Quote:Original post by sunandshadow
Alright, I give up. If the consensus is that the site is a piece of crap and needs to be redesigned, I'll redesign it. I'm pissed off that I apparently wasted a week working on it, and was prematurely really happy that I was finally done with the stupid thing, but oh well. Maybe in another week I'll have a new version.

STOP!

Use a WYSIWYG app for this. Hell, some of them are even free now. (Serif are offering this for nada. I've no idea if it's any good -- I use a Mac these days and iWeb is more than adequate for my placeholder site. For more advanced sites, I throw Dreamweaver at the problem.)


Now. Content...

Look at your art objectively. Be ruthless and remove anything you're not entirely happy about showing in public. Be positively *evil* about this, and brutally honest with yourself.

I don't personally think all your art is bad, but you do need to nail down your visual 'voice'. Find what you're best at and stick to it rather than trying umpteen different styles. Don't be mediocre at lots of different fields when you can be great at just one. One is all you need.

Also, don't your writing shouldn't play second fiddle to your images: Get rid of the 18-rated graphics there! It's a writing page. It should have writing. Period.

If I'm interested in hiring you as a writer, the *last* thing I expect to see when I open your writing page is a bloody great illustration of copulation. Put the art somewhere else. (Especially the graphic novel stuff. A graphic novel scriptwriter writes *scripts*. The art belongs in the art section. You can link to the relevant section from the script if you wish -- that's what hyperlinks were invented for -- but do not include it with the script if it's not safe for work. Your potential clients will most likely be *at* work when viewing your portfolio.)


Now for the design...

You've got the "Oooh! Colours! Let's have lots of pretty colours! And fonts! Must have fonts!" stuff out of your system. Excellent. (If it's any consolation, *everyone* goes through that phase. Graphic design and interaction design are both things you have to learn the hard way, just like any other craft.)

So now that's done with, you can approach the site with a more objective, more experienced, eye.

Consider how potential visitors will view your site and what *their* needs may be. Put the customer first, not your own convenience, or people will move on to the next site instead.

Try seeing your website as an opportunity, not a chore. Use your own art skills to create a gallery for your art. A gallery has a foyer which tells you what's what and where the interesting stuff is. (You're a writer as well as an artist, so you could put a couple of showcases for *both* here. But be subtle. A single, well-written slogan or phrase will be far more effective than paragraphs of text.)

One approach is to think of this as a magazine's front page. A collage of some of your art may be an idea here, or you could go for a more minimalist approach instead using icons, or possibly images based on one of your characters.


The dividers which frame your site's title and writing link are good candidates to use as a basis for the site's look. This is often true of most abstract 'architectural' images as so much graphic design is architectural anyway. Such designs are ideal for navbars and other GUI "furniture". (The "Space Wrought Iron Railing" image also has potential.) The advantage of such images is that they can complement the heavily figurative art. Think of the interface as the frame around your art. Without that frame, it's just a bit of paper of canvas; with it, it becomes something you want to hang on a wall.

Navigation controls should be viewed in the videogame sense: part of a consistent user interface that your visitors can grasp instantly. Keep it simple. Keep it clean. Keep it intuitive.

And keep it resolution-independent as far as possible. Not everyone has perfect eyesight or a modern PC. Some people -- myself included -- have the zoom settings turned up a notch on their browsers to make the text easier on failing eyes. (It's also worth considering that laptop displays often have a higher DPI than their desktop counterparts. Even a site that requires 1024 pixels in width can look ridiculously small on such screens.)

Your website is your shop front. The window potential visitors peer through to decide whether they want to come in. Tantalise them. Tempt them. Make them want to find out more.

Now, granted, I've spent most of the last 10 years doing this stuff and, occasionally, even getting paid for it. There's a lot more to website design than the above, but hopefully my comments, coupled with those linked to by Oluseyi -- please don't make the mistake of assuming graphic design rules can be trivially broken; most of them are directly related to basic cognitive science's discoveries -- can help you avoid the most common pitfalls.

Imagine someone else has asked you to build them a gallery website. Treat this as a paying gig. After all, the idea is that people will come up and pay you money for your work.

*

One more thing: Oluseyi is right about having your own domain. It makes a lot of difference to peoples' perception of the site, but wouldn't cost you more than a couple of dollars a month at most and you'll get a lot more flexibility with it. "Sunandshadow.com" appears to have been taken, but "marekuntz.com" or, preferably, "wickedelight.com" both appear to be available.

