soenke c. "warby" seidel - Environment artist

[Warby]

Hey warby

So....an own studio, huh? Sounds like an awesome plan as long as you don't forget what happened to Nuclear Vision

You have some guys for a team already? What about a professional #cs.maps revival?

id love to have everyone from cs.maps on my side but it bet this would be like herding cats they all have all sorts of commitments they wouldn't drop on a whim.

and the nuclear vision comment ... as long as i am not making a deal with cdv (or any other german publisher for that matter) that would force us to use a 3d engine licensed/written to make a 3d porn game ... the situation should be under control !

[hessi]

as long as i am not making a deal with cdv (or any other german publisher for that matter) that would force us to use a 3d engine licensed/ritten to make a 3d porn game ... the situation should be under control !

that statement made me actually laugh loudly

[freakadelle]

id love to have everyone from cs.maps on my side but it bet this would be like herding cats they all have all sorts of commitments they wouldn't drop on a whim.

I think you can control that with our salary Money alwa...sometimes helps people not to fool around and work focused

[2d-chris]

Mr Bliss?

Warby rocks omg ...

[Warby]

riviera recoded a bunch of the php stuff on the page to make it more usable he implemented highslide for viewing of the images so you can also open images in tabs now

can you guys have a second look and tell me if its more user friendly now ?! thanks in advance

www.warby.de

check it out with a focus on user friendly ness

[Corwin]

Woa, there's quite a lot of content in there! Good stuff!

My opinion on the usability:

- I think the "zoom in" effect on the pictures works perfectly, as it doesn't obsctruct the rest of the screen or prevent you from scrolling down on bigger shots like Lightbox used to behave.

- I'm sure it's temporary, but the "read commentary" contents are all massive blobs of text without uppercase etc. You should still have paragraphs, correct punctuation etc. in these comments or people will click, see how messy they look, and skip to the next images. I also think these commentaries are too "laid back", too blog/forum-like and don't really suit a portfolio. You should keep them simple, to the point, and professional-like.

- I think your "download" links could use an icon next to them, because I missed them at first.

- You should have a distinct color or text-decoration for the links anyway, because right now they look exactly like the project titles which aren't links. Simply underlining them would do the trick, or a warmer color would attract attention.

- It's usually good to be able to know instantly where in a website you're "standing". That means giving clues to the visitors about what page they're viewing. For instance, I clicked Gallery because I thought it would be a selection of your best shots, but instead realized it was the homepage I was on. You should consider adding a visual clue about which page is "activated", like a small arrow or point next to gallery when you're on the gallery page, and on Resume when that's what you're visiting.

- Nitpicking here, but I think the space between each projects "block" could be increased a bit, by 10 to 20px for example. Right now, everything is a bit too clustered for my tastes. It would also make it instantly clear which link (download/comment) belongs to which project.

- Since you used "anti-spam" techniques in your mail, you've already given up on the easy of use of just clicking or copying the email address. So I think you should then consider making it an image instead. Make it more visual, as right now there is no @ so it doesn't look like an email address when you scan the page. Turn it into a pic and that way you get rid of the spam issue and still have an email address that clearly looks like one.

- That's entirely my personal opinion on the matter, but I would have classed your project by type, instead of by date. That would have made for an easier navigation pattern: instead of having to go to a page, scroll it down, then click "older" again, scroll it down, etc., I would have grouped them under 3 or 4 sections like "Levels", "Drawings", "Models", "Misc", or "3D", "2D", "Others". That way, people can select to only see what they're interested in and don't have to watch everything in order to access the oldest stuff. I also think it's a bit cheap how the projects titles are displayed (maybe it's because of the way the guy coded it for you) and the underscores in the titles don't look good. Classing your drawings under a main page would render "new_digital_painting_batch" titles useless, and you'd be able to simply put all of them together in order of date and let people click on the ones that appeal to them. On the Levels or 3D page, you should still keep the names of the maps you created though, but I think they could use some enhancement like uppercases, no underscores, maybe bold type, etc. Also, with my previous comment in mind, you should make clear which page the viewer is currently on if you adopt this idea, for instance giving a different color or an icon next to the Levels link if that's what the visitor is reading.

[Minos]

It's hard to believe "Warby" is just one a man. Perhaps Warby is a codename used by a collective of people?

Jokes aside I like the new site much much better.

[Skjalg]

loving the new site warby

[FrieChamp]

Much better structured, definitely more user friendly. I like the zoom because as you said you can still open the images in a new tab (and save them too).

[Warby]

Woa, there's quite a lot of content in there! Good stuff!

