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New portfolio site
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 Re: New portfolio site
Posted by reaper47 on Thu Jun 14th at 6:02pm 2007

There's nothing you could do to not make the maps look awesome, but the banner has too many Photoshop effects. Black outline + gradient + different, overlapping font sizes + shadow + motion-blur thingy + desaturated background.

If you go for plain text only, I wouldn't decorate it so much but just write it in simple HTML instead. I would make the first paragraph more prominent also. It's swallowed by the rest of the site because it's the same font as the little map descriptions.

This might be a more personal thing, but I'm not a big fan of gradients in general. I kinda like the trend of using simple, small patterns for the site-background, maybe you can try something like that.


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 Re: New portfolio site
Posted by OtZman on Thu Jun 14th at 6:43pm 2007

? quoting ReNo
I did consider that, but those sort of things deny me the ability to use a few of the features I like when browsing. Like opening a load of pictures up at once in different tabs, for example, or using my "imagezoom" firefox addon to scale up or down pictures (those windows are normally fixed size, which undermines the use of the tool). Whether or not I should judge my own browsing habits as typical of other users is debatable though.

FWIW, I also like to be able to load more than one picture at a time in multiple tabs. You could, as someone suggested previously, make the pictures load in a new window by default when someone clicks it. Then you'll still be able to use the middle mouse button to open pics in new tabs without losing focus of the main page.

And I agree with reaper about the first paragraph. Make it stick out some way.




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 Re: New portfolio site
Posted by ReNo on Thu Jun 14th at 7:27pm 2007

I've toned down the photoshop effects on the banner - I think you guys were right, it was looking a bit too effect heavy, hopefully less so now - and made screenshots open in a new window/tab by default. I'll try and think of a way to make the intro paragraph stand out a bit as I agree it does seem a little lost as it stands.

Crono - the aliasing is noticeable while in Photoshop working on the image as a PSD as well, so it isn't during exportation to PNG. I had a read in the help files and it seems to make out that it stores them as vectors and they remain clear independent of the resolution, which makes sense to me as to do a lot of filters and effects you've got to rasterize the text layers first (losing the ability to treat them as text). That said, they just tend to look pretty badly aliased anyway, no matter what anti-aliasing setting I apply in photoshop to those text layers.



Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net



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 Re: New portfolio site
Posted by BlisTer on Fri Jun 15th at 8:21am 2007

Nice site.

Some great maps in there too. Only it's a pity that you didn't pick the corridor shot with the trimming as one of the 3 for Selfless, it's one of the things that got me into mapping! <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_wink.gif">





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 Re: New portfolio site
Posted by Le Chief on Fri Jun 15th at 2:57pm 2007

Oii reno, or should I say Duncan Blair, I like the website. It is very professinal looking. The brownish background colour looks awsome. Some nice maps in there to.


Aaron's Stuff



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 Re: New portfolio site
Posted by habboi on Tue Jun 26th at 4:17pm 2007

It's looking great now. I don't see much room for improvement so my last idea is you add the typical 'copyright' content right at the bottom in a nice dark brown.



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 Re: New portfolio site
Posted by Le Chief on Wed Jun 27th at 7:48am 2007

lol, are you from twhl?


Aaron's Stuff



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 Re: New portfolio site
Posted by habboi on Wed Jun 27th at 10:57pm 2007

I am not from anywhere. I'm just a loyal Snarkpitter as I am a TWHL'er or an Interloper.

Anyway just out of curiousity are you planning to work in the gaming industry mr Reno?



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 Re: New portfolio site
Posted by Dark_Kilauea on Wed Jun 27th at 11:18pm 2007

He kinda already is....

See The Ship.


Dark_Kilauea
DVS Administration
http://www.dvstudio-production.com/



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 Re: New portfolio site
Posted by reaper47 on Thu Jun 28th at 12:25am 2007

He's our game-industry shooting star!


Why snark works.



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 Re: New portfolio site
Posted by Agent Smith on Fri Jul 6th at 7:03am 2007

Hey all, been a while. I wasn't even sure if the site would still be going :P

I think the current version of your portfolio is looking pretty good Duncan, the darker colour in the background looks much better.

I ended up going for a light on dark approach with my current portfolio, though its more of a CD only portfolio so I haven't got it online to demonstrate. I ended up taking the shotgun approach. Packing in as much work as I could get away with and blasting prospective employers with it in the hopes it would overwhelm and stop them from looking too closely <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif">. It seems its an approach that works too, though more on that at a later date.

Oh, and awesome work on that mini HL2DM map. Classic Reno at its finest.


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http://www.hamandjam.org

'Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!'




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