I am the first to admit that the interface was very inspired by rayoflight.net, but I have tried to combine that with my own ideas to create something original.
Would love feedback, although I already have alot of plans for it and it is by no means finished yet.
In the preloader, make the animation a little bit faster. When it finishes loading and the little things disappear to the right.
Add a skip button right in the beginning, I waited a bit, nothing was happenening for a sec. Then I realized the logo on the bottom right was fading in then out.
Also, after you click on each link it’ll be nice to have the bg change too… Try to add some little effects,etc.
Since it’s not nearly finished, and theres not much content yet. I wont be able to comment on anything else.
Loading page is a bit messy. You should line the arrows [whatever they are??] up so that they are left justified then move the word Loading so that it sit better on the stage.
The buildup takes a long time too. You might want to put in a skip button. I know you don’t have an intro really, but just for people that don’t want to wait the extra minuet for no reason.
I’m on a DSL connection and I seemed to wait forever for it to load. When it had loaded it seems that you don’t really have that much content, so I’m guessing the file size of your BG image is HUGE!! [about 380 KB] Remember, anything over 72 dpi is a waste if it’s never going to be printed.
The animation is a little slow IMHO. You could do with spicing up the way things come in too. The slide in approach is letting you down a bit. Be adventures with your animation.
When you click a link the info appears, if I want to read a different link I have to click it twice. Once to close the previous window and a second time to see the new info [That’s an easy one to fix].
On a plus side, it is a very nice image and the animation of the birds flying off looks very nice too. I almost expected to hear the distant sound of crows.
I was expecting something more when I saw the ""loading taking a few minutes… I managed to change into workout close before it loaded and I’m on DSL one block from the homestead…
Now, I know it’s a music site but ambient music similar to Gladiator’s hand over the wheat would be awsome when its done… I was looking for a subtle breeze in the grass…
Kel - 420 (once again) Says it best…
you expect to hear the birds… crickets… something.
Great structure, I think that gets left out of site design to often… also the image load is tough on the flash and the image on the static page… optimize my brother optimize…
Overall… very nice… Could have been done in html to save a lot of time… but I know you got a couple miles to go…
Yeah, thanks guys. I had planned on optimising from the bginning but forgot all about it. I used the same image I designed for the bands posters and album cover, which is obviously 300dpi, but I forgot to reduce it to 72dpi. Duh.
Im going to take all your opinions and work on it. Hopefully I will have something much nicer by the end of the weekend.
Again, I had planned to add sound but forgot. I guess I had just seen it too many times and become sick of my own work. You all have been a great help.
Ok. I have made several changes. Grass in foreground moves, there is some music, which will change to the bands own music once I have imported and edited it. Added sound, and optimised everything. With the sound the whole movie is still 270Kb however. Although that is more than 100K less than the previous version, is that acceptable?
If I were to mix down the three seperate sounds in the background loop and then optimise them, would that give me an even smaller file size?
Known issues:
Skip Intro button not fully functional. Needs to stop certain movie clips and their sounds even if they are already playing
When you click a link the info appears, if I want to read a different link I have to click it twice. Once to close the previous window and a second time to see the new info.
Don’t forget to put a stop music button in.
Still need to line up the progress bar with the text above it.
The grass is quite choppy. Looks like a high-res image that you have tried to tween. You might be better off using a masking effect??
Have you imbedded the music in your site? It would be better if you just made it a load movie, especially if you intend to have more than one tune.
270K is acceptable if you can justify it. As you have very little content then I would say 270K is too big.
I saw some more stuff I could mention but this is turning into an essay so I will bring it up another time.
It’s hard to say what’s wrong without seeing how you have it setup but I’ll try.
Skip Intro:
The Skip Intro button can have a Goto and play action. Make it go to the first frame [blank preferably] of your homepage. In the first frame of the homepage put a Stop all sound action [This will stop any sound that come b4 the action. It wont affect any sound FX or tunes after it]. You said something about also stopping movie clips. If so, add a unload movies on whatever level you had them on.
Buttons:
The way you have the info come in now, it will probably be easier if you make these Goto and play as well. So a quick and easy way would be to make each bit of info [News, Bios…] its own movie clip. Stager them on the time line with a stop action on each of them. Use the Label feature to label each one individually. This way, when you click a button it will go to the right place first time.
If you want each window to slide out b4 the next one comes in, then that’s a whole different system. As it looks like you don’t do that at the moment, I wont bother explaining how to do it.
Ok, I think i have fulfilled all the suggestions (as they were all very good) so far, with the exception of the Loading screen, as I am not sure exactly what was meant, and the grass tween.
Doing the grass animation with a mask doesnt look great, unless there is a way to fade it in using a mask so that the grass image itself is not effected.
I also lost the slide in for the content, as it was getting a bit repetitive.
I have taken the string part to one of our pieces and mixed it down with the crickets and wind. Sounds alot better now I think.
So, any further suggestions before I continue adding content?