Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Indigo on June 17, 2006, 04:01:04 am
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i'm trying to come up with a decent looking portfolio site for myself. Photobucket just isn't cutting it. I was looking through some old art of mine and thought that these tiles might be a cool little web theme....that plus i was just too lazy to make some original work for my site. Either way - i'm not exactly sure if this is a good concept for a portfolio site to begin with. Am i heading in a wrong direction here? C+C?
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most recent version:
www.indigo.spriteart.com
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v169/calypson/webport1.gif)
PS - Tiny Giant inspired lettering in the pic.
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I don't know why you always keep Mr. Stubbs there, he simply looks unfinished and poorly thought out, and he looks like he's doing squats.
I don't know about the generic platformer portfolio design. It certainly looks fine, but something simpler and clean would work just as well, if not better, I think. Too much fluff will detract from the pieces you're putting on display.
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I suggest either lose the coins and the multilevel top, or have the coins and put in A LOT MORE platform game elements than just two boxes and coins.
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thanks guys for the comments
Helm:
I definately agree with you. I just was talking with st0ven about it actually and he suggested something quite awesome: Basically the whole top part of the site would be a playable mini-platformer game. (no scrolling and such) You just have a character that can jump around the top part of the website collecting ever-reappearing coins and squashing some ever-spawning baddies.
Darien:
"Mr. Stubbs," as you so call him, has alot of sentimental meaning to me. -And are you racist against the no-handed midget cultures out there?! (i'll fix him up a bit). Also i think the playable platformer idea would justify the "generic platformer portfolio design"
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put a score counter on it, and make more baddies spawn the longer you last and you've got a great minigame.
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Heh that sounds really cool actually. I agree that would justify it, looking forward to it
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Yeah, nice idea on the header. Would be very imaginative.
Don't make a very complex platform game at the top though, especially for Dial-up users, it would lag the site. Unless you used flash xD Then have a loader or something. Sounds awesome, Indigo.
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Great work indigo. If I could make all the coins look the same, I would put a shine on it or increase it's contrast since it's pretty metal.
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I like the idea of the top being playable. I don't think I've ever seen that on a website before. My only crit, other than whats already been said, is the top left part of the screen looks empty, I'd suggest putting a bigger logo up there. But good work.
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The idea of the playable top is very original and cool, and the tiles are quite nice, but at they're current size and composition/design, they steal too much attention from what would be presented below. I'd tone them down, reduce the size - both width and specially height of the "playing field", or use some other trick to that end that I'm sure you can come up with :)
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PS - Tiny Giant inspired lettering in the pic.
heh, thats cool with me.
Anyway, it's looking great, I wont comment on the pixels cuz I think they work well. My immediate reaction is that drop shadow is gonna be a nightmare to line up over a tiled background in HTML, I did something similar on when I built the website of the company I work for and as you can see I didnt bother with a background tile...
http://www.kgk-group.co.uk/
Another thing to think about is are the pages going to scale? so if you have more content the page gets longer, if so your gonna have to do something with the earth tiles to the side, cuz they might not work as the pages increased in length depending on your content.
As for a playable top, sounds like a nightmare, your basically having to do a game just for the top of your website and it'll have to be done in flash so theres all sorts of layout problems unless you do the whole thing in flash, I'd just stick with a few animations at the top, you could easily make it look like a platform game was going on just using animated gifs. Remember people are coming to your website to look at your work not to wait for a platform game to load that they never wanted to play in the 1st place, as nice an idea it may be.
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Ive given you some of my initial feed back on this sir indigo ^_^. Dont let the naysayers tell you that it has to be done in flash, we'll get you something up and working in javascript no problem. Also, if you want to avoid the whole frame/resize issue, i would suggest you plan to have your content contained with an inline frame, so you can scroll anything necessary while preserving the border (you can even have those drop-shadows the tiles push onto the content area overlap the content with translucency if you set it up correctly.
about the art itself, not only am i looking forward to a new sprite design, but also some more organic elements within the pgae itself, more plantlife perhaps, the boxes/crates seem out of place. also the boxes as they are colored now seem a bit too plasticky and not so much wood... perhaps on the sides you could shift hues to either a cyan or a magenta... and take the 'shine' highlights off the box, perhaps add some granular pixels to give it some texture.
