GBK666 Posted October 14, 2011 Share Posted October 14, 2011 Hello, first of all i hope its okay to write about an own website here..i ve read the rules but didnt see a part about it http://www.game-art-hq.com About 4 Months ago i started the project "Game-Art-HQ.Com" It was and is my target to make a platform for chosen fan art related to video games of a certain quality, just like it happens here with the judged remixes. Its in a whole a different system there, i dont have something like a jury, i alone ask artists which made fan art if i can feature their works ..so for now it totaly depends on my own opinion if someones works appear on GA-HQ or not The next inspiration i had from OCR were the Projects I know ocr since now nearly ten years and visited the forum often to see the progresses of the remix project forums and loved the idea that many artists worked on a big thing. Thats something i tried with a fana rt tribute project now for the Mortal Kombat games, i made a list of 80 playable and unplayable characters from the MK game series, these could be claimed by artists..but only one character per artist..since 03.10 all 80 characters were claimed..over 50 entries are submitted to the project already The Project can be seen here http://www.game-art-hq.com/the-mortal-kombat-immortal-fan-art-project/ i am sure MK is not everyone`s thing and there is a second project for boss characters of fighting games already There is a lot more, like official released artworks from the game companys, screenshots, cosplay galleries.. a few interviews and reviews Every artist or cosplayer i feature on ga-hq was asked for the permission to do that and always gets a link to his prefered website..other website admins just copy and use what they see often, i instead try to work with the artists and make it a win/win/win situation in the form of visitors for both parties and fans which like to see good fan art Thanks a lot DJPretzel and everyone else who build up this awesome community TheChargingRhino 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Damned Posted October 15, 2011 Share Posted October 15, 2011 I'm seeing a HUGE potential for artwork for remix albums. We don't have nearly enough artists here, and the ones we do have are busy with their own stuff while also trying to work on whatever they have for albums. It would be a great resource, and would also spotlight both sites to each other. I APPROVE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBK666 Posted October 15, 2011 Author Share Posted October 15, 2011 I'm seeing a HUGE potential for artwork for remix albums. We don't have nearly enough artists here, and the ones we do have are busy with their own stuff while also trying to work on whatever they have for albums.It would be a great resource, and would also spotlight both sites to each other. I APPROVE. Hi, yesterday night before reading your comment i actually thought about the same It could work like: Remix Album Project gets announced + seems likely that it will be done I can promote remix album projects via my DA Groups and Game Art HQ to get some artists interested and have good contacts to even some professional artists If i get artists to help ocr projects and in return the artists and ga-hq gets mentioned and linked here on ocr it would be great for my project to become more popular i guess. And i think many OCR remixers and musicfans here might like the "visual remixes" in the form of good fan art as well if the artist and the album art gets promoted via the album credits and what not so it could benefit everyone involved Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damashii!! Posted October 16, 2011 Share Posted October 16, 2011 this seems like a really good idea! you should talk to some of the higher-ups to see what they think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBK666 Posted October 17, 2011 Author Share Posted October 17, 2011 nah, i guess they read the forums as well and if they found GA-HQ http://www.game-art-hq.com/ interesting they might have contacted me already However, everyone here who is in need of artists for fan art like a cover or a logo for a OC Project or something similar is welcome to contact me, i will do what i can do support any promising OCR Projects greets and a cool week everyone, gbk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnetic Ether Posted October 17, 2011 Share Posted October 17, 2011 I also really like this idea. Especially the projects part The only problem I have with the site right now is the layout. All of the sidebars and stuff is really overwhelming... I think it would work much much better if it was more similar to OCR's design. Just a bar at the top and a searchbar. Personally I find having all of those categories all over the place really confusing. Anyway, that's just my opinion. Good luck with the site! