Mech Scene for website (process explained)

[GraphicMaster]

I'm no concept artiest (I only dream of being as good as you guys), but I wanted to share my latest concept.

This is for my personal portfolio website. I started with the sketch.
http://www.801graphics.com/img/sketch.jpg

Next I worked in Photoshop at 150dpi to create 90% of the graphics.
I started with the mech first, I had trouble picking a style at first.... so it could still use some work, but I’m not going back and changing it now.
http://www.801graphics.com/img/mech.jpg

This is my favorite piece of the site, the pipes and gauge. This was the image that was stuck in my mind that got me going on the whole thing. I have over 100 layers for this thing.
http://www.801graphics.com/img/pipes-gauge.jpg

Next was the background... I really sucked it up here IMO... has little depth. What I was after was a big air hanger type feel... but I also wanted a huge space to show content (behind doors) so this is how it turned out.
http://www.801graphics.com/img/bg-doors.jpg

I wanted my navigation driven by gears and chains here is what I came up with. I like it. (Opens cool)
http://www.801graphics.com/img/nav.jpg

Now came the really time consuming part, I then saved out each piece of the mech, the doors, navigation, and the pipes into png files at 72 dpi and imported them into flash.. Next animated, script, and sound.
http://www.801graphics.com/img/screen-shot.jpg

Here is a screen shot of the end result
http://www.801graphics.com/img/screen-shot-2.jpg

All in all took about two months... I’d say 100 or more hours.
Check out the site and see it all come together. (Not dial-up friendly) http://www.801graphics.com

I doubt I'll go back and change anything, but you guys are crazy good so I’d like to hear what you have to say about the graphics.

Thanks everyone.
(The douche bag)

[Jinsu]

Looks nice, love the akira music behind it :)

[Sunny]

wow really cool portfolio. i wish to learn flash to do a site but i just cant sit my ass down to do it. i really dig it. very interesting and playful

[Snarfevs]

Absolutely love it :D
It's certainly unique
Is it possible to fix the aliasing on the leg as it moves? It's quite noticable and detracts from what is an extremely cool, almost perfect animation.

@ Jinsu - I believe that's the theme to Ghost In The Shell

[ruzkin]

Kinsu, that's GITS music :) but close enough.

Concept is brilliant, but Snarf is right, the movement of the leg desperately needs to be anti-aliased. The jaggies were the first thing that popped out at me. Also, some thing may need to be optimised... I'm on a 1.5 connection here but the movement of the planets was still very jerky.

[Chuck,mate.]

well the work you did on the mech/bot is nice,
but it`s not doing much IN or FOR the site.
plus the site is rather poor in content and the "ghost in the shell" theme
music got to be registered, so i`m not sure your using it
without permission is a good thing. (unless, of course, you got one..)

all in all - i do think you need to do some more work on things.
:)

[mindfields]

Ok, I'm gonna spend some of my busy time reviewing your site. It will be a hard review, but I hope you can understand my good intentions.

I fiercely think that flash must be used only when absolutely necesary. It's a good experiment, but it isn't helping at all the purpose of a porfolio type website, which is to show your stuff in a quick and straight forward fashion. I mean, it's needlesly heavy, the use of bitmaps for flash animations is a big no no (that's why the jagged and choppy thing happens).

I would love to review the pics, but I'm affraid theres a robot with a distracting red light, two cheezy green robotic eye looking nav buttons and like 10 hoses right in front of the pics. I know you meant them to have some sort of thumbnail function, but due to their size they don't really look like that. They look like the final stuff so they don't invite the user to click them. Anyway... When you click the pics the popups have nothing to do with the robot motif I'm affraid. And what's with the steam sound? I turned off the music and still the steam sound keeps playing. Now I can't listen to music while watching your site because I had to turn my speakers off. Not big deal for me, but that kind of thing subjectly can negatively shape a client's oppinions towards you.

In escence, you're overdoing the stuff.

Recomendations:
-The intro secuence is needles and way too long.
-Forget flash for this project at least
-Get rid of the sounds (less kb and less annoyance).
-If you still decide to stick with the robot, use vectors instead of bitmaps.
-maybe you want to make the page wider so things can breathe a little more.
-People always like to have choices on websites. Put many smaller thumbnails instead of a slide show. What if a client don't like the first 3 pics and then decide to look at your porfolio no more, after all people don't like to waste their time. What that client will never know is that the fourth pic had the style they were looking for.

Keep improving, you're doing well.

[Bammer]

I'd consider the site okay, if it weren't for the amount of time you said you put into it. If it really takes you that long to make something like this, I'm not sure this is the kind of thing you should be spending your time on. Consider practicing the fundamentals instead. Stuff like composition, or lighting consistancy.
If you spent some months learning that stuff, I'm sure you'd be able to make a much more appealing site, and only in only a day or two.