One last thing looking at it, while i like the arcade-like effect of the title of the page itself, i am not getting the feeling that it really matches the rest of the stylized content on your site. i think something more subtle (yet equally as colorful) is achievable to make it look a bit more artful and flow with the composition of your site a bit better? perhaps its not necessary though.
Edit* Ahhh sorry Tiny g. i think 'naysay' has a negative connotation i didnt intend to imply. i do agree with you that the best approach to the whole 'portfolio' idea is to keep it as simple as possible. though if you decide youd like to add a feature to your site you feel makes it stand out, i think its certainly worth a shot, even if its novel or trivial in its functionality
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I dont mean to naysay just saying that I've built a lot of website and I know from experience that you can get sidetracked concentrating on details when the most important thing in a portfolio website is that people see and have easy access to your work. If you can get this working then great I'll be the 1st to say how amazing it is, especally if you can work it so it's almost an interactive part of your portfolio that would be wicked, just keep it simple.
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My only crit is the size of the site in general. I can barely fit it on a 1280x1024 screen without scrolling around a bunch; I'd dedicate less space to that top banner and try to squeeze it all into a 1024x768 browser window. Usually this means limiting it to approx. 800x600. I think it is good to not require too much scrolling; its not a death knell or anything, just easier and cleaner if you don't have to bother! the art looks cool though!
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My only crit is the size of the site in general. I can barely fit it on a 1280x1024 screen without scrolling around a bunch; I'd dedicate less space to that top banner and try to squeeze it all into a 1024x768 browser window. Usually this means limiting it to approx. 800x600. I think it is good to not require too much scrolling; its not a death knell or anything, just easier and cleaner if you don't have to bother! the art looks cool though!
Huh? The image is 918x828, I don't see why you'd have to scroll any, especially on 1280x1024 (I stick with 1024x768 myself). Unless you mean in the actual thread, but that's just because the forum has an anti-stretch thing that puts it i a seperate frame or something. That hardly counts. I guess it would be a problem at 800x600, but does anyone use that nowdays?
In fact, here in the reply window, it looks great, all centered there at the bottom... Looking forward to seeing the site in action!
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1. 1024 x 768 57.38%
2. 800 x 600 18.23%
3. 1280 x 1024 14.18%
4. 1152 x 864 4.95%
5. 1600 x 1200 1.67%
6. 1280 x 800 1.56%
7. 1600 x 1024 0.55%
so a little under 20% of the people wouldn't be able to view my site properly. But that 20% probably wouldn't be viewing my site in the first place since most of the art scene folks use higher res's. I dunno - is that 20% worth shrinking my site?
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1. 1024 x 768 57.38%
2. 800 x 600 18.23%
3. 1280 x 1024 14.18%
4. 1152 x 864 4.95%
5. 1600 x 1200 1.67%
6. 1280 x 800 1.56%
7. 1600 x 1024 0.55%
so a little under 20% of the people wouldn't be able to view my site properly. But that 20% probably wouldn't be viewing my site in the first place since most of the art scene folks use higher res's. I dunno - is that 20% worth shrinking my site?
I say no, personally Im sick of websites having to cater for people with lower resolutions, catering for people with slow connections I understand. but its their decision to use a small resolution that fucks up how some stuff looks
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I don't have resolution problems, I just happen to keep my bookmarks tab always open which cuts off a hefty amount of space. But that's easily remedied.
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my apologies i was viewing on a 1024x768 screen, which does require scrolling at that size. it views fine on 1280x1024! About 20% of PC users will be able to view the site without scrollbars, while the other 80% will have to scroll. It's really not that big a deal, but i would just keep in mind that artists don't hire artists. HR people hire artists!
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A bit of an update:
I started to fix a few of the things you guys have been mentioning, but most of my time has been spent converting this from a png image to an HTML doc. as far as the screen res thing goes. I decided to meet somewhere in the middle. - i did make it smaller, but 800x600's are still gunna have to scroll around a bit, but not as much. I made it exactly 800 pixels wide. I also had the drop shadow thing in there, but i took it out just because i was picky and didn't want to go over 800.
anyway... started adding a tree....tried to brighten up the coins.....got rid of the box.....made the site....yup.....check it out.
www.Indigo.spriteart.com
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Looks Good.
