Flash Portfolio?
polycounter lvl 12
I'm graduating soon from school and I've started putting together a portfolio. From what people tell me, I made a mistake by going with a flash based site. But most of the reasons they tell me not to use a flash site I've been able to work out (like viewing and downloading the full res pictures.)
I was just wondering if it is a cardinal sin to have a flash based portfolio?
If not, are there are good ones anyone could link me so that I could take some notes from it?
Here's what mine looks like right now: www.Chrisofalltrades.com (note: it is still very much a work in progress. Nothing is set in stone yet.)
I was just wondering if it is a cardinal sin to have a flash based portfolio?
If not, are there are good ones anyone could link me so that I could take some notes from it?
Here's what mine looks like right now: www.Chrisofalltrades.com (note: it is still very much a work in progress. Nothing is set in stone yet.)
Replies
It's not the end of the world but if you're not trying to sell your flash experience then why use flash?
People avoid it because occasionally people run noscript or have flash disabled. Or sometimes there are bugs on different browser types. Or sometimes the flash is really heavy, or sometimes it's designed in such a way that it really slows down a person's browsing.
I'd certainly say that a simple web page with no flash is better, but I don't think you need to redesign your site unless you want to.
Agreed, your site loads fairly quickly, but, in all honestly, there is nothing there that justifies using flash, and there is no functionality present there that cannot be done with html, css and some jquery.
Considering you made a flash site, i'm assuming you coded it yourself, so you should be able to understand html, css and jquery fairly easily. And create something even more light weight than your current site.
Rule of thumb, at least for me, if i can do something without using flash, then I do, but if I can't, then I use flash, but never full websites, rather web applications, or interactive elements that reside on a website. For me at least.
Just looked your site over. Some notes:
1) Low-quality thumbnails.
2) Right\left arrows in Environments loop back to the beginning, which is cool. However, I'd suggest the right arrow move onto the Props section instead, then have it loop back to the first environment when it's at the end.
3) Show your work. You have a lot of objects and textures in the environments and I can't see them up close, which doesn't give me much to work with when I'm evaluating your art. It almost makes me wonder if someone else made the props and you just assembled the scenes, since those props aren't actually in the props section.
4) The right\left arrows between Environments and Props totally break consistency. In Environments, the Right\Left arrows are on the left and right sides of the image, and they stay in the same place when you click them. In Props, for some reason they're side by side to the right of the image in a large amount of blank whitespace, and when you click Next, the buttons move and I have to move my mouse again to click it. It's less pronounced between the payphone and the pillar, but it still moves and that's kind of annoying.
5) You have a dot com... host your resume there. Linking it to a file in Dropbox is just weird, and for all you know it could disappear one day at random.
6) You have a huge amount of blank space on the resume page and have a scrollbar in place that only shows two more lines of text. The formatting here just feels weird.
7) Don't have a contact form, especially not in Flash. No one's going to use that. Just have a blurb about yourself and a proper email address link, which is the standard.
Hope that helps!
Also I couldn't see the website because dropbox is blocked by our work web filter.
Not being able to link people to images is a big downside. Giving someone directions on how to navigate to something in a flash site is silly.
Also, a Flash portfolio made from scratch like that sends the bad vibe that the applicant wasted time building it, instead of getting more portfolio pieces done.
http://www.peperaart.com/
Best game industry artist portfolio site around. Name/description/contact info at the top. A bunch of images, with your name on them. Done! You could literally build this in microsoft word and save as HTML and be done. All the flashy loading/rollover stuff in a portfolio is nothing less than obnoxious.
You should, at the least, make a simple HTML page to serve if Flash isn't detected. But if you're going to put the effort into that, you should just focus on making a proper HTML site.
pior: thanks for saying out loud what I've been thinking all the time
That's an interesting thought to have. I mean if somebody enjoys doing a good job of something, then it should not reflect poorly on them... especially when it is their own time and money.
By extension, wouldn't it also be easy to assume that somebody with a life would be a poor worker with bad priorities because they would have "wasted time" playing a game, watching a show, reading a book, or socialising with somebody? Is it assumed that somebody with killer art simply wouldn't find interest in doing anything else at any other moment.
I'm not defending flash though, it's a bad choice for pretty much all the reasons above.
Something like http://www.dropmocks.com/ is easy or just use a blog based site to simplify things.
HTML5 and CSS3 are your friend. They're lightweight and offer very good presentation possibilities. Every modern browser is at least competent in them and the people you want to see your folio will likely be using a modern browser. Just avoid video and audio in HTML5 at the moment, not all browsers support it yet. Make a Youtube video and embed it or create an animated PNG if you need a turnaround.
