Personal Website & Portfolio

[3Dean]

I've recently uploaded my own personal website containing my 3d portfolio. I thought it was about time I submitted it on here to gage some views and opinions regarding it.

The site is always under construction, and is far from complete especially my portfolio.

http://www.3dean.co.uk


Thanks for taking the time to look, all comments are appreciated.

[giginger]

The animation is fantastic but it needs a smidgeon of touching up on some of the icons you have on the right hand side of the screen. They seem to jar against the rest of the design which is a shame.

[unclesond]

Yup the buttons do need relooking at as they don't seem to sit with the slick robot.

Also the text doesn't scroll in the refelction, i think this maybe as you are using a component scrollbar, maybe if you built a scrollbar and movieclipped it all, so moving your scroll bar could then be coded to move both text boxes...maybe someone could confirm if thats the best way to do it.

More cool robot noises ;)
Less music ;)

Good site though

Why use two "click to enter"s?

[Willofdarkness]

the animation is fantastic, as has been said... however, it's not very aesthetically pleasing, which is probably more important for the presentation of the portfolio. your animation is your work, it should be presented in a nice way.

to reiterate unclesond.... two "click to enter" buttons?

[Millad]

Hey man Nice portfolio I like your work!
Maybe you agree with me with things like>>

The splash page cud be much simpler and nicer maybe if you agree? with that robot and your enter button. I think its a bit big for a splash page.

Why there is 2 enter pages?

Animation is great, I love the beat dude ! and as said maybe add a robot sound to make it more real.

Try maybe to use colors on your menu buttons or other places and not only hold on one color.

I love your work and the drawings, the use of colors in some of your drawings are nice.

Nice use of the reflection also ! :jailbreak

Maybe add or fix a border that fits and dont make the site to open from the sides, you kan see the end of the grandient effect and I suggest you may add a simple border to remove its attraction.

Good work man !:player:

[3Dean]

Thanks for your responses so far.

Let me explain about the two clicks. I put the first click in as I wanted a page explaining what was needed to enter the site. This was just in case some people might not be up to date with flash plug-in. If it goes straight to the flash site then the whole things up the creek.

I put the second click in because of the load times, depending on what sort of connection you're running will affect the load. Therefore, if you visit another site and come back, half the animation (or all of it for that matter) could have played out. This way means anyone visiting the site will see it, and showing off my character animation skills is the point of the site.

As for the buttons, I happen to like them as it was a solution to making them look partly 3d. Do you guys have any suggestions as to an alternative?

[unclesond]

Maybe add or fix a border that fits and dont make the site to open from the sides, you kan see the end of the grandient effect and I suggest you may add a simple border to remove its attraction.
If the gradient ran 100% of the width and the content then just centralised it self. It would be a cool step to make. So the bottom of the blue gradient perhaps marries up with the bottom of the browser..... Then the white space above will be fine.....

I think a custom scroller would help the looks too, as everything is pretty developed looking, but the old school scroller looks a bit out of place.

[Greenwidth]

"As for the buttons, I happen to like them as it was a solution to making them look partly 3d. Do you guys have any suggestions as to an alternative?"

White background
http://img433.imageshack.us/img433/642/whitebg0eo.th.jpg (http://img433.imageshack.us/my.php?image=whitebg0eo.jpg)

[briguy33]

well the glass breaking sound effect in the begining scared the crap out of me... but other than that I think everyone else here gave some good advice.. but if I had your 3d talent I would really focus on that more.... keep the graphic design minimal.. ie.. lose the icon's all together, just use text links.. don't put gradient bars where you don't need them.. stuff like that... more like a photography website but with your 3d stuff.. imo ...

[dreeft]

Robot could do with a bit more texture. Overall it's quite nice.

[leisuresuitlissy]

Mraowwr. :love:
Fantastic robot, and I like your animals with wooden legs.

I think the interface is a bit too blue though...
me

[unclesond]

but if I had your 3d talent I would really focus on that more.... keep the graphic design minimal.. ie.. lose the icon's all together, just use text links.

I second that.

Your trying to sell your 3D skills, so maybe think about your opening flash page. I suggest losing your ugly mug, and maybe replacing yourself with some images of your work, maybe its a lil fading slideshow going round. As its not blatantly obvious your a 3D designer to start with....as even tho its written on the 6 or 7th line, most people don't actually read into the text that much, so maybe let some of your nice work do the talking straight away.

