Website redesign!
polycounter lvl 18
After many years and complaints about the sounds on my website, I miraculously found some motivation in a small corner of my brain... and spent a few nights redoing it completely.
Had to learn CSS and god knows what else from scratch which was all new to me, but turned out to be rather interesting. Who knew you could do all kinds of little tricks without knowing rocket science.
The interesting little detail about the new website is that it has more *old* art than before, and hopefully i will be able to add lots more over the next days.
Why old art you may wonder ? ...Well, it's all downloadable: all models and all textures on the site are neatly zipped up and can be used for whatever anybody wants. Ever since i put up the very old 256x256 textures some years ago they've been having hundreds of downloads and still go regularly, over 50 gigs bandwidth in old textures alone over the past few years... so clearly, there's enough people who can use what we otherwise call dated.
Well, this doesn't go for the stuff in the portfolio of course, but as time passes...
My self esteem being pretty healthy and all that, it just seems ridiculous to see everything watermarked these days and all the paranohia about people stealing pixels and polygons. You can't steal what's given freely, and eitherway... who really cares.
Some of the pages are not up yet... takes time to convert everything to the new layout, but other than that i think i worked all the bugs out.
Hope the navigation makes sense, if it explodes, wasn't me.
http://www.strangefate.com
I leave you with the picture of a squirrel which is clearly completely unrelated to this.
Had to learn CSS and god knows what else from scratch which was all new to me, but turned out to be rather interesting. Who knew you could do all kinds of little tricks without knowing rocket science.
The interesting little detail about the new website is that it has more *old* art than before, and hopefully i will be able to add lots more over the next days.
Why old art you may wonder ? ...Well, it's all downloadable: all models and all textures on the site are neatly zipped up and can be used for whatever anybody wants. Ever since i put up the very old 256x256 textures some years ago they've been having hundreds of downloads and still go regularly, over 50 gigs bandwidth in old textures alone over the past few years... so clearly, there's enough people who can use what we otherwise call dated.
Well, this doesn't go for the stuff in the portfolio of course, but as time passes...
My self esteem being pretty healthy and all that, it just seems ridiculous to see everything watermarked these days and all the paranohia about people stealing pixels and polygons. You can't steal what's given freely, and eitherway... who really cares.
Some of the pages are not up yet... takes time to convert everything to the new layout, but other than that i think i worked all the bugs out.
Hope the navigation makes sense, if it explodes, wasn't me.
http://www.strangefate.com
I leave you with the picture of a squirrel which is clearly completely unrelated to this.
Replies
but all in all it works quite good.. only the secondary-menu on the right side is a bit confusing at the beginning
On one hand I like the old school vibe of the contents (and to some extent, of the layout as well). But on the other hand I think you could make the whole thing breathe much more. With a lighter layout you could make your pixel/texture stuff really shine!
For instance all the 3d art renders could fit inside the layout without a popup at all, since they are not too wide. I'd say show them fully, and maybe make the download/description text a bit less obvious? Also I think you should show the textures near the model. Because your shading is so good, it could be mistaken for a normalmapped sculpt (head on the shield for instance) so I think it'd be nice to make it all more obvious.
Goodluck!
http://www.strangefate.com/portfolio/3dHipoly.html. The enter thing is annoying, so is the first front page if I just want to see the portfolio, even more is also the first page that comes if I click on portfolio.
Also that the categories of each main category (just portfolio crits here) are on the left was very odd at first because I was first thinking ok so not so much to show - i did not noticed that the right part were links to other sections mainly because:
- they look like quotes or descriptions
- they are on the counter part of where the menu was
earhgh !? why is there a portfolio section but also a 2d, 3d and textures section !?! shouldn't that all be merged together and rather be sorted in chronological order if you want to keep everything?
well like I said I think the website is quite bad, not good structured and very difficult to understand and navigate. There is simply to much content that is not sorted well. Having 3 menu systems (main, portfolio, right side) is just to irritating for every first time watcher with just 3 min. on their hands.
The content is nice, especially the dark sector stuff is very nice. I like the modeling but also texturing of it.