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBK666 Posted October 20, 2011 Author Share Posted October 20, 2011 I also really like this idea.Especially the projects part The only problem I have with the site right now is the layout. All of the sidebars and stuff is really overwhelming... I think it would work much much better if it was more similar to OCR's design. Just a bar at the top and a searchbar. Personally I find having all of those categories all over the place really confusing. Anyway, that's just my opinion. Good luck with the site! thanks for the feedback, i never learned webdesign, i have no profis to help me and just got used to wordpress which i used for the site, i remember OCR got trough various redesigns over the years and ga-hq will most likely see different designs as well i saw that you do a legend of many project via your sign, maybe i can help you a bit with some art from the game itself recently i played it and made a lot screenshots of legend of mana and especially of all the characters, artifacts, places and soon the around 200 enemies as well http://www.game-art-hq.com/legend-of-mana-in-game-character-art/ http://www.game-art-hq.com/legend-of-mana-in-game-artifacts-places-art/ http://www.game-art-hq.com/legend-of-mana-screenshots/ greets, gbk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnetic Ether Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 recently i played it and made a lot screenshots of legend of mana and especially of all the characters, artifacts, places and soon the around 200 enemies as well Lol, I actually did the exact same thing a little while ago. Thanks anyway though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Modus Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Sweet idea but for the love of god, do not use Comic Sans anywhere. The ads are rampant, and the white layout says nothing about the site as well. It's fun to poke around.. just needs streamlined. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnetic Ether Posted October 25, 2011 Share Posted October 25, 2011 Sweet idea but for the love of god, do not use Comic Sans anywhere. I can never understand what people have against certain fonts. I swear, they all look fine to me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Modus Posted October 25, 2011 Share Posted October 25, 2011 I can never understand what people have against certain fonts. I swear, they all look fine to me! Look through every major company's website in the world and tell me if Comic Sans is in any of them. Comic Sans has the personality of a 12-year-old boy screaming at you in Call of Duty. Type your name out in Helv-... in Palatino. Then type it in comic sans. You'll feel strangely insulted looking at the comic sans one. Palatino should make you feel like a published author. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keiiii Posted October 26, 2011 Share Posted October 26, 2011 Like others said, the idea is great. The execution needs improvement. The following is going to be rather criticism-y, so please bear with me. 1. The layout! Enlist the help of someone who really knows how to design a site. In the meantime, here are some specific suggestions from me: ---I think it'd help immensely if you put all the navigation links in ONE place. Right now, there's fanart on the left, and official art on the right. I'd pick one and stick everything there. ---The navigation menu texts are centered in their div. There is a lack of visual alignment, which makes things seem cluttered and not so organized. ---Other things not aligned: the right-hand ad, GAHQ twitter, Select Language (both the dropdown menu and the flag images). ---Don't use bold text too much. ---Can you move the top ad elsewhere? And put your logo on top? ---You're using this pinkish red for the logo, and a more bloody red for links. Either go for the contrast and make them totally different, or unify and make them the same. ---Speaking of the logo, the digital watch-ish font you're using is too blurry. ---The all-whiteness of the site is not appealing. ---Integrate the layout of the forum and the rest of the site. Make it look like they're a part of the same thing. While we're on this topic, the forum layout (I'm assuming it came with the forum package) has a couple of points that you could apply to the rest of the site. ------The darker background color frames the content area, immediately making things look more organized. OCR does this too. ------Alignment, alignment, alignment. The forum icons align. The forum descriptions and titles align. The "Search" button, the bit of text below it, and the right side of the forum boxes align. 