I'm also a bit bemused to the amount of sections, 5 sections fo 5 sub sections. 25 sections for a 3d portfolio? As you only realise you make more than a 3d robot in section 12....thats along way to go without seeing any of your other projects. I think you've been adding sections for the sake of it to keep the nav consistent of 5 subsections. If I didn't know how to use your site, I'd never find the "how do I use section." I think realistically, web design should be explicitly obvious how to use anyway. Its just things like this that overcode your site and take away from the fact your a decent 3D designer. The 3 pages of links, charities, etc. All kind hearted things to do, but are you putting more emphasis on being a nice guy than selling yourself?

Your gonna hate me, but maybe inside your screen isn't conventional navigation/website, maybe the robot is just changing TV stations instead. Each station has a little 3d show going on which displays the desire information. As the robot is awesome, really fun and engaging, but the site seems dry after that.....I know this may infringe upon load times and stuff, but I think you should consider it for a section or two. Obviously stuff like contact me will still be pretty standard. But have fun with the portfolio, welcome pages

I too think i might be too blue. But thats your call. The robot should do stuff randomly too, pick its nose, scratch its bum, nod his head to the beat, anything, have fun with him :smirk:

I'm just being critical becuase it just needs a few things ironing out before it can become truely awesome. Sorry for being harsh deano, i know its your first site, you've just set it up with so much potential that you should unleash. You'll probably think im :crazy: or a ******* for asking you to change all you pages ;)

[Pixeladdict]

Nice site. Love the 3D robot.

Perhaps on the index.html, you could include that for 1024*768 viewers, hitting F11 will remove the scrollbars.

Also perhaps adding some footsteps sounds in the beginning, as to not get a shock when the magnet smashed some glass, when thrown away.

Otherwise everybody else has already said enough.


Just my 2 cents

Kind regards
Morten Rosenberg

[cmpdesignz]

I think it's an awesome site, but I'm new to Flash. You have a ton of talent, best of luck. That robot is great!!!

CP

[StinxX]

really nice site. Very nice idé with the robot. Would be cool if the robot sparked after a while when you dont click on a link for a while.

Thumbs up :thumb2:

[3Dean]

Thanks to everyone for your input, it has been a tremendous help so far. As this is my first attempt at this sort of site. At the moment I'm gearing up to producing a seperate site for my portfolio in which to sell myself (i feel dirty) with all new animations and more colours, and use an updated version of the current site for any other stuff I feel like putting on the web. As for some response to your post, here goes......


The splash page cud be much simpler and nicer maybe if you agree? with that robot and your enter button. I think its a bit big for a splash page.Animation is great, I love the beat dude ! and as said maybe add a robot sound to make it more real.Try maybe to use colors on your menu buttons or other places and not only hold on one color.Maybe add or fix a border that fits and dont make the site to open from the sides, you kan see the end of the grandient effect and I suggest you may add a simple border to remove its attraction.
Cheers for the feedback. The use of more colours seems to be a recurring theme so I’ll look into it and also restructuring the splash screen. The fixed boarder is definitely something I’ll look into. If you liked the beat, check out http://www.sunit.biz, he's the man responsible for the it.


well the glass breaking sound effect in the begining scared the crap out of me
Sorry about that. If it makes you feel any better, it scared the crap out of me too the first time I got it to work. When I next come to update it (which cud be a while considering all the different advice I’m receiving plus working on my animation show reel) I’ll look at adding more sound effects like button clicks.


Robot could do with a bit more texture.
My skills aren’t really in texturing, hence going for a simplistic character. What sort of texturing did u have in mind though?


Perhaps on the index.html, you could include that for 1024*768 viewers, hitting F11 will remove the scrollbars. Also perhaps adding some footsteps sounds in the beginning, as to not get a shock when the magnet smashed some glass, when thrown away.
I didn’t realise that about F11, I’m still a relative newbie when it comes to all this web design. Hopefully I’ll add footsteps in the near future, thanks for the suggestion.


Would be cool if the robot sparked after a while when you dont click on a link for a while.
Plans for things like that are in the pipes, just haven't got round to implementing it yet.

[designcode]

The site is best. But you don't take care of HTML. Flash work is very high but on the HTML side you don't even make margin=0px in body tag. You shud also use some sharp fonts in flash. Above all the idea is very nice.

[theflash]

Robot is very nice... But I feel that other things technically and designwise could be improved more...

you need to put preloaders when content is getting loaded
if you put name or some description about the work would help good amount the viewer knowing the motive...

best wishes :thumb:

[waseem]

COOL ROBOT, did you make him in swift? anyways you should make him breakdance!

[3Dean]

you need to put preloaders when content is getting loaded
if you put name or some description about the work would help good amount the viewer knowing the motive...

Thanks, will do.


COOL ROBOT, did you make him in swift? anyways you should make him breakdance!

He was made in 3ds Max and then the renders were imported into Flash movie clips. Plans to make him dance (probably doing the "robot" more than breakdancing) are planned. Thanks for the suggestion though.