it took AGES for the background to load for me as well, so I just had a white screen and couldn't read his contact details. Every image on 1 page is also bad when they are so high res, surely a "hub" is better, so people can jump to specific pieces as they please, rather than having to remember where they were on one huge page.
To me, Paul's site is IDEAL. I'm saying this as someone who regularly reviews portfolios, and has been involved in the hiring process at a couple companies for the last 4 or 5 years. When you're looking at portfolios litterally every day, you learn to absolutely LOVE this sort of site.
It gets straight to the work, which is all high resolution and wonderfully presented. There is NO bullshit. Sure it takes a few seconds to load, but a few seconds is still a lot less time than it takes to click a thumbnail, click back, click a thumbnail, click back.... This sort of navigation is slow as fuck, even if you might think it is convenient or structured.
Its silly that he has a black image for his BG though, as it loaded last for me too, he should just HTML that shit black. =P
In terms of creating, perhaps it takes longer to make convoluted sites. It terms of making the simplest work without any excess, designing can take quite a while. It's quite hard to make things simple. Especially if you have lots of different information to show.
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.
I think the two assumptions:
A. A simple website takes little time
B. A good website take a lot of time
Are both incorrect. You can quickly make a shit website, and you can spend a lot of time making a good website.
However, if you're really spending a lot of time making a good, simple website, chances are your initial design was overly complex to begin with. So this doesn't mean EVERYONE needs to spend a lot of time making a simple website, it just means that anyone who is overly ambitious with their initial design will likely spend a lot of time iterating it down. If you have a clear and concise goal of a simple website when you start, it really should not take much time to create. There are plenty of really good examples out there, so its not like you need to re-invent the wheel either.
But since we are on the subject of my site - I have no intention of going to a thumbnail system. I too view many portfolios at work everyday, thumbnail clicking wastes too much time, I just want to see image dumps. Everything is a trade off, there is no such thing as a perfect site. I sacrificed a quick load time to have a single page of images. But like EQ said, you'll end up spending more time clicking through thumbnails and hitting the back button then you will waiting for a single page to load. I also use the single-page system as a measure to guard against me putting all my work I ever done on my site and simply having what I consider my strongest on there. Any time I add a new image an old image comes off.
Speaking of old images, I need to update my site with new work.
Yeah it really is just sort of comical that anyone would ever think a thumbnail system is "faster" than a single-page dump format. Really, just think about it:
Single page: You have to load all the images, once they are loaded, you can view them all extremely fast simply by scrolling. This sucks if you're on ISDN, but if you have a broadband connection it shouldn't be an issue.
Thumbnail: You still have to load all the images, and all the thumbnail images as well as do 2-3 clicks to see each image! This also sucks if you have ISDN, the difference being it would take you all day to browse the site, instead of simply going to get a sandwich while the dump-format page loads. =P
Back button? shift-click on interesting thumbnails to open in a new tab!I hate scrolling. You people can enjoy your RSI-induced arthritis in your old age!
More seriously, this just is one of those massively subjective things that comes down to preference.
IMO, having a bunch of open tabs on the top of the browser is just as bad as having to click the back button. You are still stuck having to hit a button at the end of viewing an image.
I agree though it is all very subjective. The original message of this thread is that a site , regardless of its design, should never distract from the art work.
Btw I love your site Paul and once I have the content for mine i am doing something similar.
One thing I noticed is that your images are huge man. - 1mb was the one i downloaded. I wondering is there a reason not to use "save for web" future in PS? You can very easy scale hem down to half at least without loosing quality? Would that not help loading faster?
Back button? shift-click on interesting thumbnails to open in a new tab!I hate scrolling. You people can enjoy your RSI-induced arthritis in your old age!
Oh yeah, open 33 tabs or scroll down one page, OK, you've sold me!
=D
Literally, 33 tabs, because that is about how many images Paul has on his site.
Why not make thumbnails of the finished assets on the main portfolio that links to a gallery page with full-size images of the wires/normals/diffuse and a beauty shot/turnaround?
