Hayden Zammit - Folio Site feedback please

Hayden Zammit

Hi everyone.

Was hoping I could get some feedback on my folio site that I've been making. I started learning Dreamweaver and how to make sites a few days ago, so I apologize if its a bit rough. Was mainly interested in what people thought of the layout and presentation.

I mainly do environment art. There's not a whole lot of game related art on there at the moment, but I'll get to that soon.

http://www.hayden-zammit.com

cheers.

Jeremy Lindstrom

get rid of lightbox, it's taking way too long to see your stuff. I got bored waiting and left.

Hayden Zammit

wow okay. I thought Lightbox was definately a good way to go. Its taking too long to load the images?

sltrOlsson

Yeah, the first two is bearable, but after that it's just annoying to wait.

haiddasalami

Remove that home page (click here etc to go here etc) and replace it with the 3d page. If I was a potential employer, I don't want to be clicking three times to see something you created. Also yeah remove lightbox, took some time to load the images. The video section the video needs to be centered as right now its left aligned.

Kewop Decam

Make sure you save your images for web. Your first two load pretty quick in lightbox, but not the others and it could be due to size and not lightbox.

I still hate lightbox though.

Take out the character because it's not helping you. also the 4th image has proportion issues with the objects. For example, that PS3 looks smaller than the 360 and we all know that ain't right.

Not welcome/blank opening pages.

UNCCheezy

Not bad for a couple days of dreamweaver! A few comments.

1)make 3d your index.html. (mentioned previously)
2)I would work on your layout of the images. If you could keep everything contained in the width of your header, I think that would look better, even if it means having more rows.
3)some of the images take a long time to load up. Not sure if your lightbox is trying to load all of them at the same time or what. The first image specifically. Not sure if you know about saving images for web, but in photoshop if you go file->save for web->then choose the correct, it really compresses images.
4)I really like your header!

keep it up!

Purplepaint

Your 3D and html pages lack page titles they are currently set to "Untitled Document"

Definitely contain everything in a box width.. (especially your video link)

Taylor Hood

Why can't people just put, on a single page, a row of images? How many people have asked how to make a website only to be met with guidelines such as "No flash intro's, no fancy image viewers"

That said, the content on the website is pretty good =]

ShootandRun

Really cool stuff! I love that chrome mech
I'm not sure if this is needed but from all the websites I've been looking at it makes it seems little fancier if on the bottom of the screen you put something like "All content ©2010 Hayden Zammit" or something to signify the bottom, I have a big screen so if just feels like the empty screen space goes on forever.
Also might be helpful to make a link so the possible employers can download you CV/resume.

PredatorGSR

I would fold the character into the rest of the assets. No point in creating a separate game art folio if you only have 1 asset, and its rendered in mental ray anyway.

I don't know how suited your portfolio is for games since everything is rendered in mental ray and is pretty high poly, but it looks solid for that type of film 3d.

Habboi

Use Highslide for image enlarging. Example on my site.

I smiled when I saw that render of a room full of Zelda / Mario props.

Anyway while it may not be game art it shows you've got a good eye for shapes. Now get some of that into a real engine and show us some sexy lighting.

Hayden Zammit

Whoa, that's a heap of awesome feedback. Just what I was looking for.

I'm going to revise it.

I think the problem with lightbox at the moment is the images are 1680 x 1050. some of them are 250 kbs, others are at around 500 kbs. A few of you said that it was taking a while to load, but for me it loads near instantly. I also tried on a PC at Uni and it was just as fast. But hey, if it aint working for other people it needs fixing.

I'm going to change it so it starts on my 3D page as well as was suggested.

Habboi, You say use highslide like you did. I looked at you stuff (nice work by the way) but all yours took ages for me to load, surprisingly.

If I got rid of lightbox, might it be better to just have all the pictures going down in a row? Like you wouldn't click on them you just scroll down through them?


cheers, and thanks again for the help.

Habboi

but all yours took ages for me to load, surprisingly.

Funny that. Seems, like the battle with monitor brightness and resolution, there's also the battle of internet speed and location. I'll be honest but Highslide has been fast for me for every portfolio site that I go on. I've never come across the one you've used before and found it quite frustrating.

Yes, having large images all in your face is the best route in my opinion. I just like mine more tidy

doeseph

Just to reiterate, remove lightbox. While I personally didn't have any trouble viewing your work you don't want to risk having an employer who does. With regards to the "3D & 2D" tabs, instead you may want to opt for a single page with all your work and then label which is which on the page. Another thing which might not be important is that your site looks empty despite having eight or nine completely separate pieces of work. I'm working on a 21" monitor 1680x1050 and the thumbnails barely make it across the entire top of my screen. Perhaps increasing the size of the thumbnails to fill up the screen a bit more would be beneficial. Not everyone works at that resolution mind you, but it's something to consider.

Hayden Zammit

Hi everyone. I went back and made some changes to my site. I got rid of that lightbox thing I was using as everyone suggested, deciding to just have users scroll down the page to see the images. Is this a better way?

Here it is: http://www.hayden-zammit.com/

I know there's no game art stuff on there, but I think I might have to change my goals and try and get into the animation industry. I just graduated from University, and I'm Australian. And the games industry over here has been taking some major blows lately with studios closing down. There isn't that many games jobs from what I hear, and there are too many veterans bying for the ones that are left.

So yeah. Is this looking better? If not, what should I change.

Xoliul

It definitely is looking better if I recall last time.
Still, the weakest piece is Lady Jade now by far You're actually showing a pretty good grasp of lighting and colors as well as technical modeling, yet this one piece does not show any of it.

Kewop Decam

lady jade gotta go.

Tom Ellis

Really nice layout, and some nice content too. I agree the character shouldn't be there; you've got more than enough other stuff in there to let her go. Not that a lack of content warrants lower quality work, just that sometimes people keep lower quality work in their folio to fill it up (like me ).

Also, may be worth putting a little bit of text for each project, not a full on description, but right now your header says game artist and as far as I can see, there's no 'obviously game res' work in there. Of course there might be, but without seeing a little description 'x number of tri's, 1024 textures, rendered in x' it's not easy to tell.

Habboi

Much better. No crits from me.

Hayden Zammit

Ok, I'll add some descriptions under each image. It's a lot quicker to do that sort of stuff now that I'm not using Lightbox or anything.

I am going to add some game art stuff in there soon. Just props and stuff. Should I add them to the main 3D section or make another tab up top?

I know most game folio sitesonly contain game art. Is it not a good idea for mine to contain both?



cheers.

Serp

Yeah get rid of lady jade. When you make your game art just put it in the same section but above your other stuff. So you just need to scroll down to see all the art.