My new flash website.
***FIXED***
Ok It should all be working fine now, after ealier.
I have made some changes after reading the reviews.
See if you like it. Please let me know
www.labithiotis.co.uk
Thank you
Daz
Ok It should all be working fine now, after ealier.
I have made some changes after reading the reviews.
See if you like it. Please let me know
www.labithiotis.co.uk
Thank you
Daz
Replies
EDIT:
In Firefox I get absolutely nothing.
In Internet Explorer I get an error message and obviously...nothing.
It seems a bit gimmicky to me. I'd much rather have something load up quickly and show me your work in a simple fashion than to have to wait a couple of minutes just so I can flick through 3d style pages. I don't care much for the music either.
In your 'work' section, when I click on a thumbnail, nothing happens. Oh, and the character work you have on your site is probably worth taking off. Everyone will tell you that if you don't like something, chances are neither will an employer. Only show your best.
Good luck.
And when it does load, each page didnt instantly load up (after I clicked "work", I had to wait another minute for it to actually show anything) And then I clicked on one of the images and it just gives me a little black square in middle of the page, cant go back, no indication of if its loading something or what... pretty much stuck on this little black square page for a minute, and then something finally loaded and I got the chance to close it and go back.
Tried clicking on another image just in case it was only that image that took 1 min to load - and it wasnt, all images take this long to load and the user is stuck waiting with nothing else to look at except a fullscreen button (yay thanks).
Going by looks alone it does look ok, but the speed is worse than horrible - so bad that it actually kills any motivation to continue looking. I'm amazed the work page still takes 1 min to load even after I already loaded it once... I'll comment more about the navigation and layout when the speed is sorted, right now its a waste of time. Or well not completely, since I did manage to type up this post while waiting for most the pages to load.
is that it? Firefox3..
ANyways just bare with me
Honestly though, Flash has no place on a portfolio site unless you are infact a Flash developer. It takes ages to load, you can't link directly to stuff inside of it, it encourages swishy annoying stuff and generally it just makes it twice as much of a chore to get to the work on the site than straight up HTML would do.
Generally, I'll close a portfolio site if I see it's made in Flash without waiting for it to load and I'm not even a recruiter :P
Talon. i understand the flash can load slow somtimes but i swear it was working very quickly earlier. Please let me can things sorted and you can veiw it when its loads correctly.
Thanx
I spent six years as a flash developer/animator before moving to games but my gameart folio is still super lo-fi...just a jpeg of thumbnails with an image map. You might want to spend a bit more time than I did though - haha!
You can't save images from a flash site.
Do we really need 'news'?
And again, when clicking for every image it takes way too long to load.
You have broken the system by having a flash site that slowly loads, distorts thumbnails, hides your content, and made your contact information unavailable. The first image that comes up is a lens flare. The character work is memorable for all the wrong reasons. Move on from trying to make web sites, and focus on the quality of your work.
The biggest issue with your site at the moment is that it makes your pieces hard to view. The interface for browsing them is very flashy and appealing. But when I click on them, I get nothing. Normally, that would be the point where the image pops up and I get a nice big view of it. The point of a portfolio is showcasing art. Tiny little versions of art are not nearly enough. If the art is the point, the art should take up the most space, and be the biggest priority.
You clearly evidence a considerable amount of expertise in flash. I love the options for customizing the look of the site, but again I can't help but question this feature on a portfolio. A portfolio also showcases the artist's design abilities. Giving the user options like this detracts from the cohesion of the artists presentation.
This site is an excellent example of capable flash design, but it is lacking as an artistic portfolio.
However, like others have said, I don't think a flash website is the way to go, especially with someone who is just trying to get there foot in the door. I mean, you are trying to get a potential employer to give you a chance. Making a flash website will only do you harm for this reason. Employers want to look at your art see its quality, and then move on. Music and other distractions will only irritate them.
Nice job making the site, but if you want to get a job in the game industry, please make a simplistic website showcasing your art. It might be hard to swallow, but trust me it will be worth it.
As for your work, I think the first environment you show is your best. You need to start making more pieces of the caliber or higher. So quite worrying about flash, and get to working on the important stuff, 3d art!
BTW, I suggest you do a little revising to your about me section. You have some kind of awkward sentences in there.
Good luck.
Your Sci-Fi tank needs less "CrazyBump MakeArt Button" with your spec and normals, and I think you need to better understand the creation of High Poly and Specular maps to be effective.
I would also suggest a bit more modularity in your environment scenes, rather than attempting to unwrap and texture entire buildings and surfaces.
danr - yer i know my dyslexicer doesn't help, i do keep asking other ppl to proof.
as for the work, i release i still much to do, and i will start doing a lot more 3D work. I am just trying to decide that i want to go down enviroment work fully.
Thanks for the responce
your work looks good, but i dont want to waste the time of waiting for them to load
flash is cool, and you can make it work, but make sure its lightning quick, cuz i got turned off within the first 30 seconds of being to your site
the layout i dig, and the background is cool, but id work on your loading times
Kill the music. No website should have music playing that isn't specifically about playing music or a video and even then you should probably have the user initiate it themselves, rather than force the user to have to try and turn it off. The music's also copyrighted and not credited anywhere. Infact you state that everything on the site is copyrighted to you (3 years ago...).
