Critique....My.....Site?

[orion]

Two weeks in the making, from the depths of one of our generation's most derranged minds comes the instant online classic:

www.orionburcham.com !!!

"I think I've seen this artwork before- No, that was a bunch of dead people. the resemblance is uncanny." - The British Journal of Superior Taste

"My dog Aretha could make better environments, and she has no arms nor legs." - Game Developer Magazine

"I crapped myself in sorrow." -NY Times


I'd love to know what anybody thinks. I've got another quarter before graduation, so hopefully there will be time to change what's needed. I'm glad it's done, but it was fun making the site.

Thanks!
-Orion

[Safemilk]

Lol, thats a great intro, I'm not sure if this is the right section for the post but either way I love your site. I'm really feeling the layout its actually really nice to look through and it has pleasant colors.

However, I would totally lose the bio all together. I was talking with swink about that and from what i could tell, but im not quoting, people looking at resume sites dont care about your life history or you design philosophy, thats what the interview is for. Plus it threw me off when i was looking for the actual resume, not to mention it seemed heavy handed and forced. Plus your smile looks fake in the picture lol.

I would leave the descriptions for the environments though, those are kind of nice to read. Also I would reverse the order of the environments to have the newest one on top, even though it's not finished, maybe even put dates on them so people can see you are always working.

All in all though I really enjoyed your site, maybe others can be more helpful however.

[R_matey]

Yeah, your website is pretty ridiculous, very nice and well designed. Did you use any layouts or make it all in Dreamweaver.  I would say some of the shots are ify, for example the shot of the boat from underneath the water. I would also say to change the front page to really pronounce that you are a environmental artist. The top banner is awesome just needs a roar like Simba.

[Master_V12]

I'd hit it... awesome work

[JustinM]

Overall, very clean, nice, and easy to navigate. Your thumbnails are sweet.


- You should clean up your logo, some of the edges are messed up/not perfect. And is your logo suppose to resemble PS2's font? because that's totally what it looks like. Just wondering and perhaps something you might want to consider revising because it might give off a copied/rip off, or Playstation favoritism vibe.

- The tab for your site says Environment Art and Design, but you might want to add that somewhere on your site, like under your name or something so people are clear as to what it is you do/are aiming for.

- I think the overall site would be better if it was centered, but that's probably more trouble than it's worth and not that big of a deal, so don't worry about it.

- I was under the impression you're not really suppose to put a photo of yourself on a portfolio site (discrimination reasons? idk), but I guess that's really up to you to decide.

- Your use of text is really nice for describing your process and how it works, especially since some of the things are impossible to see by just looking at a photo (like "Custom planet shader with three layers of moving clouds, cloud shadows, land, and waves"). Perhaps you could use video footage or animated gifs to show off some of those things that photos don't. For that reason it seems like a lot of the work you do isn't showcased properly.

[mgvelasquez]

Very nice job, this looks great for serious!

I think your navigation bar on the left has too much negative space.  You could probably scale it in a bit horizontally. 
It could also use a bit more visual interest.. too blocky and gray atm.  Maybe crop some corners and add some colored bars? 
Try some font size changes(or colors?) between the menu items and the sub menus.  It looks too uniform.

I love the unique icon you have for each environment, nice touch.
Thanks for making the "contact" menu item NOT directly open up outlook.  I want to punch my monitor when "contact" doesnt lead to a page but to a stupid  new message on outlook.  Jeez.. maybe I just want to write your email down for future use and NOT send out an email this very second!  Sooo.. high five on that.

Great resume.  I recommend removing the version numbers of the software.  Especially for something like Crazybump which gets updated so often.  It will save you a lot of updating time when a new version comes out.  You also don't want to give the idea that you'll ONLY work with that version.  Removing the version number broadens your appeal. (i guess)

Great job though.  Hell you could just leave things the way they are and it would still rock.
Now graduate k?

[Cor]

damn dude, nice site. was all of that done in dream weaver? its all definitely a good start to a site, now all it needs is more.

[Decker]

Hey, man, I'm in Texas and staying with a good friend of mine who is a professional web designer. I showed him your site for a critique and he says that based on what you're gearing towards you should really make your website an environment. He recommended this site to show you what he means. Make your website just another one of your environments, basically. Also, he says that you should look at having your "news" section be a link and not your homepage. Your homepage should be something that blows them a way and gives them the option to go to a directory and not be the directory. Make sense? I'll have some more later when he can take a better look at it. Hope it helps!