My opinion on the usability:

- I think the "zoom in" effect on the pictures works perfectly, as it doesn't obsctruct the rest of the screen or prevent you from scrolling down on bigger shots like Lightbox used to behave.

the reason why it works so perfectly is probably because it wasn't deigned by us but by the highslide guy :)

- I'm sure it's temporary, but the "read commentary" contents are all massive blobs of text without uppercase etc. You should still have paragraphs, correct punctuation etc. in these comments or people will click, see how messy they look, and skip to the next images. I also think these commentaries are too "laid back", too blog/forum-like and don't really suit a portfolio. You should keep them simple, to the point, and professional-like.

i am a lower case nazi as is evident by anything i have ever written ^^ but i should most definitely proof read these fuckers more at least for punctuation !

but i am not a suit in real life so i will not pretend to be one on my portfolio site.

- I think your "download" links could use an icon next to them, because I missed them at first.

good point

- You should have a distinct color or text-decoration for the links anyway, because right now they look exactly like the project titles which aren't links. Simply underlining them would do the trick, or a warmer color would attract attention.

they dont have one ? thats a mistake ...

- It's usually good to be able to know instantly where in a website you're "standing". That means giving clues to the visitors about what page they're viewing. For instance, I clicked Gallery because I thought it would be a selection of your best shots, but instead realized it was the homepage I was on. You should consider adding a visual clue about which page is "activated", like a small arrow or point next to gallery when you're on the gallery page, and on Resume when that's what you're visiting.

jup that was planned will do now !

- Nitpicking here, but I think the space between each projects "block" could be increased a bit, by 10 to 20px for example. Right now, everything is a bit too clustered for my tastes. It would also make it instantly clear which link (download/comment) belongs to which project.

couldnt hurt will do

- Since you used "anti-spam" techniques in your mail, you've already given up on the easy of use of just clicking or copying the email address. So I think you should then consider making it an image instead. Make it more visual, as right now there is no @ so it doesn't look like an email address when you scan the page. Turn it into a pic and that way you get rid of the spam issue and still have an email address that clearly looks like one.

i dont know what the latest state of the art crawlers can do but seeing how registration on forums always uses these warped and noised up pictures to keep bots out i figured they have learend to read images by now but maybe not ... anybody know anything here ?!

- That's entirely my personal opinion on the matter, but I would have classed your project by type, instead of by date. That would have made for an easier navigation pattern: instead of having to go to a page, scroll it down, then click "older" again, scroll it down, etc., I would have grouped them under 3 or 4 sections like "Levels", "Drawings", "Models", "Misc", or "3D", "2D", "Others". That way, people can select to only see what they're interested in and don't have to watch everything in order to access the oldest stuff. I also think it's a bit cheap how the projects titles are displayed (maybe it's because of the way the guy coded it for you) and the underscores in the titles don't look good. Classing your drawings under a main page would render "new_digital_painting_batch" titles useless, and you'd be able to simply put all of them together in order of date and let people click on the ones that appeal to them. On the Levels or 3D page, you should still keep the names of the maps you created though, but I think they could use some enhancement like uppercases, no underscores, maybe bold type, etc. Also, with my previous comment in mind, you should make clear which page the viewer is currently on if you adopt this idea, for instance giving a different color or an icon next to the Levels link if that's what the visitor is reading.

thats not gonna happen i was very contiouse about putting everything on "one" page this time around .... it didn't really work out layout wise to have the resume and gallery on the same page so i separated them out onto 2 pages but that already took huge amounts of efforts to convince me to do so going back to the "old" way of level design section 3d art section etc is a no go i want back catalog or my projects sorted by time.

mega thanks for the input !

[-HP-]

Like the new design, good stuff warby!

Massive amounts of content in there man, jesus! Bit of a jack of all trades aren't you?!

[Corwin]

i am a lower case nazi as is evident by anything i have ever written ^^ but i should most definitely proof read these fuckers more at least for punctuation !

but i am not a suit in real life so i will not pretend to be one on my portfolio site.

Yeah, I sort of agree with not pretending to be what you aren't. Simple punctuation and dividing the biggest comments into paragraphs will do wonders and should be plenty enough.

i dont know what the latest state of the art crawlers can do but seeing how registration on forums always uses these warped and noised up pictures to keep bots out i figured they have learend to read images by now but maybe not ... anybody know anything here ?!

Well, they can try and read the images that you mentioned, but as far as I know they can't browse websites in look of email addresses in images, since they aren't generated randomly, there can be so many different styles, colors, fonts, sizes, etc. And anyway, if they're smart enough to grab an address from an image, I guess simply replacing @ by a-t won't fool them.

thats not gonna happen i was very contiouse about putting everything on "one" page this time around .... it didn't really work out layout wise to have the resume and gallery on the same page so i separated them out onto 2 pages but that already took huge amounts of efforts to convince me to do so going back to the "old" way of level design section 3d art section etc is a no go i want back catalog or my projects sorted by time.

Of course man, it's up to you

Good luck with polishing it up!