Alec Moody- Environment Artist

I think you still misunderstood rick's point. What he's essentially saying is that you don't want to viewer (in this case us) thinking about his layout being bad or encumbering when all we are supposed to look at is great art work. It drags the whole experience down. If you were PR dude and had to check out 50 portfolios today, and on the 9nth portfolio you check out, all you can think about is how shitty the page looks and that it's making you annoyed. NEXT!

Even if you land an interview, the whole mindset of the guy interviewing you will be tainted (probably not that much, but still) with the bad experience of viewing your portfolio.

I can see your point as well tho, that you think that this thread IS about commenting on the layout, which I guess you are right in as well But the poster needs to accept criticism instead of defending it when clearly users are having a bad time viewing it.

For an artist, one would assume presentation is highest priority ... no?

I kinda like the horizontal layout. But I'm on 1920x1200 so there's not much scrolling. Might be annoying on a different setup.

Nice content Alec.

I think the UI could do with some refinement. Here's an example of a horizontal layout done right:

http://aspacecodyssey.com/#home

Things done right:

The user can use the mousewheel to scroll the page, as they would a vertical layout.

All the content is on a single page meaning that after initial loading, there's no waiting for shit to download.

The header navigation automatically scrolls to the relevant content so the user doesn't have to manually scroll.

The varying types of arrows utilised in the background compliment the layout and look rad while auto scrolling.

*edit

The general rule I follow for vertical layouts is to work within 960 pixels wide. You'll find most sites do this because everything fits within a browser at 1024 res and the width replicates what people are accustomed to looking at on paper. Wide or re-scalable (liquid) layouts generally look like shit (though there's always exceptions).

If you revise your current horizontal layout ensure each horizontal region fits within 960 pixels and most people won't need to scroll to see it.

I viewed your site on a system at 1900x1080. I still had to manually scroll to see all the content. It feels like a lot of effort compared to using the mouse wheel.