Flare Sci-Fi Forums: Your thoughts on a job, if you please...

This is topic Your thoughts on a job, if you please... in forum Designs, Artwork, & Creativity at Flare Sci-Fi Forums.

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Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Hey guys... I thought I'd run this past you all before I took it live.

Shannon McRandle (formerly Shannon Baksa), the woman who modeled for the Star Wars character, Mara Jade, for Decipher's RPG game has hired me to redevelop her website. I'm almost ready to go and currently have a holder page up.

Before I go, though, I want to see what you all think of the navigation, usability, and design...

You can see the holder pages at http://www.shannonmcrandle.com and you can see the WIP for the real site on my server at
http://www.alanfore.com/ShannonBaksaSite/

Any thoughts you have would be very helpful in making some last minute tweeks.

Danko.

Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :

Well, a lot of the text is very hard to make out (like the "Content � 2002 Shannon McRandle and FourWest Media. Developed and maintained by Fourwest Media." on the front page, say, or some of the text on the Contact page) unless you hover over it or highlight it.

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Yes... she's pointed out that the dark purple text isn't showing up real well on darker monitors. I need to go back and change it to something else. I've used that color for text throughout the site [Frown]

Oh well... it won't be too hard to change...

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :

Good text layout, but a bit more contrast is needed in the colors. Pretty classy layout.

Posted by Solommagnus de Pym (Member # 239) on :

She married a dude named McRandle?

Though, I suppose it's unfortunate that she's not known as Shannon Fore. Because that would mean SHE'D HAVE MARRIED YOU!

Oh man, I am the greatest.

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

There is certainly an unfortunate aspect to it, yes [Smile]

And, I see what you guys mean about the color contrast... on darker monitors, it probably gets pretty dark all over, huh?

Fortunatly, I have most of the images saved as layered files, so it shouldn't be too hard to brighten them all up and resave. I definitely do that before it goes live...

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Just wanted to mention, the full site just went on line. It's at www.shannonmcrandle.com

I lightened up most of the graphics and some of the text. How does it look to you guys? I know it looks a little dark on some of the darker monitors.

How about load time?

Thanks for your input.

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :

Really nice.....although my mind wanders at the "Hire Shannon" part.... [Big Grin]

Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :

Thats actually a really nice site, so don't kill me when I make a few suggestions [Wink]

1. In the quiz area, it would be nice to automate the marking with some scripting...ala quizzes in the Spark, otherwise most people will just pass by. Yes, our generation's short attention spans are really annoying.

2. There's some really dense reading on the "Players" page. Might be nice to break that up with most distinct paragraph breaks, or even a few images to show, instead of tell facts. I don't envy that task however, it really is compressing a heck of a lot of information in two people.

3. Although the title page does say "The Official..." in the browser title bar, certain others have "The Offical..." At least many pages in the Mara Jade area do.

Load time does not seem to be a problem...although she is uh, a bit distracting, so I might not be judging properly here...

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Thanks for the thoughts guys.

1. The quizes. We're working on automated code for the quizzes. This was somthing I could get done right away, though, and we wanted to get it up as soon as we could. Hopefully we'll be able to update it in a few months.

2. I'll see about breaking up those paragraphs. You're right... it does look like alot to read. There are a couple reasons I didn't do alot of images of the characters or link to other sites. A) I wanted to keep the Mara Jade side of things less important than the Shannon McRandle side of things since it's supposed to be promoting her. B) I don't want to get in trouble for copyright stuff and I figure the more pictures I use, the more likely it is that either LucasFilm or Dark Horse will tell me to take them off the the site. Stupid copyright laws.. [Roll Eyes]

3. I'll fix those spelling mistakes you mentioned. Thanks for your sharp eyes! [Smile]