Also, can i ask whos hosting your site?
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st0ven
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Damn, i was hoping for some magicale hosting wonder site. cause i know stoven cant host every old artist that comes along. oh well
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looking great now, love that tree.
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1. 1024 x 768 57.38%
2. 800 x 600 18.23%
3. 1280 x 1024 14.18%
4. 1152 x 864 4.95%
5. 1600 x 1200 1.67%
6. 1280 x 800 1.56%
7. 1600 x 1024 0.55%
so a little under 20% of the people wouldn't be able to view my site properly. But that 20% probably wouldn't be viewing my site in the first place since most of the art scene folks use higher res's. I dunno - is that 20% worth shrinking my site?
I say no, personally Im sick of websites having to cater for people with lower resolutions, catering for people with slow connections I understand. but its their decision to use a small resolution that fucks up how some stuff looks
Wrong, some older monitors can't use anything higher than 800x600.
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i didnt know that anything built in the last 5 years wouldnt be able to reach higher than 800x600. in regular displays, my 3 year old monitor has 800x600 as the lowest option
looking good, and the added content gets rid of any notion that the top would overpower it
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1. 1024 x 768 57.38%
2. 800 x 600 18.23%
3. 1280 x 1024 14.18%
4. 1152 x 864 4.95%
5. 1600 x 1200 1.67%
6. 1280 x 800 1.56%
7. 1600 x 1024 0.55%
so a little under 20% of the people wouldn't be able to view my site properly. But that 20% probably wouldn't be viewing my site in the first place since most of the art scene folks use higher res's. I dunno - is that 20% worth shrinking my site?
I say no, personally Im sick of websites having to cater for people with lower resolutions, catering for people with slow connections I understand. but its their decision to use a small resolution that fucks up how some stuff looks
Maybe some of the people who own computers whose screen doesn't reach a high resolution don't have the fault? I, for example, work with a five years-old iBook whose screen is really small and can only achieve 800x600. If I had the money I would gladly buy a new computer, but, unfortunately, I don't have it and I'm one of the unhappy people whose parents or relatives don't give this sort of thing to. So maybe you shouldn't say that kind of thing again :-\
Anyway, the website works normally with me, I just can't see a few ,unimportant, pixels on the right side. The design is really good and the navigation is fine too. You should really consider that mini-game thing, I would be there all the time :) I look forward to see the finished thing!
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the site works fine here. i thoroughly dislike the guy in the header though, he's just... dislikable :X. seriously though, i don't think that he reflects your skill very well, as he has no character and an awkward pose, his hand stubs give me the creeps. oh, and i stumbled over a few typos and did some quick proofreading if you don't mind:
it sais brows instead of browse in the welcome note,
its still home instead of it's in the about me paragraph,
mean while should be meanwhile in the art section,
illustraitor -> illustrator, bottom of the resume page,
If your into the myspace thing -> you're, bottom of the contact page,
and it says hear and soul in the pixeljoint link description.
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Indigo's site has one of the best layouts I've ever seen. Great work. This inspired me to add some stuff to my site.
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thanks for the comments everyone!
Miascugh: thanks for the proof read *fixed*
2 things still left to do:
- get the gallery running (anybody have any ideas on how to do this efficiently?)
- get the game working (this will fix alot of complaints about the graphics up top such as stubby and the lack of plant-life)
C+C still welcome - its very helpful
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Linkify me cap'm!
(http://www.spriteart.com/indigo/images/IndigoArt_banner2.gif)
( link to www.Indigo.SpriteArt.com )
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Cool site!
Ill link you in my website cuz that button is very cool!
good luck brother!
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Lovely layout you have there! Keep up the good work!
I agree with miascugh about the main character up top.. it doesn't look complete to me (esp the stubby arms).
Everything else is great though.
On the links page, Wolverine's/Captain Blood's webpage link is dead/down.
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Yeah, the character isn't complete. Maybe add hair to him or more facial features.