I had a bad impression of the game but now that I saw your stuff I must say there was some very nice design in the game.
Have to say I agree with renderhjs, currently your site design confuses me - I can't work out why there's 2d/3d sections then also portfolio... what's the difference?
Also the "splash" intro page just seems unnecessary, I'm pretty sure those went out of fashion years ago, what's it actually "for" other than to get in the way? Never understood the reasoning behind those pages, to be honest.
The layout of the pages themselves are also a bit weird, renderhjs made all the points I would have already, so there ya go.
Yeeeahh I thought the right side menu would be confusing for some people at first, maybe i can find a way to make it more obvious, or more confusing even.
Pior, I thought at some point to have the renders there in large but it seemed it would make the pages too heavy to load (?), as it is thumbnails load rather fast, the full images hmmm.... Another problem is that I only have about 500something pixels width to play with in the center.
I wanted to have a more elegant popup for the images instead of an ugly browser window, but i couldn't figure out how to do it so far and I had to be done this weekend, or I knew i would just never finish it
I'm open for better solutions tho and i'll keep thinking about it... i'm pretty sure i'll come up or find something better eventually
For the normal page, it really doesn't matter what conclusions people draw about the workflow of the content, I'd actually rather distance myself from it, it's all really old stuff (one reason i like putting the dates there of when the stuff was made) ...that main site is not about showing what i can do, just a spot to give away stuff mainly. See it as my little private garden.
I'll make sure to have the skins for the shaded stuff in my portfolio tho, good point.
Renderhjs - I'll make that one the index for the portfolio, it does make more sense.
I hear you about the right side menu, i'll try to make it more obvious somehow.
The reason for the separate 2d/3d/portfolio sections is that the main site is NOT my portfolio.
It has nothing to do with it. Just because a personal site exists doesn't automatically make it a portfolio, the old downloadable content should be a hopefully obvious hint for most.
Once upon a time it was common for people to have their 'community' site with their downloadable content (whether good or bad, it was about fun, helping and creativity with the medium) and a separate, simple portfolio showcasing their best work. But i'll admit that was long before unfinished forum artwork was already watermarked and people grew openly paranoid and became victims of their lack of confidence in their own skills, and selfs.
I should have a page dedicated to life style coaching and talk about having a healthy self awareness and recognizing the things really worth caring about.
I couln't have people download my portfolio work even if I wanted to obviously, so in order to avoid more confusion, a separate portfolio seems like the most straight forward solution atm, I just CANT integrate it with all the old downloadable junk, need a clear line... maybe i should move the portfolio button to the top right of the page... to detach it even more from the website ?
Hey MoP, wish I could see some new personal work myself honestly, but there's not much time available for that these days. Good thing i have so much old stuff to give away and compensate!
Also, personal work doesn't have to be limited to pixels and polygons I find. Shaping other artists seems a much more challenging and rewarding task and a great stage to measure more than basic 3d or pixel skills right now. I'm sure the 'personal work bug' will bite me again in time but right now, trying to explain why the chicken crossed the street is more entertaining.
Found bigger fishes to fry etc...
The splash page! ...no, I don't think they ever served a functional purpose. They're as useless as a soft book cover art or a cover image in a PDF book. I'll get away with it by saying that functionality has never been a requirement for art. They do set a feeling and mood about the content that I just like to have.
I suppose (as in im pretty sure, cause i put it there and have been fighting it) that I have a conflict raging through my site.
On one side, I had ideas to make it very artsy but the amount of functionality, content sorting and accessibility of it would have been a nightmare, or at least i couldn't think of a good solution, too much content and categories for that.
So I ended up with a bit of everything, a bit of art on one side, a bit of simple readable functionality on the other, and dose of confusion in the middle.
If I get more into websites, I might yet figure out a happy marriage for the 2 sides.
I guess in this case it might be the compromise that is hurting you - like you say, it's an artistic endeavour and you want that to be represented in your site, but also you want the functionality and usability to be straightforward and easy.
As in many cases, the "compromise" solution manages to fit into neither of these requirements, and as a result is kind of stuck between two options of what you really wanted.
