Couple of cool portfolios (that other people think are cool too):
http://www.mattdempsey.com/ - No Flash
http://www.juandiegovelasco.com/ - no flash
http://fortysevenmedia.com/ - no flash
http://www.puppetbrain.com/
http://www.xhtmlcssexpert.com/ - awesome & no flash
Oh, and finished my sketches, I’ll show you when I get them scanned. I think I’m going to do two, one fun geeky one and one conservative one with personality. If I do it right only the front page will be different.
I looked at some of the sites you mentioned (only the ones without flash – I hate flash too) and they all seem much cleaner and no-unnecessary-frills than yours. Most of them do seem “conservative with personality,” and even the more fun ones (e.g., xhtmlcssexpert) have the quality that the graphics part never gets in the way of the information-presenting part (no graphics that aren’t contributing to the design, no moving parts, portfolio is clearly legible). And no popups! 
Okay, the site has been changed, just real quick (not the final form - this was like five minutes). I fixed my resume too - can I get some feedback on that? (and stop talking about how the site looked like ass. I got it.)
Ooh, come to Japan.
I miss having cool people to hang out with!
Some suggestions about the new website, take them with a pinch of salt :
I’ll throw my two cents in as a fellow graphic/web designer … your resume looks like it’s using two different fonts under the job descriptions. When applying for a graphics job, it might stand out. Also, I’d include links to the websites that you’ve created.
Can you get any experience on newer versions of Windows & Office? Both have had at least two more recent releases than those listed on your resume. I think that staying up-to-date with all software packages, not just design software, is important. Also, on my resume in the job descriptions, I was very specific as to what software I used for the projects listed in the descriptions.
Are you willing to use a template to get the desired look you want for your site? I’ve used Joomla templates for clients in the past. A knowledge of CSS & HTML makes customizing the templates extremely easy and the final product looks nothing like the original template. And updates to the site are quick and painless with a CMS.
Just a bit on my job experience … I don’t have a college degree. I was working in the IT department for a direct mail company and the person (also the president of the company) that created all of the artwork for clients was in the hospital for a week. I stepped up and took the design work off of her plate. And with that experience I ended up where I am now - doing graphic and web design for a sales consulting company.
I agree with Sarahfeena on this. What I do currently isn’t fine art and certainly isn’t an expression of me as a designer, but I love my job. I think that in limiting yourself, you might ultimately miss out on a really amazing job opportunity.
I think this is really good advice – it’s a nice, easy way to get something that looks clean and modern without having to write it all yourself.
Others have commented on the website, but I’m going to pick up on your email address.
Your website is lydeanworks, but your email address is lydean*.*works. Customers are going to miss that. You really ought to drop the dot and make the two the same.
Actually, since you have your own domain, why are you advertising a gmail address at all? Publish a lydeanworks email address and get your host provider to forward the emails to your gmail account. If your host provider supports catch-all forwarding, so much the better.
Fun Raising? Did you mean Fund Raising?
Really, STG, you should get the drawings off of the site. To be honest, they’re not very good. They’re certainly better than what I could draw, but they seem to look as if they’ve been sketched by a nerdy junior high school student rather than a mature adult. Yes, might have been complemented on them in the past, but you really won’t see much criticism of any kind on fan art sites, Deviant Art and so on. Yes, many acclaimed comic artists have a simple and/or primitive style (Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Ariel Schrag, and Liz Prince to name a few), but their style is also uniquely their own. Your comics may reflect your personality and sense of style, but what’s getting put down on paper isn’t unique. They just seem like generic, amateurish fan drawings. There’s literally tens of thousands of others that are drawing the same thing in the same style.
I know your comic art is your baby, and you put a lot of time, effort and passion into it. If you’re doing it as a creative outlet for yourself, great! However, you seriously have to ask yourself if you think it’s commercial quality.
Your web site incorporates a bluish-purplish pastel color. While pastels are a preferred color scheme for Web sites in Japan and China, in most western countries they’re perceived as feminine. Again, that’s something that will limit your appeal to clients and employers. Check out some of the online color generators out there, and consider a theme that’s not so feminine. Remember, your work has to appeal not just to your eyes, but those of others.
Clients and employers stumbling upon your site will judge you based not just on your best work, but also on your worst. Surely you have examples of work you did in school that that isn’t geeky/furry/anime related which received a positive crit. Add it to your portfolio.
Yes, I’m being harsh, but I also want to see you employed in your field.
Just wanted to opine that Aline Kominsky sucks. She might be approaching respectability now, but for decades she was R. Crumb’s Linda McCartney --but pushed to front center stage and sharing lead vocals. (Which is more like Yoko, but some of Yoko’s stuff was interesting.)
