Preserved Topic: personal site (Page 1 of 1)

i know ive been hanging out here for a while now and i have yet to put up a site here to critique. truth is, i didnt think i had a site that could compare to all the great graphic artists here ;-)

my latest masterpiece: http://sasha.saxen.net/ (moved to another server)

my biggest problem is the cast shadows for the perspective that im trying to get. any other comments are welcome.



[This message has been edited by la'dsasha (edited 23-10-2000).]

Wow! very very nice !.. funny enuff I had seen this site earlier today.. was reading one of your posts and surfed over to it.... at that point your pics page wasnt up... lol

You know the first thing that struck me? Originality... I just love the way you have it aligned right.. thats so unusual on the web and very very refreshing... I think your graphics are very crisp and colours fine..
one thing I was surprised about is that your 'bookshelf' nav at the top of the page contained no mouse overs?.. maybe I am just used to them nowadays... I like the way you did that btw.. not unseen before, but still kinda different....

I also like the way you have the page set up so that however long it gets the left hand side stretches to fit... its almost like one wants to scroll down just to find the cat!.. hehe..

this critique is based in me viewing it in NN.. and hence I shant bother to open up IE again cos it probaly looks fine there too!

very nice work L'dasha and I thinkn your work compares quite favourably with any of the people here (artists)..

nice to see something refreshing...

~Vp~

edit (spealing again!! tis @ me)



[This message has been edited by vogonpoet (edited 23-10-2000).]

if you created those 2 horses with horn, you are damn good. and the bookshelf's color looks nature too. And cat, soft and cute.

a few suggestions:
I think the navigation buttons(the text on the book) should be more attractive since they are aligned vertically, maybe a brighter color or bolder text can help.

also, the graphics are not optimized enough, ~2k for a button is not so bad, but why not shrink the mem size if you can?. The buttons and the horses can be optimized by a half and still have their beauty according to my test. If you don't have photoshop at home or at work, get irfanview from download.com, it's good to be a freeware, it does pretty fine optimizing job.

can you post more pictures of you? I just bookmarked your page!!

Nice and original! <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">
I like the unicorns and the cat. (even though I am not a cat-person).

The colours you use are pretty unusual as well. Maybe not my personal favorites, but I think they work very well on this page.

As for critique (oh boy, here it comes... well, there is not that much really)
You asked specifically about the perspective and shadows, and I agree that they look a bit odd. I think you need to decide where the light-source is, and then try to be consisted about that. That doesn't mean the shadow should be identical on all parts, but if you look at the left part now you have a shadow from the shelf indicating that the lightsource is on the upper left, but for the purple thingy it indicates the lightsouce is to the upper right instead.

The shadow under the actual shelf (on the wood under it) looks that it might be a little small to me, but of course that depends on where you decide your lightsouce to be.
To make it look more real I think you need some sort of light *on* the actual things, and not just the shadows. As it is now the light is even all over and that looks less realistic. If you take the shelf and the meny and run it through the lightning effects filter I think you can get something that will look awsome.
I suggest trying to use a bigger image when you fill the shelf with the wooden texture. As it is now the pattern is repeating too much, and one can even see the edge between the parts of the fills, as it is not completely seamless.
As for the menu... I am not sure what effect you are trying to achieve, but I think you can get it to look more realistic and better if the books and bookstops are not exactly the same height. Even if you have a row of indentical books standing on a shelf the upper edge will not be completey even like that. And I think I would like it better if the books were a little higher than the stops.
Seems I had quite a lot of critique to give after all. But don't get me wrong, I do like the page <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif"> And the idea is a very good one.

Since I am working on a wooden layout myself at the moment, maybe you get some ideas of looking at it: http://www.algonet.se/~sandmon/portfolio.html
I'm not saying that it is perfect, since it is not, but it might give you some ideas about what I mean with the light. On this image I let the light be strongers in the upper left corner. (but then I cheated and used black background, so I would not need to bother with drop shadows <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/wink.gif">

the only image i was able to get significant compression difference was on the cat, which was reduced by 6k (now 20k, 8 secs on 28.8 and 5 secs on 56k). any lower and i started loosing some of my shadings on the runner. the unicorns only dropped less than a 1k, and strangely, one is bigger than the other, even though theyre the same. yes, i could probably use a jpg and get a much smaller image, but im using gifs for the transparency and color accuracy. otherwise id have to use a bg image to compensate. everything was done in photoshop, and i dont have a tablet to draw any of those things ;-)

the books *must* be a dark color. i want the lettering on the spines to be gold and brighter colors drown out the color and make it look realy fake. the lightest green book was pushing it for a dark color.

