Apologies in advance for tooting my own horn here – I’ve been working very hard on this since the beginning of May, and after about ten solid hours of HTML crunching and image editing yesterday, and a few more tonight, I’m finally done.
I still need to finish my front page, but other than that, everything is finished. I would love to get some feedback on it. I’ll sweeten the deal for you boys by letting you know there are oodles of new pics of me in the Personal section.
Very nice. I like web sites that use hand-drawn art. Gives it a much more animated feel all around. I’d get rid of the superfluous splash screen, though. And in case anyone’s interested, this is my favorite photograph on the site.
Well done! The site looks good, and the pictures (both your art and you) are terrific. I love the “Not a Sound…” painting; like an angsty Georgia O’Keefe (the key on the wall makes it).
Hmm, I should admit now that I know next to nothing about, and have no knack for, visual arts. I adore Mondrian, and that’s about all I know about painting. That said, “Room Without a View” is intriguing; the character looks utterly hopeless and helpless, but then there’s the bizarre situation of what looks (to me) like a happy, gentle, cheerful ray of sunlight illuminating the miserable prisoner. The contrast between the gentle, benevolent look of the sunlight and the obvious misery of the prisoner is mesmerizing.
I think I’ll stop now, since I fear I’m misinterpreting all of this terribly.
It’s definitely more organic, which I feel simply fits better – as far as how I interpret your communication via your writings and artwork in general, at least. Good choice on the background color; it’s pleasing to the eye and therefore well-suited for a lengthy time spent perusing the site. While the links at top (to various nooks of the site) don’t exactly stick out, they oughtn’t be a problem for those well-acquainted to web page design in general.
I’d also get rid of the splash page. Since you use your site as a vehicle to display and sell your work, you should try to make your website as friendly and open to visitors as possible. This means eliminating anything that hinders access to the substance of your site.
You have a site worth showing off-- do it!
Other than that, I have no complaints with your site. I like the all-caps typeface you used for the headings and copyright notice. I think it fits nicely with the overall look of the graphical elements.
And man, every time I visit your site I see another piece I want to buy…
Snooooopy, have you been to my site before? It sounds like your browser is trying to use a cache or something, because those Playground pics aren’t on my site anymore. If you’re using Netscape, try Shift + Reload.
Re: The splash page… there is a big, really detailed artwork that I did specifically for that page, and it kind of introduces the “feel” of the site… but I need to redo it in the technique that I used for the main graphics because I changed my mind halfway through doing the design, that little “enter” is just a placeholder. I have the splash page because the site is set up that I can translate it into another language eventually, when I get around to it – that’s why all the main site is under /en/. At that point, the splash page is where one would choose the language for the site.
Thanks for the feedback on the background colour…I had originally planned to float the artwork looking like torn paper, on a black background, but I happened across that beige colour and decided it was 1. better for the design, and 2. less likely to make me look like a scary goth and send normal people running away from my site.
typhoon, I hate that picture, everyone else likes it though. :dubious:
First, I think the main (horizontal) navigation could stand to be a little contrastier, with a lighter background like the subnavigation (vertical) has. Maybe it’s because I keep my monitor a tad dark, or maybe I’m just not very observant, but I didn’t even notice it for a while there.
Secondly, if you have the time, I think it would be neat to create mouseover graphics for the navigation. I always think it’s neat when “hand drawn” sites have mouseovers for things that look “old.” (You know, a nice blending of an old-fashioned asthetic and new technologies/designs.) A couple examples that come to mind are neilgaiman.com and www.mousecircus.com.
Thanks much… there’s not really anything I can do about the horizontal navigation now, without doing the whole thing over. I do have the links in the intro text, so hopefully it doesn’t become a serious issue.
I used to use javascript mouseovers in my previous designs (don’t know if you saw any of them or not – at one point symbols moused over to the page names, someone accused me of mystery meat navigation – I know what that is, but WTF?). I couldn’t really think of anything interesting to do with them this time around, given the fact that the artwork is one solid piece, and the titles are actually in my handwriting… about the only thing I’d be able to mouse-over would be a drop shadow or glow, and neither seemed to jive with the design. The site you linked to is pretty, but I can’t stand sites done in all Flash so I didn’t look at it very much.
To be honest, I really don’t like animated or moving stuff on webpages at all… I guess I’m a little bit of a luddite in that respect.
Damn, damn, damn. Uh, I’m using Opera as my browser and your site looks great. Do me a favor jin, and don’t post nudie photos of yourself. The friction burns’ll kill me!
Your website looks very nice, Jin. I really like all the graphics that you did for it (not to mention all the exquisite artwork). You make me wish I had been a better student in all my art classes.
I know how you feel about doing your website redesign. I’ve been working on mine since January, and all I have to show for it is experience in javascripting, an empty domain, and a very badly done graphic. I have got to get moving on that thing soon.
Jin,
I didin’t read the rest of the comments, so I apologize if I am repeating.
I love your stuff (and am thinking about buying something - although I have some surgery coming up and may not have the spare cash)
I hate the ‘ENTER’ screen. I’m not sure what its function is, and it seems like one layer more to get where I want to be. Here at work, that’s not a problem, at home it was a bear. I guess I would get rid of it.
I absolutely love the boarder art, I think it adds to the site, even though at home it slows down the downloading.
That’s it, I’m a techie and although I could code any of it for you, I don’t have ‘the eye’ for doing web sites.
That screen actually does serve a purpose… the Enter thing is just temporary, there is a piece of artwork that goes there, because I made it before I made the rest of the site and then changed the style the artwork was done in. So I have to make a new one, and should be done with it in a few days.
The way my site is set up directory-wise, the index page is meant to be a branching off point for multiple language versions of the site. I don’t know when that will happen, but in the meantime it means whenever I DO make the change, all the deep links people have in my site won’t break from all the URLs changing. I agree the enter thing is pretty stupid, but it’s just a placeholder for a few days until the art is done.
I’m also going to end up with multiple domain names once I start my webcomic and if I get any of my music projects off the ground, so with jinwicked.com as the main site the index page will probably have little banners for my other sites as well. Usually people just bookmark or link to the first actual page with content, so they rarely see the splash screen after the first time visiting the site, anyway.
Good luck with your surgery, take care of yourself!
