New website, seeking work.

_Shimmer · Jul 2005

Hi guys!
Finally i could set up my new website. With more funk, more random content and more info about me (But still more to come).

Here you go:

http://stephko.viranyi.de

I wanted to keep the design clean and simple.
I have dynmaic content and will add alot more by some time. Unfortunately the game art stuff is quite old (I retextured the beast once and added a normalmap, the only "new" thing), the newer ones are under NDA.
However, currently I am working on some hipoly / normalmap stuff with animtion and so on for your pleasure

.

As you can read on the site I am seeking work at present. On-/offsite fulltime / contract. If you know somebody who knows sombody who knows somebody else who is searching for a little german artist let him know.
If I get the half of my salaray paid out in beer, its ok for me

.

Crits and comments are highly welcome. Also, if you find some grammar, spelling or typo mistakes in the text (english is not my foreign language) notify me please, thanks.

I hope you like the stuff..

IceWolve · Jul 2005

I realy like your lay out and design, One thing that might help is the polycounts on the models, unless im blind and dont see them.. I realy love your nuclear dawn soldier and that undead warrior with a shield, those are cool..

aesir · Jul 2005

One of your pictures is a bit fux0red up. You only seem to have loaded the top of half of the picture to your webiste. Here it is:

http://stephko.viranyi.de/portfolio/gameart/folio_hank.jpg

Other than that, I love the layout and design. Looks awesome. If you really want to broaden your work some showing some figure studies wouldnt hurt.

_Shimmer · Jul 2005

thanks for the hint aesir. fix0red.

I am gong to scan my sketchbook by some time and add A LOT of sketches, figure studios mostly

cholden · Jul 2005

You content is fantastic, and the layout is clean. Now, delete you intro/splash page and news page. When a someone goes to stephko.viranyi.de, they are probably an employer, give them your name, what position you want, your email address, and thumbnails of your best work right on the index site. It currently takes 3 clicks to see your portfolio content, 3 chances for an employer to miss your talent. By putting your content on the main page there's a chance of you being discovered on accident. That being said, your stuff is real good, but you could focus your content on exactly what you want to be hired for. The extra stuff, like photography and whatnot, can always be on a side page somewhere.

Here are two of my favorite portfolio layouts that are very employer friendly.
http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/cottages/b1ll/
http://www.gamemechanic.com/jonjones/

_Shimmer · Jul 2005

the thing with my old page was, that it was simply a business card and no word was given about me and my personalty. I know that a employer wants to see the content as soon as possible, but with this new approach I not want give an potential employer the feeling that I am just a empty shell. Infact, I WANT to work in team and for me, showing that you are not a complete wanker is important. It has already cost me quite an effort to write "services" instead of abilities or something like that

Anyway, thats the reason why I put up this banner; to have him directly see what content is awating him.

But, what do others say?
Personally I could live with deleting the splashpage (honestly, when setting up i didnt knew why I ever planned to make a splashscreen, maybe just because of the stupid text).

Thanks for the kind answers so far

Illusions · Jul 2005

Simple suggestion: Remove the splash page, its pointless. Usually people use a splash page for the following reasons:
1) Preloading (Flash) for the main site
2) Choosing one of multiple versions of the main site (html/flash, english/alternate language, 800x600/1280x1024...etc)
3) Choosing one of multiple main sites

Other than that, your site looks clean, and well laid out.

killingpeople · Jul 2005

"click the hell out of me" hah!
one legged joe fucking rules.

rollin · Jul 2005

hm i think the splash page isn´t realy that bad.. as long as you dont make such a "ENTER" link.. the joke is something that gives u a bit more attention than without .. and thats what u want

but something other.. you make such a good page but than you present your stuff as little row of little thumbs.. why are your doing this? (and your not the only one..) this is what you want to show and you make it as tiny as possible and in such a big block, that it realy irritates the eye

If you give every model its owne row and make the thumbs a bit bigger (maybe sort the stuff a bit better.. lowpoly char and heads and midpoly and environment and weapon) it would realy look more relaxed

I would also put the "Funki folio..." into the Banner or over it or remove it or made it grey.. bc you have atm 2 Headlines for the viewers eye.. the "Funki folio" one and the ::BLIBLABLU:: one, and with all the text and thumbs it cause a bit of chaos

(esp. because they´r all yellow)

but don´t mind.. it´s realy cool stuff and i only make some tiny suggestions that could make it a bit better

Slainean · Jul 2005

In the services area, you misspelled "proficient".