i accidentally wrote over the shelf bg piece and ended up getting a different pannel that seems to tile a bit better...

i will toy with the shadows a bit more. im trying to find things around the house that i can set up to get a better perspective.

more photos? ill have to think about it ;-)

see, you have books of the same color, you can share them.

my suggestion is to :
- make the book spine a background without text.
- make the text separately to transparent gif.
- make a fixed sized cell and use the book spine as the background, then apply the trans. text gif on it..

they look cool still, but I really want them to be alittle more optimized.

but none of the books are of the same color. theyre all different. i wouldnt be saving any bytage by doing what you suggest.

Like your site - initially because it has a double of my cat on it!!! As vogonpoet said it is refreshing to see something original and if you are truly a beginner then please keep us posted, as I'm sure you're going to do some excellent stuff.

Regards
ali <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

Galaxal I don't know why you are making such a big deal about the optimization. I am looking at her site on my computer at school and it loads in a good time. On my computer that is something, I have about 1/2 a MB of RAM and still running Win 3.1. OUCH!

just to make it MORE perfect! I have dsl, so it wouldn't make me a differnece, I was actually having 3 downloadings while surfing her page, so it came alittle slow.

if you want to leave them the way they are, they still great.

Well ZOX did an excellent job on your shadows so theres no need for further commenting. The book navigation is nice. My only suggestion to that would be to use a different font if possible. It might get somewhat hard to read the text on other monitors, don't get me wrong I can see the text fine. Also, maybe changing the books sizes randomly might be a nice touch. Such as having a large book, short book, short, large, etc... Althought it might make it look bad, your choice.

My only real comments is on your text and layout. There really doesnt seem to be much of any. The way you have your text it comes across rather boring. Maybe add some header images or group things into different tables or something, i dunno. That seems to be your only real problem.

One last thing is how you have your text links on the bottom of each page. Ive never seen a purpose for this, any particular reason why designers do this? Comments by everyone are welcome.

Nice job on all the images though La. They look very nice and realistic. You mentioned you didn't have a tablet I think, you did all of that with the mouse? Nice.

BTW ZOX, awesomely unreal layout you posted. I really think its just about the most original, nicely made site Ive seen in a long long time...

Thank you. I'm not even a beginning coder. Anyone here can tell you, I need help. I'll be a solid customer. I really like your style too.

...swept out through the cracks beneath the door...

the reason why i did it was because i knew that i would have some long pages. duplicate navigation at the bottom is so that users dont have to scroll up to the top to get where they want. also, some people dont have images turned (i forgot alt tags on the books this time) on or *cough* cant read my font.

i set up a paper model of my shelf last night and was worried that they didnt look realistic enough.

maybe ill add a bit of a heading later. i thought about doing it, but i havent decided yet how to do it.

I always try and use 'text links' also for the same reason as you mentioned L'dasha...
The only time I might not use them is in a framed site where the nav buttons are static and only a frame content changes..and even then if the page is long I would use some text links at the bottom eg "top of page" I think it is just good design consideration to do this... plus even it is used on a shorter page, it adds continuity to the look and feel of a website.

Another reason for the text links is for those of us who are browser impaired. On my school computer I use IE in preview mode so that the images don't bog down my poor machine. I love those text links at the bottom.

I think that is the main reason it is such a common thing amongst designers.

Fair enuff reasons, actually makes a lot of sense now. I avoid this though by never actually adding content to any of my sites <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

la'dsasha:

I love this layout! Nice and clean, easy on the eyes colorwise..and I Love cats! Therefore, I love the cat at the bottom. Original, neat, and appealing! =)

just resetting my cookie here.. ;-)

<img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">
I must say that, a Is love cats, I've been influenced by his presence.. <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">
Cute little cat!

So, the layout is good, the idea of making a book shelf is good and your wood is good. (Hé hé!)

So, as far as I'm concerned, i find the fact that the self continue out of the screen on the right really frustating!Also, the text is too close to the right side of the screen. A greater margin should be better.

The text on the books is a little bit too blurry... <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

Anyway, i like the design and the cat! Cool to see something different!

Good job , LA'!

nice!
very neat code, i get impressed by little finishing touches, like the really nice way your images load up in their own little windows.
i like it.
i just love the way you can break all the rules when it comes to your own personal site, one of these days i may waste a little time myself, and create a cacophony of coding.




pix·el [píks'l , pík sèl ]:
any of the small discrete elements that together constitute an image