Renewed site!

[-HP-]

hey guys.

http://www.helderpinto.com

I just renewed my website, take a look and please drop some c&c in here!

I believe the old version didn't focus enough on my personal work, so i decided to port the gallery to the very root of the site!

Cheers

[Zacker]

Both layout and content looks great! I really should move the WIP album to the buttom though and also change the thumbnail to the much better looking car instead of the current low poly pharoah or whatever it is.

Another thing you should do is increase the jpg quality of the thumbnails on the frontpage.

[Acumen]

i dont like the navigation.

im so used to browsing artists sites with the tabbing feature that i find it quite annoying to not being able to do that with your site and have to wait for the thing to load instead.

especially on the pages that have like 30 thumbnails, i don't wanna wait for a single pic. i mean i want to see all these pics as fast as possible with *tabtabtabtab* and not click, load, wait, click....

i don't know i never really liked such designed flash portfolios. i don't take that much time to view an artists work but just want a nice fast overview. if i were you i would change that around a bit. i mean, in the end i don't really see the need of that hp being in flash at all. i would prefer a much simple navigation a ton :/

the work is nice and all but (to take it a bit over the top) the navigation makes it hard for your work to shine - sry to say that

[Nexus]

looks good, i like the blue layout

'

[-HP-]

Thanks for the feedback guys!

Acumen, thanks for giving me your opinion mate, curious enough some guys told me the same, they prefer simple HTML pages instead of this flash galleries.

I myself don't mind browsing through flash galleries if they are well structured and simple to use, I guess It all comes down to persons taste!

Nevertheless, I had to pay for this script, so I guess I'm gonna keep it at least for a little longer.

[Thrik]

I don't think it's too bad to be honest. As an HTML, CSS, and Javascript fan I'd always do it without Flash if possible, but in a portfolio site I don't think it really matters either way as long as the process of going through pictures is smooth. Flash has the added benefit of being easily portable (unless it references pictures stored elsewhere), which means you could add a download link to the .swf so people can download your portfolio to show others/etc.

The only criticism I have of the way you've implemented it is the sheer size. On 1024x768 it's simply too big, and causes a horizontal scroll bar. Your lovely artwork behind the Flash is also completely hidden on this resolution, which kind of makes the site look really boring as the only things visible are the flat, blue bits.

Simply scaling down the Flash to a width of about 925px would work wonders, and also hide the JPEG compression better.

[-HP-]

Well, initially I was thinking on making the flash gallery with a size of 800*600, mostly because some of my old work is around this resolution!

But, I decided to opt for 1024*768, that way optimizing the site for 1280*1024 monitor resolutions, which I believe being the most used resolution nowadays for the "target audience" of the site. (Although, the monitor resolution standards for website design is 1024*768)

Also, most probably my future work (Crysis maps screens, renders, etc) will be much bigger in image size, so I can easily send it to the gallery, and they can be enjoyed at a fairly high resolution, so yeah I made it 1024*768 thinking on the future.

Oh, and I'll see if I can do something about those bad quality thumbnails, I guess i'll have to tick off the "compress movie" on the export settings, I hope it wont get too big in file size.

[Thrik]

For the sake of about 30 pixels you could stop it scrolling horizontally for 1024x768 users, though. A lot of people still use 1024x768 even if they're on a higher resolution at work like me (1680x1050 at work, 1920x1200 at home) simply because running maximised windows on such high resolutions is pretty wasteful.

If we were talking about more than like 30 pixels I wouldn't argue it, but it won't really affect the design at all.

991 pixels is roughly the limit of what a 1024x768 user can see without scrollbars. Your Flash movie is currently set to 1024 pixels wide.

[hessi]

i agree. the flash might be a nice presentation, but please keep it small enough to fit on a screen. i cant get it onto my screen from my macbook pro 15" in a 1440x900 resolution. though if it has to be that big please put all navigation to the top so i can at least skip stuff without scrolling.

[KungFuSquirrel]

What's the map with all the Doom 3 textures? Is that for a mod?

[-HP-]

It was a project I was working/leading for Max Payne 2 called Katana: Rogue-Ops

http://www.moddb.com/mods/4805/katana-rogue-ops

I dropped it though, I was tired of Max Payne engine, 4 years working on an engine is too much! :-| what a shame...

[m8nkey]

i dont like the navigation.

i don't know i never really liked such designed flash portfolios. i don't take that much time to view an artists work but just want a nice fast overview.

I agree. The interface is different between your splash page and your galleries. An intuative navigation system is simple and remains identical on every page leaving no guess work to the user (treat the user like an idiot). Personally I prefer good old fashioned HTML. It's fast, doesn't require any pluggins and your work doesn't get lost in unnecessary effects. I love flash animation and have been playing around with it since v1.0. HTML still beats it hands down for functionality though. How many websites do you frequent that are flash based?

Despite my entirely subjective CC, I think your content is great, love the architectural visualisations.