Back button? shift-click on interesting thumbnails to open in a new tab!I hate scrolling.
Agreed. And who puts one image per website section, structure it so it is per game/project, have four or five pics in each, hey presto, far less tabs! :poly142:
Why not make thumbnails of the finished assets on the main portfolio that links to a gallery page with full-size images of the wires/normals/diffuse and a beauty shot/turnaround?
I think the divide has boiled down to people that look at portfolios for fun and people that look at them as part of their job.
True dat.
I was never trying to ignore or defend the dearth of artists who glitz up the site when their folio aint got it. Really I was showing discontent for the attitude, or even really, the rhetoric. Or whatever!
I suppose I just didn't want to imagine a guy looking at a folio site and thinking, "Oh look at that, his website is so fancy... Ah! His folio work MUST be terrible!"
I mean it's business anyway... hell this guy in column A has a family huh? well he'll be caring about things that is not the company so I'll go with column B.
Those are separate pages. It's not a long dump of ALL images. So it's not like Pepera's site. Sure, you're not using thumbnails to click through to individual images, but it's still organized.
There's got to be a balance between clicks and loads. The problem is not in using thumbnails, the problem is in excessively using them.
There are people who make a website where you have to go:
-url, wait for homepage to load
-click top menubar for "pf/portfolio.html"
-click thumbnail to go to "/pf/3d/3d.html"
-click another thumb to go to "/pf/3d/AK47.html"
-click yet another thumbnail to open "AK47_front.jpg"
-go back
-click one more thumbnail to open "AK4_side.jpg"
-etc.
Which are a lot of actions for 2 images.
Whereas your example only requires this:
-url, wait for homepage to load
-click top menubar for "portfolio_weapons.shtml"
-scroll up
-click top menubar for "portfolio_characters.shtml"
-scroll up
-click top menubar for "portfolio_vehicles.shtml"
-scroll up
This is just as many actions, but this time you've navigated the whole site. Only thing I could recommend is also having the navigation at the bottom so scrolling up isn't needed anymore.
EQ, you're right about catering to the proper audience, but don't you think a little more organization (highpoly, ingame, old stuff) would work just as well? Another question for you: Pepera's stuff is all props. How would you recommend environment artists to tackle their sites - how to present a bunch of levels?
Stick with HTML, because it is SO MUCH EASIER TO UPDATE. When I had a flash website, I never updated my work, because it just would take too much effort.... I mean, if it doesn't bother you to update it, then I suppose it wouldn't be too bad. Just keep it light.
I review websites here and there and for me what matters is "can I find what I'm looking for quickly".
Layout doesn't have to be beautiful as long as it doesn't obscure where I can find stuff.
Navigation has to be simple so I can find my way around quickly.
Load times: it's ok if the reel/art takes a while but I hate waiting for UI and navigation stuff to load. (I also hate tons and tons of facebook api, twitter api, and other crap on your site. This massively slows down things!)
Now that's personal, but I just hate websites that do not work - Flash folio, simple html, just make sure it works and don't be sloppy. Sloppiness is something I can't stand (even though sloppy people are the reason us TAs and the QA people have a job)
Snacuum : yup I agree ... to a certain extent To push the point further : Let's say that the fact that one knows how to make a folio in flash doesn't make the choice of doing a flash portfolio in the first place a good idea. Of course one if free to practice flash as a skill ... but using it for a folio shows a misunderstanding of what a folio is about. Therefore,it is a waste of time, since building a flash folio is more complex hence more time consuming than building a regular html one. As a skill tho, learning Flash is not a waste of time since it can be used to prototype UIs, animations, and so on - I agree with that.