I would say it's going to be much easier for you if you stick with one solution and unify everything into it (sounds like the "pure artistic" approach would be better here?), rather than trying to please everyone or meet halfway.
It's certainly possible to marry these two things, however I know it is always difficult (unless you're a born designer!) to make something that ticks all the boxes - is slick, stylish, artistic yet also easy to navigate and contains all the info you need. Good luck!
the new menu (which is also very cool) just looks and feels different from all else. i say make everything like this neon-cyber-egyption direction.
as for portfolio vs. personal, i suggest not mentioning the word portfolio anywhere (so ppl dont get so annoyed and confused) and have a 'oldies' section where u keep all the.... oldies.
I was thinking of adding more subtle and fitting sounds again, for the buttons and console humming... we'll see, need to read up on how to do that properly too...
I'm thinking that if I wanted to throw it all together, the large blue
What I can't think of, is how to make it all simplier if im throwing the content of the regular website and portfolio together... An oldies section would be the whole website again minus the portfolio, its really just swapping the 2 around.
Hmm i'll sleep over it, maybe i can think of a satisfactory way to bring it all together without adding 20 new entries on the right side menu.
thanks for the comments.
as for simplifying things, ditch the right menu and make each sub-section a thumbnail (logo or whatever) in the actual page. the content images can be then presented in full, as one long scrollable page. if it's overblown u can also make NEXT-PREV pages (with even more cool art accompanying the links). this way u get rid of the right menu, cut around the "preview" page, and by god almighty u might even please renderhjs.
The easier your website becomes:
- the easier it will become to update and maintain your site
- the easier it will be to change things (like color or order)
actually I like the idea of a whole website that consists just of 1 page. The links of the thumbnails could link to the bigger sized images but everything else would fit on that page including: contact (just whats important), about (make it short) link to your resume.
And then maybe do the same stuff for your older stuff ?
some web things that are often outdated today:
- intro animation
- splash screen
- home sub page (not even as default start page)
- link sub page (keep your friends on networks, not websites)
- pop up windows using JS (thats why pop up blockers are invented for)
- serif font for the read text
- Myspace alike GIF animations
- "this page is optimized for IE 6.0, please upgrade ...." bullshit notifications
The right menu is a bit confusing and is a common place for google ads and more then likely will be ignored at first glance? It might be a bit of a pain the ass but if the right menu was added to the left as a sub menu it would make nav much more simple.
Overall, less text more awesome right up front.
http://www.nicholaikropat.com/
I like this guys layout, but the construction method isn't all that hot (image ready slices).
I had no idea that the big blue ball did anything until I read here. Probably a mouse over graphic would work, maybe something like a slightly satanic magic 8 ball-ish with the letters DL?
I agree about having less text, I carried over the stuff from the old site, but most of it is so unnecessary. I got bored of it myself just reading it when i was copy/pasting it.
Old school is fine Kwakkie, I am kinda old school...
The links page will go, i really wasn't sure what to do with it anymore...
Other than that you wont have much luck telling me something is outdated on the web i'm afraid. While I care about a comfortable navigation, What the web focus groups think a website should have or not these days is maybe a good reason to try the exact opposite... If picasso was outdated and all art should have anatomically correct characters, and fit inside any of the commercially established art styles i'd probably go off and do the opposite as I see fit.
Some things are easy to fix...
-I'll make a preview sheet for the downloadable textures, there's no need to have so many there to see.
-The sphere will either get an arrow or be replaced by something that's still easy to spot but is more fitting.
-Reducing the amount of text overall will hopefully show me an easy way to hmm make things more compact with some of the suggestions i'm getting here.
ideally:
-I'd find a better solution for the image display other than a popup window (does it trigger everybody's popup blocker ?) that'd be bad. I noticed I had my website set to allow popups so i wasn't getting any... after removing it from the allowed popups list it still wont complain but i could very well imagine that that's just IE being well... IE.
-Figure out something instead of the right side menu... I still feel like putting the menu anywhere else is still gonna be a menu detached from the original menu = still confusing, but i'll scratch my head over it after reducing the amount of text etc.
