[dawn]

Hi:
I just wanted some of the professionals/VIPs to view my web site. I just redesigned it a few days ago. I know I need to work more on the effects and animation techniques for lightwave.

Do you think I'm good enough to get professional work or subcontract work? That's what I'm trying to do.

Please let me know what you think. If you have a project that I can work on, please let me know. My web site is located at http://www.tjg.us.

Thank you.

Dawn

[voices3d]

hmm... maby you should think about making the web page allitle faster than bullet time in matrix. I dident have the time to wait for the pictures . but i am no profecional, i am just newbie. so i cant comment them from a profecional perspective.

[Mark]

I agree - the site take waaay too long to load (and this over a 1MBit ADSL connection. I'd suggest taking another look at your site design and try not dropping the entire portfolio into a single flash file.

Also, you might want to take another look at the colouring of the text on the site. I found it pretty hard to read some of it with the images behind it.

[dawn]

Okay. I have a cable modem and it takes a second or too except for the graphics sampler. That takes about ten seconds. But I'll take your criticisms very constructively. Because I know everyone doesn't have a cable modem.

Thanks for being honest.

[Leovenous]

I know I am kind of a late entry here...

I wish I had my wesite updated with the flash revisions I am making so you would know me from Bob.

There is almost nothing in your wesite that impresses me. I like the fact that you have a well defined theme, and I think you should hold onto that.

Intro:

I like the fact that your preloader bar expands from the middle (just because it is different) but you need to put some little lines on each side or something to give the visitor a frame of reference as to how much progress is being made.... that is what the bar is for anyway. Also, if you stick with the center thing, dont center in on your text alignment. The artistic balance of your screen shifts in an odd way.

In a way I found the intro both fast paced and low paced and that generally confused me. I didnt even figure the story out until the alien was dead. How exactly to correct that, I dont know. I would probably take the approach of better animation mixed with no animation.

Images:

The quality of your images doesnt seem consistant. South Park gets away with what they do because it is consistant. If you mix vector and raster images a lot, you may need to dumb the raster images down or make some vecor images raster in order to achieve better consistancy. It is work, it requires thought and planning, and it is art.

Also, if you are going with a sci-fi look, I would strongly consider the 40's Sci-Fi artistic look, or something very modern, but no half-measures. That is just my art opinion... all this is.

Also, I would go for a smaller cinematic area. That should save some space and maybe allow you to put richer images in.

Sound:

I know this is a tricky one, but the sound does not seem to fit well with the visuals. If you or a friend has software that can kill "white noise" I would strongly reccomend doing that. Also, the soundbites tend to start and end abruptly (well, mostly it is the white noise doing this) so you might try to put really short fades on each side of all your sounds.

General:

I would reccomend you get some blank paper, draw a bunch of boxes, and storyboard the intro. If you cant sketch just keep it simple. Decide exactly how everything will flow. Asess your artistic resources... and your animation resources, and adjust your storyboard to fit inside of those abilities. If everything has to be simpler, but the delivery is more professional, then so be it.

If you want to do it professional, it must, must, must be professional looking. Think of the person that would spend money on your services. They look at your stuff and imagine how you would effect thier companies reputation. It is a hot candle to be held to, but its a fact.

Immerse yourself in 3D if you use it for art. Even if you don't inted on making anything fancy, think of it like wrestling... build up to build down.

Well...

I hope, I really hope this doesn't discourage you. I think if you take your time and really work it though, it could be great. Are you good enough to do subcontract work? Today, no. Tomorrow, maybe. It just depends on how much you are dedicated on attention to detail, proficiency, and customer service.

Thats my 98 cents.

You are welcome to dig into my profile and hit me up on messenger or IRC.

dawn....

Right honesty is the best policy (as they say)

Some things where quite cool, infact you have some really unique ideas on navigation etc... and they where interesting enough to keep me there...

normally with flash I close the window right down as soon as I see a loading bar

but - I wasnt sure at first if it was a web site or a game, that sounds bad I know but thats the truth.

As far as the other all look - it did look a bit "I have just learned to do this in flash so Im going to stick it on my site even if it looks bad"

so my advice.... get some nice lines in - kill the flash and redesign something simple yet attractive to look at

[Leovenous]

Don't listen to Kevin! (heh heh)

Flash is very robust and versitile, and yes, friendly if it is done right. When I ever get my website rebuild done it will be 100% flash. Most of my text content will be fed in through text files to it will be highly editable. Flash has a high degree of XML support and can interface for databased-backed web sites. It is not just an eye candy program.

My point is, Flash isn't the problem.

