Bibliography

Carlin, M, (2010), Tips for Making an Awesome Showreel, [Online] Available from
http://www.fuelyourmotionography.com/tips-for-making-an-awesome-showreel/ Accessed on 12.04.2011

Darkin, C, (2010), Stunning Showreels, [oniline], available from http://www.computerarts.co.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/575950/cap84_tut_reel.pdf accessed on 15.04.2011

Eccher, C, Hunley, E and Simmons, E, (2005), Professional Web design:techniques and templates, Cengage Learning

Jorodn, P, (2007), Digital Media, Career FAQ, Australia

Meyer, C and Meyer, T, (2010), Ceatign Motion Graphics with After Effects, 5th Edition: Essential and Advanced Techniques, Focal Press, London

Meyer, C and Meyer, T, (2009), After Effects Apprentice, Focal Press, London

Nicholson, B, (2006), Effective Websites for Artists and Art Groups, Lulu Press

Syed, H, (2004), A Complete Introduction to the World of Web Design: A Visual Approach, Lulu Press Inc, USA

Thompson - Lecky, G, (2007), Video Game Design Revealed, Charles River Media

Vest, J, Crowson, W and Pochran, S, (2004), Exploring Web Design (Design Exploration), Delmar

Williams, R and Tollett, J, (2005), The Non-Designer's Web Book: an easy guide to creating, designing and posting your own website, Peachpit Press

Feedback

Finally I had finished my website, troubleshot all of the problems and now I wanted to go to all of the websites I had joined to get feedback.

Most of the feedback I got was good so I was very pleased, the ones that weren't that good were even more helpful as they pointed to things I could change such as the font on the profile page, many people thought was too decorative so I changed that to a simpler font, they also thought that I should make the home page graphic larger which I did as well.

Conclusion

Overall this unit has taught me a lot of skills and software that I had little or no knowledge of before such as AfterEffects, iWeb and WebEasy, I really enjoyed using the AfterEffects software and will be incorporating it more into my future work. I'm very pleased with the finished work and can add more to the website as I complete more work.

Final changes

After some advice from my tutors, I removed the showreel page and merged the profile page with the contact page on my website, although reluctant at first as the site was almost done, I think these changes greatly improved the site. The changes also meant there was now room on the website to showcase the graphic novel. I also added the comic version of my graphic novel on the website as I thought this a good example of my work.

Finally I also changed the size of my gallery images and added an easier page navigation.

Uploads

Once I felt I had the website and showreel more or less complete, I researched and found a webspace provider and domain name package that suited and began the process of publishing my site to the web.

I bought the domain name http://www.jdohertyart.com/

Originally I wanted to use iWeb to complete and upload the website, however I needed to be able to finish the website shortly and had no access to the programme so I looked around and found a programme called WebEasy which was similiarly intuitive and didn't take too long to learn.

Before long I had uploaded my website and embedded the showreel onto it. I had to embed the showreel in .flv format as for some reason it would not work with .mov or .mp4.

There were a few other issues such as the profile page not scrolling properly and the page resolution being incorrect that it took a while to sort out  but eventually it was completed.

Below are the final pages...

Music

Once I had the showreel more or less locked down, I needed to start focusing on the music I would use.

I looked at several websites which had royalty free music such as...

http://www.openmusicarchive.org/

http://www.opsound.org.org/

http://www.jamendo.com/

http://www.soundclick.com/

http://www.sounddogs.com/


Many of their samples were 60 secs long at least but there was still a good collection of 30 sec clips.

I wanted the music to compliment the images as best I could and not just be cool music for it's own sake as this would detract from the focus of the images. Many showreels I found on the internet were often overpowered by their soundtrack which was often chosen because of the artists taste in music rather than it's suitability for the piece.

This became tricky as most of the short music clips were either too short or too long and I had to stretch or edit them to make them fit, this often distorted the music too much. It was quite a search until I found a piece of music that I thought worked well, not too fast or too slow and in sync with my showreel.

