[Portfolio] - Paul Searle - Website Critique

searlee

Hello all.

I'm new to Polycount, well by new I mean I've been observing for some time but I'm finally able to post.

(www.searlee.com)

A bit about myself can be found on the portfolio site however I'll write a bit here for those that do not want to go searching for it. I'm currently studying a BA(Hons) in Computer Games Modelling and Animation at the University of Derby, England. I'm in my second year but don't really have much to show as of yet because last year was an introduction to the industry with a more broad spectrum encompassing machinima production and design.

This year we are taking all of our work over from Maya into Z-Brush, Unreal 3/UDK and Gamebryo and working with the parallel course BSc(Hons) Computer Games Programming in order to create games in each of these media.

I'm the only one in my year to have created a full working portfolio website and I would like some critique on the site if it is not too much hassle.

I'd like to remind everyone that it isn't the content that I'm asking you to critique as I know it's a bit sparse and lacking in any real quality at the moment but just the website itself.

Thanks in advance.

Paul Searle

www.searlee.com

MoP

Hey, not bad, the site is working pretty well.

I found navigation pretty easy. Although if it's a portfolio site I kinda wonder why you have that "main" page, and then also the "portfolio" page, since they have the same images on. I would probably just ditch the main page that it goes to ("home" - what is that actually for?) and just make the very first page be the Portfolio page so people get to all your art right away.

I'd also suggest getting rid of the flash viewer, it's much slower and less straightforward than just having the images inline in the page. What I'd do is, keep your main Portfolio page the same, but instead of each link (eg. "Vehicles") going to another list of thumbnails, each of which opens a Flash viewer, you should just have all those large images inline in the page that the initial thumbnail goes to.

So I'd click on "Vehicles" and see all the full-resolution Caravan images in a list, so I can just scroll down like usual and don't have to wait for the Flash viewer to pop up. It means less clicks for the end-user, which is always good, and they get to see your full-resolution art in a much more streamlined (and more web-standards-compliant!) way.

Does that make sense?

missberetta

I'd say put your best work on the front page and make it clear what you want to do. Character? Vehicle or General 3D Artist? Perhaps you don't know yet... it's just something to think about for later. Like your picture!

Progg

Looks good to me. Definitely a unique color . I think the biggest thing is some of your work on the front page seems to be split up, i.e I think a few of the pieces that are of the same subject are too far spread out in the thumbnail strip. I agree with missberetta in saying that it is a bit hard to tell exactly what you want to do! Either way the work is good

Richard Kain

The little thumbnail selections should be at the top of the page, not at the bottom. It should be as easy as possible for the user to get into your galleries as quickly as possible. Show them the content as soon as possible, and guide them to more content just as quickly.

searlee

Thanks for the help. It's very much appreciated. I must say after I had created my site and then looked at some of the other portfolio sites around I thought the same thing about it being a lot harder to get to my actual work than most of the others. I'll have to rethink this and I'm glad you all agreed with my thoughts. I'll get onto it as soon as I have some free time as I have a character due in on the 8th Jan and he's only partially textured.

Thanks again for the quick replies.

Paul

searlee

www.searlee.com (just as a reminder)

Ok, so... I've spent the last few day's making my website a lot more like an actual Portfolio site. It's a lot flatter and there's a lot less "crap" about. Not all of the links currently work but a good 90% of them do.

It would be greatly appreciated if I could get some critique on the site.

p.s. I'm still messing with the logo/letterhead thingy at the top but if you feel it's necessary to comment on that then please do.

Thank you in advance for any comments that you leave

Paul

vofff

Hello! Your portfolio looks fine to me, it is clean, easy to navigate and understandable. Only thing I could give u crit is the font, I find it sometimes hard to read. But good job anyway and good luck!

Axios

Alright, looking at just the site, I'd agree that the font can be hard to read. I'd suggest changing it, at least for body sections if not headers as well. Additionally, you have a lot of glowy effects going on, especially on the text. This seems a bit distracting and kinda hurts my eyes because it feels out of focus. The general site navigation and ease of use seems solid, though I think I'd prefer to see slightly larger images in the site itself instead of necessarily having to go to the full-res version. The body of the pages look ~580 pixels wide, which seems fairly narrow. I think it'd be beneficial to expand the width of the body and eat up some of that margin so that you can get more high-res work all up in my face. Other than that, good job. I like purple.

Michael Knubben

It feels a little bit like what I imagine a bordello or upper class opium den to look like, but that's not a bad thing as such. It's certainly unique in all it's smokey purple wallpaper kind of atmosphere.
I'm not a very big fan of the effects you use for the little blurbs of text accompanying thumbnails, though. It's making things a bit too garish.
The actual borders on your images/thumbnails are also too gradient-rich and contrasty. It's overkill, I would say.

I really like that you have flythroughs embedded, but those really need to be HD. 720 minimum, to be effective.

searlee

Thanks guys. That was much appreciated crit.

@vofff. The font was something I was playing with a lot while I was making it and I do agree with your comments. I think it might be a mixture of the size/font and glowy effects in certain areas so i'll have some more of a play. each piece has been saved into a seperate PSD purely because I wasn't happy with it.

@ Axios. Totally agree with the fact that it's too narrow. I've been playing with all of the background images and such so i'll get it how I want it and how it looks better shortly.

@ MightyPea. The flythrough that I have in there at the moment is purely a placeholder. I forgot to mention that because it was a quicky i uploaded to show someone. I need to make a new version as that is the older version of the map also. Also I'll change the borders and such.

Thanks so much. I'll fix it in the next week and then post again asking if anything else needs changing.

Paul

searlee

Final update has been made for the time being (aside from any crit that I get which will be changed very quickly after the crit is posted.) Could I get any crit on the new features/changes.

Thanks

Paul

Axios

Much improved. The only thing that really jumps out to me is the width of the main page. The width is nice for individual project pages, and I think it'd be good to see that consistent through the site.

searlee

thanks again. yea I was toying with that but I didn't have enough time to change it yesterday as I was doing it to a time limit. I'm bored of how it looks already so I'm going to keep the coding but make the background etc a lot more simple in a month or two.

EMC3D

Looking good, you have the foundations to change so you wish it now you've done all the code work.

kodde

I'd skip the concept of showing your "old" art. The word itself in this context has a quite negative vibe to it, it's probably inferior to your newest/current art, it might show flawed things that people get stuck on.

Picture this. A potential employer looks at your portfolio, likes the first things he/she sees. But then... old art? -Whats this? Ewww... that there wasn't all that good. No I think I changed my mind."

It's quite easy to get stuck on just a few details you don't like and let that influence the general feel of something. Even though the majority/focused things are good.

If your "old" art is on par and just as good as the rest and you want to keep it there call it something else. "Various Art", "Other projects", etc.

searlee

changed to suit what Kodde mentioned.