Portfolio site

[Brand X]

I finally finished my new portfolio page to display my work, or currently, lack there of. I would love to get some opinions on the design of the page itself. Here's the page. The whole entire site is completely done in Actionscripting, with all of the menus, and picture galleries created using a combination of Flash and XML for the images and descriptions and such. Using XML to make a Flash site, if anyone is interested in doing so, is fucking fantastic, and makes editing the contents of the page painless and easy.

Currently I have some sort of synchronization problem with all of the data being loaded up, so if the links don't do anything, try clearing the cache in your browser.

All opinions are welcome

[bandit]

Nice

Here are a few things I saw wrong

- http://web.syr.edu/~bmbilfie/images/themudget1.jpg <~ image not found
- When I click on STATIC or DYNAMIC, I notice that the boxes move to either the right or left. But what I noticed is that there is that one box that gets left behind. When you click on the either link again, the button joins the rest but in a slower pace.
- The video to the mousetrap is pixelated and hard to see. Make the video size smaller?
- http://web.syr.edu/~bmbilfie/swf/brandonfishMX.swf <~ file not found

I need to work on my portfolio site as well. I pretty much got majority of it. I just have to fix the images for the portfolio pieces itself. I dont know if I should add a link to .pdf files or just leave it as the way it is. School webhost doesnt off much space to store files.

http://stupub.stjohns.edu/~tyee285/

SOrry to hijack it.

Any opinions?

[YellerDog]

Hey Brandx, site doesn't work in Firefox at-all. The navigation looks neat, though.

Bandit, you've got a few broken images in your portfolio section.

My not-amazing site: http://www.yellerdog.com/

[bandit]

Bandit, you've got a few broken images in your portfolio section.

The last 2-3 images I know dont work. There are no images to them.

My not-amazing site: http://www.yellerdog.com/

I love the look. I like the DEMO REEL. Do I see frames? I've been told that frames are a no-no nowadays.

[YellerDog]

I can never tell? Site got me two jobs, though.

[Brand X]

Hey Brandx, site doesn't work in Firefox at-all. The navigation looks neat, though.

Yeah, I know there's a problem, but even after recoding the whole thing to load everything in a different manner, the problem still exists.

Did you try clearing the cache?

And apparently your site won't load up, it says the page doesn't exist. I'll try it later and hopefully whatever is up with the server is resolved.

edit: Your site did end up loading up, and I'm definately digging the style of it, especially your demo reel.

My favorite part is your XML picture gallery, because that's the type of stuff I code by hand.

- When I click on STATIC or DYNAMIC, I notice that the boxes move to either the right or left. But what I noticed is that there is that one box that gets left behind. When you click on the either link again, the button joins the rest but in a slower pace.

Yeah, I've noticed that too. I've chosen to ignore it since it doesn't really cause any problems. It has something to do with a function call happening in the middle of another call to the same function. Oh well!

[Drewbacca]

I think the site does what you want it to, but every piece of work on the site that you're showing seems like simple experiments and nothing hefty enough to stand up on its own. Now, I'm not really sure if that's the kind of thing your industry is looking for when hiring.

I suggest taking work from friends and local businesses looking for websites, spending a lot of time working it out, and then putting that in to your portfolio as an actual real world piece.

The thing I personally liked the most was the way you have sliders of RGB on your site in flash. I'm working on a project right now and that thing kind goes with it. Also, spend time on your typography. I realize you're not a graphic designer and don't claim to be, but some of the type and shit in flash needs to be tightened up.

[YellerDog]

edit: Your site did end up loading up, and I'm definately digging the style of it, especially your demo reel.

My favorite part is your XML picture gallery, because that's the type of stuff I code by hand.

I will cheat wherever it's required. Thanks for checkin' it out! I'll try your site again with IE and Opera tonight.

[Drewbacca]

Why did you go with frames instead of tables Yellerdog?

[Brand X]

I think the site does what you want it to, but every piece of work on the site that you're showing seems like simple experiments and nothing hefty enough to stand up on its own. Now, I'm not really sure if that's the kind of thing your industry is looking for when hiring.

I suggest taking work from friends and local businesses looking for websites, spending a lot of time working it out, and then putting that in to your portfolio as an actual real world piece.

The thing I personally liked the most was the way you have sliders of RGB on your site in flash. I'm working on a project right now and that thing kind goes with it. Also, spend time on your typography. I realize you're not a graphic designer and don't claim to be, but some of the type and shit in flash needs to be tightened up.

I'm very well aware of all of this, but I'm still glad you pointed it all out. There was a reason I mentioned my lack of work in my first post

This site is really my first major development since I've moved into the Flash developer/Web design realm. Which is why I was looking more towards opinions on the design of the site itself, and not really the content on there. The problem with the program I was in is that it spreads your skills very thinly. The first year I was required to take foundation classes not reletive to my major at all. Then I was required to learn how to do 3d modeling and animation, I was required to learn actionscripting, I was required to take audio classes, shit, I was also forced to learn Director . By the time you finish up with all of your 'required' studios, you really only have two semesters to apply your skills to something that you wanted to. Those 2 semesters for me were spent programming, and figuring out the in's and out's of actionscripting, because I seem to enjoy it a lot.

Now like you mentioned, I'm definately going to freelance right when I get out of school to build up my portfolio. I at least need a few fully developed sites before I can even think about showing my portfolio to potential employers.

As for the fonts, strictly related to the design of the portfolio page, do you have any advice to what I could do to improve the fonts?