As for, wasting time instead of working on a piece ... it is,sadly, true for many Flash folios since a majority of them showcase sub-standard work...
speaking as an absolute supporter of flash and one who could knock up a dynamically driven / updating tweening and preloading jingle bells rainbow delight that overcomes all of the issues presented thus far ( save for displaying on iOS ) in a relatively short amount of time. . .
i'll throw my 2c in as a +1 for giant scrolling image dump that renders across all platforms
Interesting thread, although an old topic, I thought there was no more doubt that flash should be avoided at all costs? Just the fact that you can't right click -> save, is reason alone to NOT use it.
But then again, as long as the navigation is simple, I'm ok with it.
I like Paul's website, it definitely gets the job done, but personally I rather have a little bit of organization like categories, Bram's website is a good example of good category structure.
It also depends on what your area of expertise is, for my own website, I felt the need to have 3 diferent categories, one where I put the games I worked on, other where I just put personal shit, and a museum where I like to showcase more old.
. As a skill tho, learning Flash is not a waste of time since it can be used to prototype UIs
with scaleform its more then just for prototyping, these days a lot of UIs are done straight with flash and used ingame, at least with the bigger engines like Unreal or Cryengine thats the case, can't say for IDtech, unity doesn#t support it for now but some other/smaller engines support scaleform 100% so for a UI artist its totally a big plus to know flash
Snacuum : yup I agree ... to a certain extent To push the point further : Let's say that the fact that one knows how to make a folio in flash doesn't make the choice of doing a flash portfolio in the first place a good idea. Of course one if free to practice flash as a skill ... but using it for a folio shows a misunderstanding of what a folio is about. Therefore,it is a waste of time, since building a flash folio is more complex hence more time consuming than building a regular html one. As a skill tho, learning Flash is not a waste of time since it can be used to prototype UIs, animations, and so on - I agree with that.
As for, wasting time instead of working on a piece ... it is,sadly, true for many Flash folios since a majority of them showcase sub-standard work...
Yeah I know I've been putting a bit of a twat attitude here lately when nobody deserves to hear it. I was not at all interested in defending flash either. I suppose I spend a bit too much time looking for subtext in people's posts, and these days anything that reminds me that games is a business just seems to set me off
Those are separate pages. It's not a long dump of ALL images. So it's not like Pepera's site. Sure, you're not using thumbnails to click through to individual images, but it's still organized.
There's got to be a balance between clicks and loads. The problem is not in using thumbnails, the problem is in excessively using them.
There are people who make a website where you have to go:
-url, wait for homepage to load
-click top menubar for "pf/portfolio.html"
-click thumbnail to go to "/pf/3d/3d.html"
-click another thumb to go to "/pf/3d/AK47.html"
-click yet another thumbnail to open "AK47_front.jpg"
-go back
-click one more thumbnail to open "AK4_side.jpg"
-etc.
Which are a lot of actions for 2 images.
Whereas your example only requires this:
-url, wait for homepage to load
-click top menubar for "portfolio_weapons.shtml"
-scroll up
-click top menubar for "portfolio_characters.shtml"
-scroll up
-click top menubar for "portfolio_vehicles.shtml"
-scroll up
This is just as many actions, but this time you've navigated the whole site. Only thing I could recommend is also having the navigation at the bottom so scrolling up isn't needed anymore.
EQ, you're right about catering to the proper audience, but don't you think a little more organization (highpoly, ingame, old stuff) would work just as well? Another question for you: Pepera's stuff is all props. How would you recommend environment artists to tackle their sites - how to present a bunch of levels?
Its really the same concept, just a matter of scale. At some point it is good to separate into categories, in Paul's case he has what is essentially a portfolio full of sweet tanks and vehicles, there just is no need to really split that up.
My point has never been that your website should consist of one page and page only, but that it shouldn't consist of 47 different pages/images loading in new tabs etc.
RE: Levels, if you have a few levels, splitting it up per level would be a good idea. If you have 24 levels, spiting it up per game or project, or level theme would be better. I have see level designers/enviro guys with a single page layout though, its just a question of how much content you're showing, generally.