Adjustments

I made a few minor adjustments to the showreel such as the images used. I chose a few images that I didn't originally select and removed some of the ones I did. I did this because I felt that I although I had to be as focussed as I could on the field I wanted to enter, I also had to show a range within that field so that potential employers/clients could see I was adaptable. I paid attention to Lecky-Thompson (2007) who explains that a showreel needs to show a scope of style and images as there is just as broad a range of clients as there are styles of art. (p214).

I also removed the more cartoon like images from my showreel as I thought that even though they showed a range of style, they were not my best work and instead I used them in the gallery on the website where I could showcase more work.

I wanted to include more images but I couldn't enter any more into the 30sec showreel without making the images that are included already go by too quickly. Most showreels lasted around 3-4 minutes but then most professional showreels had far more art to choose from.

After Effects

After Effects was something I had used very briefly a long time before and it took a lot of practice to to get to a point where I was happy with the results.

The animations as mentioned in my previous post I wanted to keep simple such as zooms, fades and side scrolls. The more flashy effects I tried with the artwork the more the focus was taken away from them and as Darkin (2010) states "The focus of the showreel must be on the artwork and not on the effects." [online Computer Arts]. I thought this was vital and that anything to visible in the way of effects would detract from the art itself.

For some of the pieces I decided that it would look good in the showreel if the centrepieces of the art appeared before the rest of the piece so I made layers in Photoshop and tested out how that would look before adding the effect to my final showreel.

The chosen pictures

Below are the pictures I chose to use in my showreel...

As advised by Carlin (2010) who states "Beware of using cheap simple effects in After Effects or other programmes as the people you are sending the showreels to will know them off by heart" [online, Fuel Your Motionography] So I didn't want to try and do anything flashy.

The Selection Process

The first part of creating the showreel would be to select my best pieces of work to include. King (2010) states "Although the showreel should geared toward a particular type of art, it should show the artists versatility" [online, careerFAQ]. I felt this was important as although I wanted to show my best concept design work, I also wanted to show my best comic page layouts as hopefully it would be seen by both industries in the future. For this reason I re-named my website and showreel 'Illustration' and not just 'Concept Design'.

With the above in mind I began selecting the best pieces of my work, in concept design and comic illustration. As advised by my tutor and corroborated by Garing (2009) who states "A good showreel should only include finished and perfected artwork, no works-in-progress" [online, VFX].

The showreel had to be at least 30 seconds long so I made a random collation of images and set them so that they changed at timed intervals, I then asked several people which time they thought best i.e should the images change every 2, 3 or 4 seconds.

According to the data collected, the best time for each image was either 4 or 5 seconds. So with that in mind I worked out that I would need about 10-12 images.

I decided that I would use 5 of my graphic novel images, 5 concept design and perhaps 2 environment designs as I wanted the showreel to play to my strengths.

Showreel

Along with the website we needed to create a showreel which would display our best work.

I tried to find as many research books as I could but I soon found that there were little or no dedicated books on the subject, there were a few books I found that had a chapter or so that were helpful but no books dealt with the subject alone. The best resources I found were online resources such as tutorials and art websites that had discussions on the subject.

I was more nervous about the showreel part than the website as I was not sure that I had enough exemplary work to display on a showreel and as Darkin (2010) writes "If you are unsure if you have enough work to put in a showreel, then maybe you should reconsider if you are ready enough to make one" [online, ComputerArts]. However I felt that perhaps, I was just too crtical of my own work as several other people including people on forums felt that my work was good enough to use in a showreel. I also had to remember that my showreel could be updated at a later date when I added more work. Jordan (2007) agrees and explains that a good showreel needs to be updated as often as possible when material of a higher quality or more relevance is completed (p154).

Rules of website design

With my new homepage designed, I did more research and found that Eccher, Hunley (2005) et al describe 5 basic rules for website design. They state that a website should be...

• "Your web site should be easy to read
• Your web site should be easy to navigate
• Your web site should be easy to find
• Your web page layout and design should be consistent throughout the site
• Your web site should be quick to download " (p38)

Measuring my website against these rules I could see that it was easy to read, it was easy to navigate, easy to find would come later, the design was consistent and it would be quick to download.

First website designs

In Photoshop I began designing how the homepage of my website would look. I decided that I would keep the font that I had used on my game design so as to create an overall theme. Below is the first website design that I came up with...