If you have a killer portfolio and some flash on your site its not a big deal. More often then not though, people with flash websites tend to have pretty sub-par work. If you're more interested in doing web design than game art, go get a graphic design job. If you're really interested in game art, it should show in your portfolio IE: look like you've spent more time on your ART than your website. This has nothing to do with "having a life" or anything like that. Your portfolio should focus on your art, not your website design skills.
But yes, if you're a struggling artist unable to find a job, you have sub-par work, and you're spending most of your time playing video games and partying with your friends, that also does reflect poorly on you. - Just to be clear.
How well you present your work is almost as important as the work your presenting. Time should be spent on it.
Yes, but more in regards to your lighting, rendering and presentation of your actual art assets, not your website. Often times the best portfolios are the absolute simplest portfolios as well.
Anyone with a convoluted portfolio design is doing themselves a disservice because they're basically advertising their inability to both identify the point of their portfolio (THE WORK) and that they can't grasp the concept of usability or anticipate how people view/use their work (not talking about this guy specifically, but bad portfolio designs in general)
This is really an area where less is more and simpler is always better, and that doesn't just mean the layout but also how you implemented it. Flash is NEVER the simplest way to present your work.
I get your point, but that's not exactly great advice either. HTML5 is hardly set in stone yet, nor is (the often simultaneously recommended) CSS3. If you wanna go towards the lowest common denominator, use HTML4, CSS2, and not even the fancy stuff. Also, test the shit out of it on many mobile devices.
Using a flash plugin here and there isn't bad, if it's implemented nicely. For instance you could have a static image in the HTML, and then overlay it with a turntable video or something.
But the site should be 100% usable and functional without flash. "Progressive enhancement" is what it's called. Rather than have an awesome site (for modern browsers) that breaks to 'decent' on low-end devices, have a good site for those devices, and then awesomify for the high-end things.
Here's a read: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/understandingprogressiveenhancement
Personally, I rather dislike Paul Pepera's site... it seems TOO thrown together and simple. I'd advise something like http://www.brameulaers.com. instead. Still dead simple to make, but a bit nicer to navigate IMO.
No.
Large amount of time spent does not = convoluted
In fact it can be the inverse
Most definitely true.
So does:
PhotoShop > Automate > Web Gallery
www.carbonmade.com
www.wordpress.com
www.behance.net
www.shownd.com
www.portfoliosfriend.com
www.crevado.com
As others have said if you're spending more time on your portfolio than making art something might be wrong. On the other hand if you're building a site for yourself, hosting tutorials, running a useful blog, offering online classes and training then yea put some time into your site, but for the purpose of shopping around for a job it doesn't matter so why put mountains of effort into what doesn't matter?
Common mistakes:
Flash website?
Business cards?
Bedazzled DVD cases set to every big name studio?
Resume with 7 paragraphs dedicated to Doug's Lawn Care on it?
Graduating GPA in big bold 72pt type?
Modeling demo reel, with crazy fast turn around, in a non scrubable format?
Compare it with making a 3D model. Getting rid of every last inefficient polygon is a hefty task.
Edit: also, here's a real website as an example. It's just a simple bunch of images, but it was quite complex to make it simple and smooth. Also, check out through how much trouble Alec Moody is going to make it work, and that site's not complex either.
The more you expect your site to do, even if it's just a matter of getting images to sort/display a specific way at different resolutions and across different devices like in Alec's case, the more problems you run into. At this point your site turns into something that is functionally complex, but has a simple layout, which is not the same thing as having a simple site.
Maybe I've explained this in a piss poor way but I don't understand why this is such a difficult concept to grasp. Maybe it's the "long time" part that is tripping everyone up because it's a relative term.
im wondering how to create CGhub-like dynamic thumbnail ,,,,
That is my favourite kind of reel
he hit a few things right but i still think http://www.brameulaers.com/ is fantastic
but really just having your basic info at the top and a ton of images works best anyways.
I disagree that this is a good example. It needs thumbnailing, as the site takes ages to load all the images and you have to scroll through everything whether you like it or not. I am also unsure as to why it take so long for the background to load, and why it isn't there before the images are.
The entire page took about a minute to load or more. I'm in the office right now, and it's not as if I'm on a sub-par connection (nor are there issues with this machine). It's possible it's considerably slower down to geographical differences, but I wouldn't expect it to be so profound.
In any case, I don't want to scroll through reams of content. I want to be able to pick out the images that interest me most. 1/4 res thumbnails can do that quite nicely. Scrolling is far worse than clicking.