There's no wires, textures, polycounts or even descriptions on anything except the watercooler. And the normals on that are totally screwed (never just throw a diffuse map through crazybump, you will not get correct normals; see this). Also, filters also do not make specular or reflection maps.
Ditch the brochure, it's not very good and it has nothing to do with 3D art. It's also spelled incorrectly.
I'm pretty sure that stairwell was a pre-supplied model for a lighting competition a couple of years back, but that's not stated anywhere.
Spellcheck! It's not hard to do but there's quite a few slip-ups, as dan said "iit" makes it look sloppy and unprofessional.
The other thing is that it's not clear exactly what you want to do. There's one piece of game art there and the rest is general 3D art. There's some levels (which only have one photoshop filtered screenshot - no downloads or additional untouched). Figure out which direction you want to go in and then build your folio towards that.
took me a while to figure out, and i think i did by accident because i was furiously clicking on stuff when getting angry that they wouldnt open
I'm not as down on flash as some of the other members here. (what's with all the Flash-hate?) But I do agree that Flash probably isn't the best choice for an on-line art portfolio. Traditional web coding will serve you better for this purpose. Even though I personally love Flash, I do keep my personal portfolio site non-flash.
I wouldn't throw away the flash. I'd just keep it handy for applications to flash-related positions. You could pull it out to apply for GUI or interface design positions as well.
But good stuff none the less man.
I noticed a typo in the reference page at the photoshop slicing part. Some of your works are to big in the screenshot- I have 1280*1024 here and some of the picture came close to the border of browser- even though there was not much detail in the work. Esspecially the 3d screenshots/rendering could be smaler.
Oh and I HATE music on websites its something people do on myspace- forces me to search for the mute button or open the windows volume panel. I guess a valid reason why so many people hate flash websites.
Btw. did you noticed yourself that many of the songs have bad quality- there is lot of noise in them, another reason to ditch them, besides that the music has nothing to do with you,- you did not made the tracks,- neither does it say anything about you other than that you are a halo fan or whater game music runs.
Some odd content imo is:
- news: why on a portfolio,- even more if the news content is not related to your work
- main/ all works: why have 2 sections- it just irritates so stick with one. Also the cover flow is just annoying- everyone does that these days and its so obvious that it tries to mimic apple and by that you place yourself already very low. As a artist or designer you should instead try to stand out.
As for the content:
I think alot of the pieces could use more refinement- often I saw some wacky photoshop filter on them which is bad- because anyone who knows photoshop will notice that right away. Alot of the 3d works were often empty and not rich enough in detail and quality.
i'm not a fan of flash for portfolios, i think it over complicates things. it loaded fairly quick,, about 3 or so seconds, but thats 3 or 4 seconds too long.
as far as content, i would say work more on normal maps, the link posted in this thread is a good place to look, anytime i see someone just convert a base map to normal, makes me want to murder something.
the brochure i would remove unless you were specificaly looking for a job doing that. and even then,, i would spend some time making more, all the images just faded together is confusing, you need some seperation, thers a cannon that just kinda blurs into a platform of barels, that blurs into a yellow tank thing, just seems like 10 pics placed randomly on layers in photoshop then you just soft erased away chunks, the little circle insets are tonly, and its hard to tell whats going on inside them. and everything is the same green.
the train map looks ok, but is it suposed to have the photoshop filter look? did you add that to the screen shot, or just a setting in hammer? and if it is a setting why? if its something you did to the textures of the level to get that look then its cool, if you just turned on a effect that comes with hammer to try and add some instant coolness then it is a letdown. let your art speak, not filters,
keep at it and you should get there,
check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightbox_(JavaScript)
Also I would ditch the water cooler. You might think its nice but what it says to employers is "here is an art test I failed at, can I work at your company?"
http://mv.cgcommunity.com/
Time spent on html/flash : 0,01%
Time spent doing kickass art : 99,99%
Loading time : none
Ease of access : hard to beat
Simple really...
It would look better if he didnt use any <br> tags and just spammed a block of images plus it will save 1 sec of time pasting the <br> tag, even more time to spend doing kickass art.
In long, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
(yeah ZeroPunctuation I know!)
What I dont like about it:
- soooooooooo slow to navigate (transition tween, stupid and fake preloader- it would be better if the images would load as scanline like they usually do in regular html sites)
- takes away control - you cant open the images in tabs or do other specific browser stuff (if your browser is advanced enough
- makes your wbesite look like any other one
If I were an employer, I wouldn't even have waited more than 20 seconds for your site to load before giving up on it.
-caseyjones
1. why blast mirrors edge in your news section? are you mad? you are looking for a games job.
2. why do I need a separate window to view your videos? (flash is good for videos)
3. lots and lots of spelling errors in your site, spell checked this?
4. no one likes music on websites, do you?
5. can I change the font size or print out your CV?
6. can I save images from your site?
7. what if I don't have flash?
Basically, flash is not working in yours or anyone else's favour. Spelling mistakes make you look unprofessional.