://jeremylindstrom.com/
http://shogun3d.com/
http://www.kalescentstudios.com/troyfolio/Main.htm
http://www.bja-design.de/
Need to find out how to use Dreamweaver properly, barely scratching the surface atm, all I want is a design that will adjust with the browser and some basic html rollovers, not much else.
...thanks to Rollin for your helpful crit
*edited for new version.
Really? I call bullshit and if not, why would you say that in a forum that prides itself on honest critery? I'm here to learn and help others if I can. Good point on the lava though. Will fix the shadows and the anomoly on the tower lhs and fuck with the foreground a little.
out/
If you don't mind me asking what did you use to make it? parts of it look real.
*updated next post
So, thumbnails! They are still being a headache, the site design I changed quite a bit but this web design business is extremely frustrating, can't wait till it's done.
btw if anyone is interested and wanting to learn photoshop to dreamweaver or other adobe apps, go here http://www.tutvid.com/
There is a tut^ for Photoshop CS4 which tells you about using slices which makes a document suitable as a start to a site template for use in dreamweaver. I'm up to there but unfortunately the follow on tut in dreamweaver is for cs3 and there is some missing funtionality for tables so it looks like I will have to downgrade
ps: It seems alot of web design folks are pretty pissed at "Layout Mode" not being present amongst other things that I've yet to stumble upon.
Also, that legal disclaimer on the front page seems very unnecessary. People who would steal your images and reuse them are going to ignore any legal ramifications anyway. Everyone else, from employers to people using images for inspiration, don't need to be told that they can download images. It has the side effect of making you seem overly protective, and I don't think that is a good image to present.
Just my opinion.
Also, the light background is distracting from the content. If you want to showcase images, use a dark colour, if you want to showcase text, use a light colour. Again, dark makes colours shine more.
Anyway mate, I was procrastinating a bit, so decided to give a suggestion a whirl in ye olde photoshop:
http://i48.tinypic.com/2u76oli.jpg
The one large thumbnail you could use for your best piece, also it gives the whole thumbnail area a bit more interest.
Didnt bother to add in the disclaimer text, as you have a pretty good grip on typography.
Hope this can be of some help.
.thumb img {border: solid 10px rgb(255, 255, 255)}I agree about the legal jargon, nobody gives a shit.
All in all I think you have to much of many things, so my get rid suggestion list:
I really like the direction bbob went; because its simple, clean and to the point. It doesn't irritate with all that meta info (copyright, respect the artist, links, legal, ....
The key for any job hunting, CV and cover letter is to make things short and straight to the point.
So maybe change yor welcome message to something short like: Thats it, you said everything that really matters with just a few words and by that made sure that more people actually read those characters.
Comparison bbob vs gcmp
v4 (logo looks better but...)
v5 (least favourite)
v6 (favourite)
...about the logo and your suggestion bbob.
I see this two-tone lettering only style everywhere, it looks cool and is easy to read but so many companies use it that in the end it seems to be difficult to distinguish them. I just wanted something unique that people will remember and be able to say, o yeah that's "this persons" work.
..about the thumbnails.
This was going to be a dummy link in order to try and leave it open for a future second thumbnail page, if it's a bad idea or totally unprofessional then I will consider removing it.
I know you guys are probably thinking less filler, more thriller and despite me actually agreeing on this I find myself battling against the layout, filler seems to be the cure < frustrating!
Thanks again to all