That's the thing though, there is IMO. Theres too much MM scrolling! It hurts! With categories, theres less of that. Not so much on your site, cause you guys did so many damn assets, but still ;P
Replies
It gets straight to the work, which is all high resolution and wonderfully presented. There is NO bullshit. Sure it takes a few seconds to load, but a few seconds is still a lot less time than it takes to click a thumbnail, click back, click a thumbnail, click back.... This sort of navigation is slow as fuck, even if you might think it is convenient or structured.
Its silly that he has a black image for his BG though, as it loaded last for me too, he should just HTML that shit black. =P
I think the two assumptions:
A. A simple website takes little time
B. A good website take a lot of time
Are both incorrect. You can quickly make a shit website, and you can spend a lot of time making a good website.
However, if you're really spending a lot of time making a good, simple website, chances are your initial design was overly complex to begin with. So this doesn't mean EVERYONE needs to spend a lot of time making a simple website, it just means that anyone who is overly ambitious with their initial design will likely spend a lot of time iterating it down. If you have a clear and concise goal of a simple website when you start, it really should not take much time to create. There are plenty of really good examples out there, so its not like you need to re-invent the wheel either.
P.S: I fixed the black-background loading glitch!
But since we are on the subject of my site - I have no intention of going to a thumbnail system. I too view many portfolios at work everyday, thumbnail clicking wastes too much time, I just want to see image dumps. Everything is a trade off, there is no such thing as a perfect site. I sacrificed a quick load time to have a single page of images. But like EQ said, you'll end up spending more time clicking through thumbnails and hitting the back button then you will waiting for a single page to load. I also use the single-page system as a measure to guard against me putting all my work I ever done on my site and simply having what I consider my strongest on there. Any time I add a new image an old image comes off.
Speaking of old images, I need to update my site with new work.
Single page: You have to load all the images, once they are loaded, you can view them all extremely fast simply by scrolling. This sucks if you're on ISDN, but if you have a broadband connection it shouldn't be an issue.
Thumbnail: You still have to load all the images, and all the thumbnail images as well as do 2-3 clicks to see each image! This also sucks if you have ISDN, the difference being it would take you all day to browse the site, instead of simply going to get a sandwich while the dump-format page loads. =P
Also: *cough* http://www.3pointstudios.com/portfolio_weapons.shtml *cough*
More seriously, this just is one of those massively subjective things that comes down to preference.
I agree though it is all very subjective. The original message of this thread is that a site , regardless of its design, should never distract from the art work.
One thing I noticed is that your images are huge man. - 1mb was the one i downloaded. I wondering is there a reason not to use "save for web" future in PS? You can very easy scale hem down to half at least without loosing quality? Would that not help loading faster?
Oh yeah, open 33 tabs or scroll down one page, OK, you've sold me!
=D
Literally, 33 tabs, because that is about how many images Paul has on his site.
Like this: http://aajohnny3d.carbonmade.com/
http://jordankocon.carbonmade.com/
Agreed. And who puts one image per website section, structure it so it is per game/project, have four or five pics in each, hey presto, far less tabs! :poly142:
Agree fully.
Well, if I was looking for work, I know which demographic I would be targeting.
Yeah this is also good, provided there isn't 20 sub-sections on the their site, otherwise you're back to the same thumbnail problem.
for realz - I usually just include a link to a zip file containing all the images in my portfolio.
True dat.
I was never trying to ignore or defend the dearth of artists who glitz up the site when their folio aint got it. Really I was showing discontent for the attitude, or even really, the rhetoric. Or whatever!
I suppose I just didn't want to imagine a guy looking at a folio site and thinking, "Oh look at that, his website is so fancy... Ah! His folio work MUST be terrible!"
I mean it's business anyway... hell this guy in column A has a family huh? well he'll be caring about things that is not the company so I'll go with column B.
Those are separate pages. It's not a long dump of ALL images. So it's not like Pepera's site. Sure, you're not using thumbnails to click through to individual images, but it's still organized.
There's got to be a balance between clicks and loads. The problem is not in using thumbnails, the problem is in excessively using them.