Overall, very sleek. The color scheme is easy on the eyes and has a nice contrast. In the portfolio gallery, I would put the thumbnails above the block of text. As it is, the thumbs are close to the bottom of the browser window and out of your immediate view. They should be more centered in my opinion. Also, the gap between the address bar and the top banner is much too large. You're gonna want things a little more centered. I agree that the splash page is unnecessary.

These are small suggestions but I think it will improve the layout. Now let's see that Exo Marine fully textured!

_Shimmer · Jul 2005

[ QUOTE ]
In the services area, you misspelled "proficient".

[/ QUOTE ]

Hahhaha thanks for that, thats stuff thats not allowed to happen.

Anyway thanks for the comments so far. Yop I will delete the splashpage.

killingpeople: I guess we both are the only one who like the splashpage tagline. oh well

Glad you like onelagged joe. It was printed in a local youthmagazine were I worked as a layouter / photographer btw

rollin: The point with the little thumbnails is that I want to push my content by some time. So more to come and I not want to force the viewer to scroll down all the time. Though, I am sure it looks VERY small on a 1600x1200 rez. I am contacting my brother by some time to find a good solution for this problem. Thanks for pointing out

The "funky folio" will be removed, jep. Design is so hard sometimes. You just tend to lose the point of it

As for the portfolio order. I am used to the typical system: The first is the best. Everything that I think harms the portfolio will be placed in the Archive/junk folder.
If you find a work in the game art section that could harm the whole folio, please notify me, it will be most likely moved to the archive / junk

slaine: Again this seems to be a resoltion issue. It looks fine to me regarding the centeration (Currently its optically centered).
ahrm I gonna remove some pixels betweeen content and address bar.

Okey guys. Thanks for all the feedback. Trying to fix all problems.

jzero · Jul 2005

Nice design, although there's one technical thing you can put in to make it roll a little better. The way your portfolio pages are built, you just have the images all dumped together into a table cell. That means that every time a page loads, the structure of the page isn't finalized until all the thumbnail images are loaded. So sometimes the thumbnail area starts out shorter than it ends up, and even wider sometimes, because of the placeholder spaces. The page jumps and changes shape until everything's loaded, which looks kinda goofy.

My suggestion is, put your thumnails in a table, so that the page grid is tight and consistent, even if the page is full of red X's. Also, make sure all your thumbnails have 'height' and 'width' parameters, that way the browser will know to hold a space of that size until the image loads. That will stop all the page-jumping.

Good luck!

/jzero

lkraan · Jul 2005

Nice and clean design. Just the way I like it.
Why is there so much empty space above the 3 options (sitemap, etc)?
if you lose that then the scrolling will be minimsed on a 1024 screen.
You present all your models in a different way. I think that it's good to show every model as a wireframe, skinned and the textures along with info on the polycount and texture size(s).

Edit ... Excellent work by the way

_Shimmer · Jul 2005

ok fixed some problems. and bump, juhey!

Sage · Jul 2005

Nice work like always and I like the site a lot more than before. I suggest you show your favorite pieces at the start of the page. I don't think the news section is helping you much either, especially since it seems to be bad news. I suggest you only post your news in a positive light. I'm not sure how employers over there deal with things but I have encountered some pretty shallow people in the States so I suggest you be careful with what you say. Ideally you want them to give you an interview before you show off your personality.
Fix this sentence, because of bad grammer. You don't need "the" in front of Europe.

...Therefore I am seeking fulltime employment in the Europe.

Good luck.

Alex

_Shimmer · Aug 2005

Added a bit of content in my track record, fixed some problems, added news. Currently I have no stuff to show realy, stilll under NDA. I still would love to hear some feedback.

The news are currently sorted badly, gonna talk to my bro to fix that.

cholden · Aug 2005

Why do you even have a news page? To announce you have a web site? Isn't that clear to the user by being there?

Index (main page) the user right to your portfolio (page with thumbnails). This is a portfolio site, right?

poopinmymouth · Aug 2005

Obviously there is going to be news added as it happens. It might not look necessary at this exact second, but after a few updates, I'm sure it will be much more clear. Being as you are actually searching for work at this moment, I might have the default page be the folio, and the news an option on the menu.

Shimmer, very nice work. I like the folio lots. In fact I heart it. My only beef is in the way the images pop up into a new window. I constantly have to close them. I'd prefer it change the page itself to that image (so I can navigate back to click on the next one) or have it pop into the same window and regain focus, each time I click on a new image. (it would be nice for it to auto size too, but I don't know how to do that in html)

Daz · Aug 2005

Looks great Shimmer. Clean, attractive and to the point. Helps that the body of work is quality too of course :-)

_Shimmer · Aug 2005

yeah poop, the window is issue bugs me too. Well, it bugs me that other people are bothered by this

The site was designed to work perfectly in firefox with tabbed browsing. I am still on the hunt for a good solution for all browsers.