But howabout Roz Chast? I’ll put her up as a good role model for nerdy and semi-primitive.
Oh, and STG, I agree with the majority opinions here, but greatly enjoyed the links you provided to your favorite artists. Thank yo.
Absolutely. I was trying to think of the artist associated with that style. Lynda Barry, too.
STG, as an exercise, it might be of interest for you to do a crit of your own work. For example, consider the front page of your web site as it existed on the day you started this thread (i.e., the version with the moving images).
What was your target audience?
What design decisions did you make to appeal to that audience?
What design tradeoffs did you make?
What audience(s) would the design not be appropriate for?
What alternate designs might be possibilities?
Etc.
50 Awesome Portfolios From Female Designers and Illustrators
Guess what? That’s your competition. Hopefully, that will also be your inspiration to break out of your geek girl mold, and prove your versatility.
Yes. Natalie Nash’s Jelly Labs is an interesting comparison: cartoons and a purple background, but it works.
I haven’t set up an email on my domain yet. It just slipped my mind.
Nope. That’s the name of the company. Honest. Wow, they finally updated the site and it still looks awful… http://www.funraisingschoolgear.com/ I suppose it’ll appeal to the non-tech-savvy moms they usually deal with though.
The previous color scheme was rust-based and I’ll probably go back to that (I tend to alternate between rust and ‘my blue’ which is my favorite.) Or now that I think about it, probably navy and grey.
I think I’ve versatile - I just don’t have a lot in my portfolio to prove it. I’ve got a couple of other package designs (or at least one) that I’m going to shine up and put up.
I’m also going to be getting more model sheets up in more mainstream style, although there are plenty of artists that do superhero art in a specialized style (DCAU was pretty radical at the time; Bill Sienkiewicz can be pretty out there and I’ll never be as good as him, but oh lord so pretty; Dave McKean who again I’ll never be as good as; and what’s her name that’s doing a new Sandman story? Jill Thompson, that’s right.) Although, honestly, I could see some of my polished ‘Silver’s Kids’ stuff (that’s my stylized chibi-esque stuff) in Comic Alliance ‘Best Art Ever (This Week)’ or one of the artist showcases they do. The more polished stuff which isn’t up right now.
(And despite the username, I don’t think of myself as ‘girl’. I just don’t think of myself in terms of gender. Not that anyone else will think that way.) I’m going to put up the sketches for the new site tonight or tomorrow - this weekend got hectic. Like I said earlier, there’s going to be two fronts - one very clean and conservative and one that looks like a comic splash page for the people looking for geeky.
And I can’t find it now, but thanks whoever mentioned the resume. I’ll fix the fonts tonight or so. Atlantic - I haven’t used the newer versions of Office (I use OpenOffice), but I’m sure I can pick them up. And I’m not limiting myself to geeky stuff - if I was I wouldn’t be doing office work right now and I wouldn’t have worked for Fun-Raising School Gear. It’s just that I’m going to be 30 this year and I thought I’d be closer to my dream job by now (… on the other hand I just graduated last year so I should just shut up… on the gripping hand, several of my classmates had better jobs… This is what happens when you have no friends and your parents have no friends and thus you have no one to network with)
Sorry to be harsh, but it seems to me with a little reflection, you probably could have thought of a lot of the advice here yourself. “Maybe I should check out other designer’s websites”, “I might have to grind through a few more crappy projects”, “Maybe I should punch up my portfolio to make sure it shows my best AND reflects my versatility”, “maybe I should go over my resume and make sure it’s perfect”. While I’m sure you work hard at your job, I think the basic problem here is that you aren’t working very hard at making yourself, at least seem like, a professional.
Not setting up an email attached to your domain is a pretty good example. Any domains I’ve had took me about 10 minutes to set it up. A professional doesn’t let something as important as that which is trivially accomplished “slip their mind”.
In reverse order:
So basically you knew all this stuff being said, but you can’t get around to doing them. Then I guess the only advice you need is “Make time for it, or forget it”.
How much other stuff do you do do outside of work, housework, and the other mandatories? I finished school in May, I got a job, I got let go, I made a website, and I found another job. And NOW I am working on getting my act together. I’m gone eleven and a half hours, I’ve got parents who expect me to do housework, and I still manage to work on stuff (I just also tend to not quite finish projects - bad and yet oh so common habit) So shoot me.
So I forget it? Then what? I get paid ten bucks an hour to do data entry for the rest of my life? I go back to school again and build up MORE debt? No.
Bee please. The housework?!? Other mandatories?!? All while holding a full-time job! Goodness gracious! I guess you’re just like everybody else then.
Oh, wait. Most of us also pay our own rent/mortgage and sing for our suppers.