There are people who make a website where you have to go:
-url, wait for homepage to load
-click top menubar for "pf/portfolio.html"
-click thumbnail to go to "/pf/3d/3d.html"
-click another thumb to go to "/pf/3d/AK47.html"
-click yet another thumbnail to open "AK47_front.jpg"
-go back
-click one more thumbnail to open "AK4_side.jpg"
-etc.
Which are a lot of actions for 2 images.
Whereas your example only requires this:
-url, wait for homepage to load
-click top menubar for "portfolio_weapons.shtml"
-scroll up
-click top menubar for "portfolio_characters.shtml"
-scroll up
-click top menubar for "portfolio_vehicles.shtml"
-scroll up
This is just as many actions, but this time you've navigated the whole site. Only thing I could recommend is also having the navigation at the bottom so scrolling up isn't needed anymore.
EQ, you're right about catering to the proper audience, but don't you think a little more organization (highpoly, ingame, old stuff) would work just as well? Another question for you: Pepera's stuff is all props. How would you recommend environment artists to tackle their sites - how to present a bunch of levels?
A great example of dividing your work into categories/projects :P
Didn't know you guys did the vehicle work on UT3, really shweet.
Stick with HTML, because it is SO MUCH EASIER TO UPDATE. When I had a flash website, I never updated my work, because it just would take too much effort.... I mean, if it doesn't bother you to update it, then I suppose it wouldn't be too bad. Just keep it light.
(not to derail..)
and I totally agree with avoiding flash - the thumbnail rollovers in my site were done with simple css/html..
Layout doesn't have to be beautiful as long as it doesn't obscure where I can find stuff.
Navigation has to be simple so I can find my way around quickly.
Load times: it's ok if the reel/art takes a while but I hate waiting for UI and navigation stuff to load. (I also hate tons and tons of facebook api, twitter api, and other crap on your site. This massively slows down things!)
Now that's personal, but I just hate websites that do not work - Flash folio, simple html, just make sure it works and don't be sloppy. Sloppiness is something I can't stand (even though sloppy people are the reason us TAs and the QA people have a job)
As for, wasting time instead of working on a piece ... it is,sadly, true for many Flash folios since a majority of them showcase sub-standard work...
i'll throw my 2c in as a +1 for giant scrolling image dump that renders across all platforms
But then again, as long as the navigation is simple, I'm ok with it.
I like Paul's website, it definitely gets the job done, but personally I rather have a little bit of organization like categories, Bram's website is a good example of good category structure.
It also depends on what your area of expertise is, for my own website, I felt the need to have 3 diferent categories, one where I put the games I worked on, other where I just put personal shit, and a museum where I like to showcase more old.
with scaleform its more then just for prototyping, these days a lot of UIs are done straight with flash and used ingame, at least with the bigger engines like Unreal or Cryengine thats the case, can't say for IDtech, unity doesn#t support it for now but some other/smaller engines support scaleform 100% so for a UI artist its totally a big plus to know flash
Yeah I know I've been putting a bit of a twat attitude here lately when nobody deserves to hear it. I was not at all interested in defending flash either. I suppose I spend a bit too much time looking for subtext in people's posts, and these days anything that reminds me that games is a business just seems to set me off
Its really the same concept, just a matter of scale. At some point it is good to separate into categories, in Paul's case he has what is essentially a portfolio full of sweet tanks and vehicles, there just is no need to really split that up.
My point has never been that your website should consist of one page and page only, but that it shouldn't consist of 47 different pages/images loading in new tabs etc.
RE: Levels, if you have a few levels, splitting it up per level would be a good idea. If you have 24 levels, spiting it up per game or project, or level theme would be better. I have see level designers/enviro guys with a single page layout though, its just a question of how much content you're showing, generally.
since when people are looking at portfolios they prolly will want to see your UV layout, wires and bakes at somepoint too.
That's the thing though, there is IMO. Theres too much MM scrolling! It hurts! With categories, theres less of that. Not so much on your site, cause you guys did so many damn assets, but still ;P