The news are just for my perysonal setisfaction, as stated I not wanted to go the buisnesscard route again. I gonna rethink that by some time

Thanks for the comments and crits so far.

Prs-Phil · Aug 2005

Great site m8, the only thing that bothers me a bit, is that the newest news is not on top.

motives · Aug 2005

i wish you would make more and bigger renders of your work. I mean, the beast and rider is an awesome piece but the render on your site is kinda small, feels like you dont showcase all the detail

_Shimmer · Aug 2005

Thanks for the heads up. I am going to fix some issue here and there. But till that happens here is a old little piece i normalmapped afterwards and fixed some texture issues and made a little animationset for it. Youll need the xvid codec to view it.

And hey, suggestions are highly welcome of what animations I should give him in addition

Sa74n · Aug 2005

the run cycle looks really stylish. you should have the camera rotate around him slowly so you can see the anim from different angles.

motives · Aug 2005

i think perhaps you should remove the box he is standing on and let him run in empty space.. Or alternatly animate the ground passing under him... I always thought it looks weird when people are running but not moving

cool animations for showcasing characters is always the old "unholster gun, load gun, aim some, reholster gun" sequence. Complete with a 360 camera pan

steve_o · Aug 2005

Great work Shimmer, I like your hand painted faces a lot... you tend to always add a bit of creativity to them that says 'Shimmer.'

Keep plugging away at your own original work please, I really enjoy it most.

_Shimmer · Aug 2005

thanks fro the kind words guys. I really try to improve the whole site on every it and bit. Currently I found a mehtod to make my news system more reasonable. I will keep adding some stuff constantly, especially keep my WIP folder intersting snice I think 50 % of the peeps lookin at my site still havent seen it

I for my self love WIP folders so I want to give others the pleasure (?) too.

Anyways, I am working on a new personal project. I want to train myself in zbrush, normalmapping, animation, art consisity and production pipeline more and more so I started a new project called "Monstergroup".

I am planing to make 4 classes, animate them indivudally. All normalmapped with new shader tech like normalmapping (I start hating this word), specmaps, SI maps, Glowmaps and so on. I hope it will turn out good. Also i wanted a more unique less generic design like space marines. I took the monster route but less genital style like Jason does (it so well

.

I hope you enjoy.

nkoste · Aug 2005

I love that last piece _shimmer and also your normal mapped busts. Besides your texture work your modeling is also superb. Seems feet are something you save for last though

. I've just finished a lowpoly bust which I plan to do a hires version of in zbrush. Quite inspiratinal stuff you got there.

Waiting for more... IMPATIENTLY!

Mark Dygert · Aug 2005

http://www.gamemechanic.com/jonjones/

If you like this layout and are not very HTML savy but want a good portfolio page (like this one) to start with that looks "just like" this one. Open photoshop 6 or higher and go file/automate/web gallery. The only draw back is that it only has a few options and doesn't bring that creative pop a custom site does. But really why are they coming to your site, to oggle over your mad page building skills or to oggle over your work.

Just don't try and pass the page off as your own code because the automated template pages stand out. I have used it a few times for certain projects:

http://www.vigville.com/backgrounds/
http://www.vigville.com/de_lochs/

Sith Happens. · Aug 2005

[ QUOTE ]
http://www.gamemechanic.com/jonjones/

If you like this layout and are not very HTML savy but want a good portfolio page (like this one) to start with that looks "just like" this one. Open photoshop 6 or higher and go file/automate/web gallery. The only draw back is that it only has a few options and doesn't bring that creative pop a custom site does. But really why are they coming to your site, to oggle over your mad page building skills or to oggle over your work.

Just don't try and pass the page off as your own code because the automated template pages stand out. I have used it a few times for certain projects:

http://www.vigville.com/backgrounds/
http://www.vigville.com/de_lochs/

[/ QUOTE ]

Those are neat templates, i like them alot, the only drawback is you get small images.
----

Your site is pretty solid shimmer, I like your devil head the most, good luck man!

_Shimmer · Sep 2005

k, bump again. I added some content and a shoutbox so that you can eternalise your self...

Also feel free, as stated on the page, to pass this folio to your AD and coworkes.

Thanks

New website, seeking work.

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