I’ve been working on getting the studios site up and running for a couple of months but with all of the clients that we’ve been having I haven’t found time. Finally though, I got it up and running and it’s looking and working good. We’ve posted most of our work, both personal and commercial. As most of it was done with Blender I figured that I would drop a topic here for all of the Blenderheads to give quality feedback on the design, the artwork, the studio and everything! So please, go over to Intelligent Design Studios. If you would like to comment on the artwork you can post something here or email them to [email protected] or [email protected]!
We would love for you to link to us - so if you would like to place a link or add on your site then please drop us an email and we’ll get you some ads and advertisement space in our links page, which will be added shortly!
Although we haven’t added the legal page we do ask that you request permission before distributing any of the artwork.
Also, I have a few recommendations for your portfolio section. First, if a section is empty (e.g. Misc. and the Articles section), you’re better off just not showing it until you do have content for it. Second, if you’re looking to sell yourself, use just your strongest work. Things that are below your quality standards or things you may describe as a test or exercise are usually not things that potential clients want to see when they’re deciding whether or not to hire you. And, personally, I’d recommend not using a dropdown menu for navigating your various portfolios. Not all users will understand that. Just make a submenu for you portfolio page.
Also, is the studio just you, or you and other people? It’s a judgement call, but if there’s multiple people and the work is representative of the group as a whole, it would probably be best to use “we” rather than “I”. Another strange thing that I noticed is that two of your website links point to blender3d.org. That’s a bit deceptive, especially considering that the thumbnail looks unlike where the link points (not many people bother to read the description next to the thumb). If the site’s dead, don’t reference it (unless the design is particularly strong, then you may want to link to an image of the design, like you did for GlassWorks… twice).
And as a personal nitpick, the next time you play with this site’s layout, you may want to consider moving away from table-based layout. Yes, it works. Yes, there are things you can do with tables that is difficult or impossible in a CSS-only layout. However, going the CSS route will make your life easier when it comes to maintenance. I generally tend to use a hybrid of CSS and table-based design. For things that are easier to do in tables (like a variable bottom-aligned footer), I’ll use tables. Everything else gets CSS treatment. Just a consideration.
This is a studio - not really a company - there is a big difference in the two. I understand all of your comments - and they are really good. But, a studio isn’t hired out (sometimes yes, but not this one) - it’s a couple guys (of which i’m the lead) we do mostly free lance work and we post images of all of our stuff - for right now my images are the only ones in the image gallery as that is what I focused on for a year or two. The animations are my own as well (obviously nothing really big though) and the games are a community effort although in each case I was the lead. Intelligent Design Studios (IDS) is more of a reincarnation of GlassWorks Images but it allows for a future to include other individuals not just my own work. So we aren’t really looking to “sell” anything - it’s just a place to show our stuff - and like you said, we like to show only our best stuff (i have hundreds of more photos not shown!) And again I understand the “we” and “i” bit - i’ll make sure to go back through and revise some of it. This has been a two to three month deal so it has been edited by several individuals and so the wording is a bit different for each.
I also understand about the linking, it may seem misleading but it’s better than going to a dead page or a 404 - i don’t have the hi-res versions of the sites so i can’t show anything really - and the scripts are designed for links - i’ll see if I can revise it to go nowhere… maybe a # would do - yeah that’s what I’ll do - thanks!
I hate to dissapoint you - but i’m a web programmer - that’s my real job (the studio is a freelance thing) - i do understand the difference between tables and CSS and I totally agree - but when you just want to slap a site together out of a couple of images to showcase some artwork - you don’t take all the time to develop things properly or best - eventually (several revisions down the road) I will make it more of a CMS with CSS only but for now I tried to use just some basic HTML.
I may take you up on the drop down menus … but on the blank pages… well it’s better than dead ends so I prefer to add some sort of note - if you take a look at the news section i added several “pages” just today so although many visitors may see the site “incomplete” I should have the articles section up soon so it isn’t worth the trouble to make a dead link. And I’ll be removing the Miscellaneous section completely so that’s solved. I had planned on adding music creation, logos, posters and other things but it’s not worth it…
Overall though your comments are very good and I’ll take them all in to consideration for revisions and updates! Basically with this site I (I keep doing that - “we” - it’s myself, and another guy! %|) just wanted a simple showcase for the artwork itself - we already have other designs in the works for a more interesting look with better continuity without tables completely… but with work and then freelancing it’s pretty hard to find time to get our own site done!
browsing through your portfolio
i would suggest to remove some of
the images in your own interest.
i see better images done by freshmans
here at my university.
however the latest rendering with the snail,
the ball pen design study, some of the
interior shots, the watch and the glas bowl
show a depth i feel comfortable with.
most other renderings are just conceptually
empty and on a technical level not very
impressive enough for a studio portfolio.
after looking through the portfolio I also agree with you cekuhnen - the top most images are how I ranked them in order of importance and I think that those will be the ones I keep - not too mention the page was just way to long - thanks for the suggestion - I’ll be cleaning them up soon…
It’s nice, the color scheme, etc. are well used. One thing that bothered me is that it downloaded a bit slow. Usually you want it to be accessable at some point for 56k users (I’m not one of them, but we do still have them :P).
Other than that… I dont’ really have any criqitues.
Ok, Im going to (re)reply to this so it doesn’t look like Im the bearer of a totally negative view.
The actual site design is quite classy and well thought out, and I have to say that it’s certainly better than the hack job Im doing at the moment with my own site. so well done on that score.
but as I stated before, I have an issue with the term ‘intelligent design’, especially in the context of this site. For example, looking through the gallery I’ve found tons of examples of bad design. Case in point:
What is going on there? The left corner looks like it has been smashed, and the chain appears to go through the floor that the watch is sitting on.
Point 2:
Every terragen image there. did you just use the default scene and move the camera around? Spend 20 - 30 minutes setting up a scene in terragen and you can get output vastly superior to that.
No intelligent design here either. Is this a bathtub toy or is it meant to be a proper sub? it’s hard to tell with almost zero surface detail. Also, how does the pilot actually see out of it?
It’s examples like these that give me a real issue with the name you chose. You are announcing your professionalism with that name. Projecting a certain image. Now you need to back it up with some actual content.
aravinda and madcow - i understand the mixed opinions on the the art - to some it’s great to others it’s lame - i know that some are good and some are poor - then again it is a mix of old and new! I will be weeding out the old ones soon.
I do however have to defend one image in which you degraded madcow and that is the watch - you might find it to be of lame quality and perhaps it is, but Bart (manager of the blender3d gallery) thought that at the time it was good enough to be added along with other much more superior art! Perhaps if you actually looked at it you would realize that is is a scene of a watch underwater - particularly in a babbling brook - thus the reason for the sand and the caustics and clouds - again the reason the chain goes “through the ground” - not too mention - look at it again - no, really look at it - it’s also an opitical illusion! Notice how the watch looks hollow and cut where the sand buries the portion of the watch face? Now I’ve seen alot of art - including some of your wonderful work but I haven’t seen too many optical illusions quite like that.
All that said, some will like it, some will not - for those who do i say “thanks” and for those who don’t i take their crits and apply them to future work! That’s how the ball rolls - rolls on, rolls off!
