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...
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.
Monday, 28 March 2011
Sunday, 27 March 2011
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...
Monday, 21 March 2011
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.
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.
Friday, 18 March 2011
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.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.
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.
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
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.
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.
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