These will usually include email accounts too, so you could have "mare@wickeddelight.com". Having control over the email address is a big plus and also a major advantage when dealing with clients professionally. (It's also less painful if you should decide to change provider later on as you just take your domain with you to the new host. I like to keep a Googlemail account too, as backup, but I never use the email address given me by my ISP as these change whenever I change my ISP.)

Hosting your own domain is ridiculously cheap. I can get hosting here in Rip-off Britain, including a .COM domain name, for about £20 or so per *year*. (By comparison, I pay around £30 *per month* for my mobile phone contract.)

(I'd buy both choices as they won't cost much anyway. The biggest problem with domains derived from your actual name is that email addresses generally look either egotistical, weird, or both. Point it at the "wickeddelight.com" domain instead. This way you'll save on hosting too.)

I didn't use a wysiwyg page maker because my roommate hates them and refused to help me if I used one lol. Also because I did that last time I tried to make a pretty webpage, and I didn't learn anything from doing it that way - looking at the code it generated I couldn't understand it at all. I do have one I can attempt to use though.

Quote:Look at your art objectively. Be ruthless and remove anything you're not entirely happy about showing in public. Be positively *evil* about this, and brutally honest with yourself.

I don't personally think all your art is bad, but you do need to nail down your visual 'voice'. Find what you're best at and stick to it rather than trying umpteen different styles. Don't be mediocre at lots of different fields when you can be great at just one. One is all you need.

From previous experience I've found that my favorites among my own art are not the same as other people's favorites, so I don't think I'm capable or judging my own art objectively. Which really makes sense because when I look at my stuff I see the intentions behind it, which other people don't, and I just don't have the same taste in art as the majority of people anyway. All the pieces I chose, I'm happy with _for what they are_, and when we're talking about concept sketches and blueprints they're kind of inherently homely because they're not finished art, they're diagrams. Showing finished art for that sort of thing wouldn't work because it's not what I'm selling.

I think it's interesting that you think I should concentrate on one visual voice. I do have a style I regard as mine, but that's never what people want to buy. I also philosophically think it's better to be a jack of all trades than a master of one. What I'd really like to do is be the main artist for an RPG or MMORPG, and that takes the ability to do a ton of different stuff.

Thanks for the suggestions about using the graphical divider or space wrought iron railing as a theme, I'll think about those as I'm attempting to redesign the page. How exactly do I design a page with lots of graphics to be resolution-independent?

Writing page, it's under construction, I hadn't really decided to keep that pic there anyway. I might keep it if the 18+ writing ends up on its own page, but it definitely doesn't belong on a page with pg content. The storyboards however are a standard part of what a comics scriptwriter gives their artist, I have been repeatedly asked by artists to provide them with sickfigure storyboards along with my script. As horrible as they look I certainly wouldn't call them art lol.

Quote:Original post by sunandshadow
I didn't use a wysiwyg page maker because my roommate hates them and refused to help me if I used one lol.

Only fools and masochists deliberately go out of their way to make their life harder.

Quote:Also because I did that last time I tried to make a pretty webpage, and I didn't learn anything from doing it that way - looking at the code it generated I couldn't understand it at all. I do have one I can attempt to use though.

You don't have to understand how a thermos flask knows how to keep hot drinks hot and cold drinks cold in order to use one. It's a tool. Stop treating it like magic and just use it for what it is. After all, you don't regularly open up Microsoft Word's .DOC files in a hex editor to understand how to hand-code such files yourself, right? Who *cares* how or why it works! Let others worry about that stuff. Your task is to *get the job done*. That is all that matters in this industry.

Quote:
I think it's interesting that you think I should concentrate on one visual voice. I do have a style I regard as mine, but that's never what people want to buy. I also philosophically think it's better to be a jack of all trades than a master of one. What I'd really like to do is be the main artist for an RPG or MMORPG, and that takes the ability to do a ton of different stuff.

The main artist for an RPG -- or any major game project -- doesn't do "a ton of different stuff". If you're working as a lead artist, the trick is to *get other people* to do all that different stuff. *Your* job is to keep the vision whole; to make sure they all stick to the same consistent artistic style. Nowhere is it graven in stone that that style has to be *your* style.

Management isn't about being able to do every last little thing on your own -- trust me, I've done that and it was difficult enough back in the 16-bit days! -- but about being able to know how to get your colleagues to do them for you.

A lead programmer spends most of his time merging code written by other people into the main project, ensuring it's of a good enough quality and also specifying what needs to be written. His actual coding time on any given project will often be _less_ than that of his colleagues. Quite a bit less in some cases.