Unfortunately the general feedback that I got back was that there needed to be some changes made, apparently the bird-man  did not work with the rest of the page and made the page look cluttered . Also I was told by many industry professionals that there did not need to be separate pages for 'Character' and 'Environment'.

I then redesigned the homepage to the advice given and came up with this...

Opinions

In order to get some contacts and get some opinions on my website as it progresses, I joined a number of forums such as...

http://www.conceptart.org/
http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/
http://www.drawingboard.com/
www.amateurillustrator.com/forum

The general consensus for designing a website seemed to be as I had previously thought

* Keep it simple
* Large numbers of art in the gallery, preferably with differing types
* No auto-playing music
* Open image files in separate windows
* Clear purpose
* Little or no Flash

With the above information in mind I began to set out my first website design.

The competition

With the principles I had learned in mind I began looking at websites for concept designers and illustrators.

Some of the websites I looked at were...

http://www.kwanchang.com/
http://theartofjaelee.com/
http://www.jzconcepts.com/
http://jungsketch.blogspot.com/
http://www.targeteart.com/
http://www.ryanchurch.com/

These website showcased a lot of the principles I had learned but a few had the flaws as well.

http://www.kwanchang.com/ the website for comic book artist and illustrator Leinil Francis Yu, a hero of mine was very simply laid out and the navigation was easy as well. There was no time and bandwidth consuming java animations or anything like that. However the website, although it is pertained to be his official website seems only to be there to sell examples of his work and seems to have little in the way of a contact or 'biography' page.

http://www.theartofjaelee.com/ is the website for comic book artist Jae Lee, another hero of mine. His website was again simple and easy to navigate and had clear navigation. It had all the sections I would expect, the only thing I wasn't keen on was the caricature on the homepage, which I thought made it look a little unprofessional...

http://www.jzconcepts.com/ was a website I chose at random as an example of a website for a concept designer. It was a professional looking website and the artwork was showcased well, however the navigation menu's were quite small and all the artwork displayed for some reason kept scrolling across the page and would not remain static which was quite annoying. Another annoying thing about the site was the music that instantly played.  This was a no go area according to Crowder "Automatically playing music on websites can quickly alienate viewers and the wrong music can cause a viewer to close the website completely" (2008:73).

http://jungsketch.blogspot.com/ is the website of famous concept artist Steve Jung, although this is another website which states it is his official website but it reads much more like a blog and has little navigation short of what blogger has as standard.

http://www.targeteart.com/ was the website of artist JP targete and was a website that required the viewer to click through from the title page to reach the homepage. On the title page there were several examples of JP's work but all were of a very specific fantasy art theme. I found this to be quite odd as anyone who was thinking of hiring JP for something other than fantasy art would be instantly put off. However apart from a few small quibbles with hard to find scroll bars on the pages the website was otherwise well put together.

http://www.ryanchurch.com/ is another website I chose at random, he is a small concept artist but his site although simple is well planned out and very easy to navigate. It did lack a little style but I think it does it's job and all the art is showcased very well.

First Research

Once I had learned what the brief entailed, I immediately went to the library for research and what I quickly learned was that there was very little dedicated literature on either websites for artists or showreel making. Evidently this was because it was a small niche of website design and that there had been very few books written on websites for artists or showreels.

So what I decided to do was read what I could on website design in general and adapt the teaching to my particular design.

One of the first principles of website design that I learned was that 'simple is better'. That's not to say that the design should just be black and white and dull but as Syed (2004) explains "A good website is one that does not bog itself down with fancy animations and graphics but is clear and simple to navigate with out being dull" (p35).

This was a fine line to draw as I wanted my website to look good but I didn't want the website visitor to be put off by overly fancy graphics.

Another important principle that was stated in many website design books was that "The purpose of the website must be evident at all times" Pochran (2005:64). This principle was one I considered very carefully, I had to be aware that my website's purpose was to 'sell' me as a illustrator/concept designer. So it had to display my artwork as best it could and make them the focus. So my wesite had to be simple enough in design, without looking like a template and had to keep the focus centred on my art.

My nest step would be to look at existing websites for artists and see what made them work.