Flash should be like what a college choral professor told his students; "Light, tight, and bright."

It shoud have a button that lets you skip the intro, for the sake of repeating visitors and Kevin.

Want to see a heavily flash based site? www.xootr.com

Parting note: I am not a Macromedia salesman.

well I guess I would have to disagree with my good mate JD (Leovenous) on this one

Flash IMO really does not have a place much this days, lets all face it, once you see a preloader or something flying around a screen - what do you do...well I kill it, and everyone I have every spoke to regarding this also kills it.

The only people who actually think its great is

1. The person whos site it is
2. The person who is making the site

But ask the average visitor and all they want is to get to the site, find out the infomation quickly and easy, and either buy something and then get out...unless of course its a forum based area where people do what we do here.

dawn - I would really consider you site, we have been doing web design for years now and flash based sites are really not used often now...its totally unessesery, but at the end of the day its your choice

but if you are going to use flash then make it small / static and tidy

regards

kevin

[dawn]

Hi Leovenous:

Thanks for the input. I put the preloaders in to let people know that the page is loading (and for them not to go away). Some people don't use preloaders because a page is small and they figure people will wait. The preloaders also show the percentage of the movie that's been loaded. There is also a "skip the flash movie" button on the lower right side of the movie.

Nonetheless, I got the theme from the Terminator3 web site (kind of) mixed with my own storyline of an alien breaking into the computer's cpu trying to steel the goods. Like if you have an alarm in your house and a robber tries to steel your goods. The alarms checks certain safety zones to make sure everything is secure and working properly. The camera may show the kitchen, which is empty. Then, it zooms in on a couple sleeping and suddenly awakes when they hear the alarm go off. Then, it shoots over to the police responding to the alarm at Central Station. Then, you see the robber trying to take the goods and he gets caught. It doesn't always tell you the entire storyline in one shot.

I didn't want to make it too long and I wanted to sort of give it the game edge/feel (like Kevin said) because I like games. I like Flash's vector drawing tools. I didn't want to design it in Illustrator and then import everything in Flash. It seemed like double the work.

I will definitely cut trim the image size down so that it loads faster on the homepage and a few other pages because I want to accommodate all surfers (dial up to T3).

Leovenous, do you work professionally in 3D?

Holla!

Dawn

[Leovenous]

No I most definately don't do 3D professionally. Ask anyone who has been around long.

Maybe someday.

The only people who actually think its great is 1. The person whos site it is 2. The person who is making the site

Kevin is probably right about 75% of flash sequences. Be the other 25%.

I guess I am coming across strong on my opinoin here because I think different sites can be built with different goals of user experience. It seems you want to create a mood, set a theme, and use media to be visually immersive. I think that is very legit and very different in context from what Kevin and simplyvfx does.

You expect a forum to be very trim and straightforward, but go look at the website for Call of Duty and it is a whole different thing.

I realized Xootr is not the site I wanted to send you to. I think I was thinking of the Razor site.

Anyway, you have two comrades respectfully disagreeing. The choice is yours.

Oh, and when you re-storyboad and step up your movie get settleed on a good color scheme.

[sjh55]

I'm a beginner at 3D but liked your website.

Pretty cool stuff. REally liked the scene with the sexy girl!

You may already know, but in case you don't, your 'About Us' page has text on top of text. FYI

Got a question...I'm also new to Flash and other Macromedia stuff. How do you do the "loading %" animation in Flash?

Thanks,
sjh55

[dawn]

Hi:

Which text is doubled? I didn't notice it on the "about us" page.
Thank you for telling me.

I don't know which version of Flash you are using, but check out Actionscript.org. They have very cool tips and techniques for learning Flash. Here is a link.

http://www.actionscript.org/tutorial...er/index.shtml

They support Flash 5, Flash MX and Flash 2004 and good tutorials, movies, etc. Have a great Thanksgiving.

[sjh55]

On your about us page, the second paragraph starts with "We" and ends with the work "like."

Everything else has text on top of text so I can't read what it says. I have the latest version of Internet Explorer and my monitors are set to 1152x864.

Thanks for the link to Actionscript. I have Macromedia's MX 2004 suite, and I'm learning web design, and Lightwave 3D for the first time, so I'm feeling overloaded with information trying to teach myself to use all these programs (with the aid of online tutorials of course).

Happy holidays!
Steve

[Leovenous]

I learn allot of my Flash stuff at www.flashkit.com

It has hundreds of tuts on everything flash, but you kinda have to slog through them and pick out the best.

[MarkR]

http://www.wefail.com/ .....very twisted and cool

http://www.levitated.net/ ...taking action script to new levels