A lead artist is no different. His job is to check the quality of the assets coming into the asset pipeline and ensuring they're rigged as specified, as well as fitting the designer's vision of how each asset should look. He may also be liaising with the other leads to prepare the next batch of tasks for his staff.

I suspect you're conflating the "Lead Artist" with a "Concept Artist". The latter is there to get the initial look and feel of the game sorted, yes, but in that case, you really need to work on your anatomy as most of your art simply isn't going to work in a 3D environment. (I have much the same problem, which is why I don't do game art much these days. I have a very rough, cartoony style that only really works in 2D. I'm actually better at architectural drawing and graphic design than realistic character work.)

If you're really dead set on getting work as a concept artist, you are going to have an uphill struggle unless you spend a good while nailing down the anatomy. As others have pointed out (albeit in less than diplomatic tones), your art is too informal and abstract in style. In all fairness, we're overdue a shift away from photorealism, but realistically most of the demand out there for mainstream console projects is going to be for artists capable of realist art styles rather than the more abstract forms.

That said, you could do worse than working on a casual game or three. There's a greater demand for non-photorealistic art style in the casual games sector. (Rather than focusing on photorealistic renderings, try reading up on character design and graphic styles for animation -- particularly books aimed at the Flash / Web animation side. I suspect you'll feel more comfortable working at this end of the stylistic spectrum.)

Quote:
Thanks for the suggestions about using the graphical divider or space wrought iron railing as a theme, I'll think about those as I'm attempting to redesign the page. How exactly do I design a page with lots of graphics to be resolution-independent?

Resolution-independence in this case just means ensuring your page looks decent at resolutions from 640 x 480 upwards. Don't set an arbitrarily lower limit to screen size if you can avoid it, that's the key.

Tricks include using a mostly text-based layout and only using graphics to highlight and frame rather than larding the page with whopping great GIFs and PNGs. Wherever possible, use text. That's the real key. It keeps up the site's speed and also makes it much easier for people with accessibility issues. (Screen readers can't parse text in an image file, for example.)

Come to think of it, you could probably get away with using something like JAlbum to do most of the heavy lifting. All you would then need to do is build an entrance page to link to the JAlbum gallery (or galleries) and the writing page. Try and use a similar look and feel for both. JAlbum has a bunch of templates you can use, so that shouldn't be too difficult. Pick a simple, minimalist one as that'll make your life easier.

Quote:
The storyboards however are a standard part of what a comics scriptwriter gives their artist, I have been repeatedly asked by artists to provide them with sickfigure storyboards along with my script.

I hate to say this, but I think your artist just can't work out what you want from your script. Like animation scripts, comic scripts need to include seriously anal direction detail and even instructions on framing, such as:

Quote:
PANEL 3: TWO-SHOT with EDGAR and JANE as they argue. JANE is on her feet, emoting and waving her hands about while she rants. EDGAR just sits there impassively. There is a table in the foreground and JANE is standing behind it.

JANE:
So this is what you call 'reasonable', is it? What the hell did I do to deserve an asshole like you?

EDGAR:
Hey, you proposed to me, remember?


PANEL 4: FRAMELESS POV SHOT from EDGAR showing MCU of JANE ranting further. Her clenched fists slam down on the top of PANEL 6, below, which acts as the table in this shot. She's leaning forward, shouting into EDGAR's face and we're seeing this from EDGAR's perspective.


JANE: (the 'MAN' should be in really big type on its own line)
Why, you... you... MAN!



PANEL 5: Reverse-shot, ECU on EDGAR from JANE's POV as he drops his bombshell... he's grinning like the proverbial canary-swallowing cat and waving a wad of cash -- fifty-dollar bills! -- right in front of us.

EDGAR:
Aw now honey! I said I din't do it an' I din't! See? I tol' ya I ain't a bettin' man no more!

...

That said, storyboards can certainly be useful in getting the visuals clear in your own head. (I know a pro who does just that.) Whether I'd include it on the website is another matter however. If your artists insist on this, then by all means mention that you can provide one (and perhaps include a link to an example in your art gallery), but I wouldn't include it on the page with the script as it'll be a visually distracting image, taking away the impact from the text.

But that's just my humble opinion.

Re:


Sample Layout

To myself: I think the text shouldn't be in the middle. But I am not sure how to avoid that. It might also look nice if there is a sidebar with a list of prices.

Thank you for the example. [smile] I like the feel of it, the shapes it's organized into.