[TeacupBandit]

Hey, man, I'm in Texas and staying with a good friend of mine who is a professional web designer. I showed him your site for a critique and he says that based on what you're gearing towards you should really make your website an environment. He recommended this site to show you what he means. Make your website just another one of your environments, basically. Also, he says that you should look at having your "news" section be a link and not your homepage. Your homepage should be something that blows them a way and gives them the option to go to a directory and not be the directory. Make sense? I'll have some more later when he can take a better look at it. Hope it helps!

That is a cool site and all, but how does someone go about making that. Is it something that can be made through dreamweaver or golive?

[Master_V12]

That would be a cool idea... but once Orion becomes a world famous environment artist... untill then keeping it simple is important... HR people are a bit sloooow

[Heart_Murmur]

Hey Orion, I think everything has been said, and I agree, I like what I see!

Hey, man, I'm in Texas and staying with a good friend of mine who is a professional web designer. I showed him your site for a critique and he says that based on what you're gearing towards you should really make your website an environment. He recommended this site to show you what he means. Make your website just another one of your environments, basically. Also, he says that you should look at having your "news" section be a link and not your homepage. Your homepage should be something that blows them a way and gives them the option to go to a directory and not be the directory. Make sense? I'll have some more later when he can take a better look at it. Hope it helps!

This to me seems like a really bad idea, and here is why:

When the HR people do come to your website they want to to clearly be able to navigate the site. The first thing they want to see is your work, that is the sole reason they are there. Second would be contact info/resume if they do decide that your work is worthy. What they don't want to be doing is waiting for the web page to load and having some cumbersome flash animated website. These people do this for their job, you don't need to spell it out to them that your an environment artist by making an environment themed website. I'm not going to animate characters walking around my website left to right because I'm going to be a character artist, thats annoying and so is that recommended website.

Good example of displaying information: http://www.mvelasquez.com/

[orion]

Hey! With school now out I can finally respond to all the posts here. First off, thanks a lot- you guys definitely liked my site more than polycounters did, which I"m guessing means it's pretty good for a student but not as great for a professional. Now, down to business:

- the site was made with dream weaver only. There's no flash, but I did end up learning some javascript, java, and ajax html to make it work (many thanks to shawn for getting me started with js, and to Nate Ferguson, Aldo, and others for helping me test)
- the jaggy logo is something that was originally on purpose, but now is obvious it doesn't sell when shrunk down. I'll definitely be fixing this.
- the site being centered would be cool, but it would involve a complete restructuring of the site, and required a skill I didn't have until halfway through making this build. Maybe in a v2.
- the order of environments is debatable, for sure. The current order is not intentionally from oldest to newest. I tried to sandwich my two least favorable pieces inside the two pieces that have gotten the best response from others. I'm still not totally sold on this, and would love to have a site that displayed them all without a perceived order.
- I totally agree- my site needs clear identification that I want to be an environment artist right on the front page.
- wha? I thought i had taken those version numbers off. Ah well, that comment's right on point, and that will be fixed for good.
- i asked a lot of people about the photo-on-website taboo. Everyone I talked to from inside the industry seemed to be confused that I thought there was a problem, and said it was usually a good thing to show, depending on the photo.
- after reading Dan's comment, I ran my bio past several teachers at our school. I added a few revisions, and I hope it seems less heavy handed. I decided I did want to include a short bio next to the resume. If someone doesn't care about it, no harm done- the resume's there. If they do read it, I hope it doesn't seem forced. the response I got from teachers is that a good bio is short, condensed, and to the point, and is therefore sometimes dry.


About the "site as an environment" concept: Thanks for the suggestion, Chris. My opinion is that, although this works well as a cool looking website that you might explore to navigate, as an artist seeking a job a good goal is to make the site as simple and obvious as possible. Although game environments are meant to be explored to reveal their secrets, this is the opposite of how I want my site to operate. Nate and Vic were spot on in their comments that most of the time it's going to be an HR rep who's looking at your site. Since they're looking through tons of them while going through applications, you don't want to bore or annoy them.

They also don't have the same apps or the same interest in graphics that we do, and this makes anything that could keep your site from running instantly a huge risk. That means little to no flash, and no required plugin model viewers (at least when used instead of great screen shots). the main challenge of portfolio website design is that you have to make your site easy enough for a lazy, tired, aggravated person to navigate, while still pulling something off that looks different and interesting.


Ironically, the day after I posted my site, I found another artist's page that I thought looked 100x cooler than mine. Oh well, I'll just steal all of his good ideas for my next site :p

Thanks again for the helpful advice.
-Orion

[airrunkle]

woah berry colored text! 

[orion]

Don't lick the screen.

[TeacupBandit]

Hey Orion,

I really like the slideshow and the content on your page, I have been working on my site for the past two months, but cant really get anything concrete. How did you build yours (programs used) and do you have any tips that really helped you out when developing yours?