What I dont like or want:
-Tiny and/or partial preview icons that make me feel myopic and force me to click on something because it might be good... when it usually isnt. Something I dislike from so many galleries...
-Standard Web Portfolio 2.0... I have no interest in making something that looks like any other portfolio template. There's enough of those. I would rather see bizarre artist portfolios and enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to navigate them. at least it would be an experience.
-Please everybody or specific people, that's impossible anyway... It should stay my personal website. It's not Ebay's express checkout and it's not commercial art or design.
-I wish i new more html, CSS and generally more about coding, and had a larger attention span for my website.
Going on a cruise soon so things might not happen quickly.
Thanks
Check it out!
I'm not sure lightbox is a good option, it always kind of drives me nuts, for some reason it takes a few seconds to load, and its not always apparent how to close it and get back to naving the site. I also remember lightbox being a bit hard to update, they might have improved it since I last looked at it, but the other problems still exsist.
I think the text you have would be pretty helpful to have, just not in with the thumbnails. Since your images are 800x600 you could probably round that out to 800x800 and not run into any monitor issues. Giving you a 200x800 strip for the text and contact info?
That way if anyone saves your image they have all that info. It also seems more natural, in general I think people want to read about the model after they've seen it.
Vig- I was reading up on those pop up windows I trigger last night and apparently they really dont seem to count as popups, guess they're seen as part of the site maybe, good to know it's not just for me then thanks
I'll try out Lightbox and see how it goes, it is more elegant than my windows. I think the slowness of it comes from its fading and window resizing effects that happen before it displays the actual image... they feel sluggish but i'd hope that those delays can be turned off, i'll see.
Alternatively, I discovered inline frames last night so I could probably come up with something simplier on my own that would be still better than my pop up window, if all else fails.
I was also looking for scrollers last night and I think i found one I could use for the thumbnails, so you can just scroll through them rather than have a mile long table of thumbnails. That should help further with making things more compact.
The thumbnail text is hmm problematic, in most cases it would be indeed better off on the image itself, but i think in some portfolio cases i'd be still better off with a longer description of what was done or what the challenges were for the next set of images... then again, if I end up using a scrolling thing for the thumbnails, the text would be lost anyway... unless hmm the mouse over on the thumbnails triggers the text on an inline frame and clicking the thumbnails shws the full image then hmm I'll see.
There's still the question of what do to with all the sub menus, I'll think about something like Shotgun suggested or maybe i can have them now with iFrames as Tabs at the top... I'll play around with it.
good point Sir Per, and thanks
nice of you to share your textures with us!
Hope to see more texture tutorials though :P
Nice work!!
The new one is looking good, thanks for the opportunity to download some models, very cool.
Off topic:
I think its time for polycount to do a Tribute to all those "Gurus" who made the forum what it is today, i can remember names like strangefate, rorschach, DH, bobotheseal, mop, poopinmymouth, per, etc...I think the great minds behind polycount could do something super cool
I'm playing around with accordion menus that should allow me to remove all the right side menus completely (!) and i had to grab a customizable gallery software... lightbox was not playing along with my templates and whatever other stuff i have going hmm...
So far so good, love the accordions... just need to figure them out properly
The test page so far, ignore everything but the functionality, just playing around with using images and how i can animate them on state changes hmm... images would have smaller thumbnails so you dont have to scroll down and the thmubnail text would be probably displayed on the right side of the screen (inside the accordion still) on mouse over (if i get that working)...
http://www.strangefate.com/3d/3DmodelsTest.htm
thanks for all the help guys!
Butterfinger fix (have to click now) and proper bars for the accordions... did an actual animation for the arrow rotating down but alas, animations dont work properly with the accordions triggers.
Accordions are figured out.. so i'll mess around with their content this weekend.
Started rebuilding the content, 3d stuff finished so far... still have to see if iw ant to add the old lowpoly stuff there or just under the freebie stuff...
I'll change the loading GIF sometime to match the accordions feel
Some images are too big for the pop up, and the popup toolbar thing has to go and be replaced but those are problems for another day
A big difference compared to the very beginning of this thread - thumbs up
www.pioroberson.com
http://joekeller.net/