My New Portfolio Website

DECEiFER

OK, so I am doing a degree and part of the semesterized 12-week system in my course is doing a module on Flash with ActionScript 3.0 (we did a semesterized module on ASP.NET too, but that's not relevant here :pac:). So as our final assignment in the module, we had to build our own portfolio website. I started it last week, and it's due up tomorrow afternoon (ah, nothing better than a flood of assignments during the holidays).

http://www.deceifermedia.com

So what do you folks think?

I'm going to take a guess and assume one of the common pieces of feedback will be the time it takes to get from one page to the next, due to the tweens I have in-place. I wanted to make it look somewhat fancy, so I put aesthetics over function on that aspect of the site. But, be brutal, I know there's plenty of flaws - I just haven't had the time to pick them all out as yet.

I kept the .swf down to ~800KB, and did as much clean-up of Event Listeners and FLV Playback streams as possible, to gain back memory once you're no longer using those components.


Thanks in advance!

TitoPuente

Quite cool that. You're love for multimedia certainly shines through. If you want to get into Web design specifically though, you'll need to seriously work on the aesthetic side of things - screen layout, typography, usability, etc.

DECEiFER

TitoPuente wrote: »

Quite cool that. You're love for multimedia certainly shines through. If you want to get into Web design specifically though, you'll need to seriously work on the aesthetic side of things - screen layout, typography, usability, etc.

Absolutely, I did too much work on the coding and I just slapped the rest in anywhere it fit, and it's good how you were able to spot it. I'll continue to develop the site after its handed up. I'll even replace those zooming tweens with something quicker and better looking.

Thanks for the reply.

RoadKillTs

Wouldn't be the biggest flash fan in the world but its prity cool.
It would be nice if you could click on the pictures in the Graphics section so you could see a bigger size.

Well done though!

yop

Looks well I have to say and its different. Maybe lacks a big of color or something as its quite dark, but it definately catches the eye

p

It's not bad for a first delve into Flash. I think everyone does the whole futuristic green glow style at one stage. However, I don't think it's a style you should stick to. It's a good job for where you're at.

In the future, you should try designing the site _before_ you build it. That way you want work on the details like layout, grids, typography etc... and get them sorted. Your actual visual design needs to focus more on the fundamentals. But this is good for where you're at now.

Take a look at this site to see some examples and critiques of web typography. It'll help you develop a critical eye on your own work:
http://typesites.com/

On the technical side. How are you handling the zoom in & out. If it's using code, I highly recommend using this 'tweening' library for Flash. It's available for AS2 and AS3. http://blog.greensock.com/tweenlite/ Make sure to use check how to handle easing, as it'll make your transitions look smoother and more professional if you're using code.

Overall, good work from such a short course. Keep working at it and will be interesting to see more of your work.

DECEiFER

p wrote: »

It's not bad for a first delve into Flash. I think everyone does the whole futuristic green glow style at one stage. However, I don't think it's a style you should stick to. It's a good job for where you're at.

In the future, you should try designing the site _before_ you build it. That way you want work on the details like layout, grids, typography etc... and get them sorted. Your actual visual design needs to focus more on the fundamentals. But this is good for where you're at now.

Take a look at this site to see some examples and critiques of web typography. It'll help you develop a critical eye on your own work:
http://typesites.com/

On the technical side. How are you handling the zoom in & out. If it's using code, I highly recommend using this 'tweening' library for Flash. It's available for AS2 and AS3. http://blog.greensock.com/tweenlite/ Make sure to use check how to handle easing, as it'll make your transitions look smoother and more professional if you're using code.

Overall, good work from such a short course. Keep working at it and will be interesting to see more of your work.

Hi P, you're dead right, I definitely need to work on a site plan before going into it. With this, I just went in. I was thinking of an idea, whilst doing a bit of gaming, and then when Area 51 popped into my head, I went straight to Google Earth and made a start.

For the tweens, I'm just using the bog standard tween class on the x, y, z, width, height, and alpha (where applicable). Nothing is done on the stage, it's all AS3 coded. In-fact, I just drag my Library items in anywhere at all, and use simple math or a single figure to place it correctly on the stage at runtime. I even coded the FLV Player and UILoader in, instead of using the Component menu and Component Inspector. To be honest, it's much easier, there is more logical control, which I like.

As for the theme. Ha ha, I feel ya there. I won't do that again, it was just something I've always loved seeing, green colored satellite imagery. Putting it into a Flash site didn't seem like a bad idea, and I stick by that decision even now. BUT! It's the first of many personal sites, I've only built simple HTML sites for other uses in the past.

Thanks for your critique. Thank you everyone. I will definitely take heed of all your suggestions, and I appreciate your kind words.

Oh, RoadKillTs. As for larger images, I certainly will consider doing that soon, and maybe coding in a full-screen mode for the movies, also.