2. Guidelines for artwork submissions. Quality is going to be hard to describe, but at least provide clear guidelines on what you automatically don't accept. ---What's your policy on a pencil work reproduction of a screenshot? Would you accept something like that, or do you require an original composition? What about pose/composition copying? ---What about violence/ nudity/ etc. ? ---What about background jacking? i.e. character is drawn by the artist; background is some photo jacked from google, OR in some cases, stock photo used with permission) ---Original characters allowed? (my opinion: don't allow them, even if the artist's original character is shown hanging out with Mario) 3. The "About" section doesn't tell me anything about what the site is actually about. I was expecting to find some info on who you are, why you made the site, what you're trying to accomplish with the site, etc... (I was specifically wondering if you were an artist yourself, and I still don't know if you are!) 4. Individual artist pages, like this one. Instead of linking their offsite gallery with their name, I'd like to see a more formal "contact info" kind of area, like: Artist Name: wheeArtist Site: http://www.ocremix.org Email: Undisclosed Why? Because if you just link their name with nothing to indicate that the link leads to their offsite gallery, it's confusing. I first thought clicking on their name would simply refresh their artist page, because clicking on their name (on the previous page) was what took me to this page in the first place. Organize the artworks by series/ game title. Yes, it's a page showing all art from that one artist, but it could benefit from more organization. Put the "Every artwork on this site was chosen by me personally, every artist was asked by me for their support of this website" part below all the artwork thumbnails. People don't visit this site to confirm whether you chose the art personally, they come to SEE the art. Show them what they came to see, and put the other stuff later. 5. I realize this might not be easy for you -- I'm not a native speaker of English, either. But please, try to use correct grammar, spelling and punctuation. Failure to do so seriously harms your presentation. Don't forget a . at the end of every sentence that does not end with !, ?, etc. Do not capitalize the beginnings of words like "character" in "80 playable and unplayable Characters" here. Get help from someone who's fluent AND knows their grammar. That's about it... for now anyway. Best of luck! The internet seriously needs a good centralized gaming art site. If you clean up your site, it could really become something big. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBK666 Posted November 8, 2011 Author Share Posted November 8, 2011 Heya, criticism is something precious for me, and i guess everyone who wants to create something or wants to build something up there are a lot points made in the last posts here though and i am changing some things here and there already, and consider some more thing is that i care 100 times more about the content so far than about the site design and when i look at google analytics the growing number of visitors and pageviews per visitor is more than fine.. the site is 4 1/2 months old only and i have around 800+ unique visitors on a day already which watch around 3,5 pages per visitor And well, the problem is that i am absolutly no designer, i learned html..and..thats all I use wordpress and gain experience with every month, and i guess that ga-hq will see more than one big designchange For that i need to learn a bit css and more html though ^^ I use comic sans sometimes because i think it looks..unprofessional. Especially in the fanart sections it can be a bit unconventional i think The main font is never comic sans though and will never be 2. Guidelines for submissions good point, but the thing is that basically submissions can only be made in the forum, people cant just upload their stuff, instead they can show me examples and i decide to add their works or not. I am very active at deviantart since a while and know many artists from there, i ask them directly if they want to be featured on ga-hq or offer it to them. This might change a bit in the future though 3. Good points for the about page, i will work on that right today I am no artist..cant draw..cant remix. I had and have many ideas though ..build up more than a handful communities in the past, and have the talent to activate people for my ideas and to participate in contests and comunity driven projects like the MK one Next year the maybe biggest game related fan art project starts in februar on game art hq It is a street fighter tribute project and has the target that not less than 200 artists are participating to make it complete. 90 SF characters can be claimed by 2 artists there are 10 additional challenges, like drawing Ryu vs Sagat, the thing is that again 2 artists can claim the challenge, but those will actually battle against each other trough a poll whcihd etermines which image will be used for the project and which wont. It is about street fighter..so some sort of competition cant hurt Around 60 artists claimed characters and challenges already, 13 of the Street Fighter characters cant be claimed anymore, 2 challenges are given away as well Nude, very violent and original characters will never be a part of ga-hq, original creations can be showcased in the forum though 4. I have actually started working on both points last week already Organize the artworks by series/ game title. < done in a lot artists gallerys already, thing is i started organizing like that only a couple of weeks ago, organizing it for the artist galelries from before takes again much time, and the most visitors visit the game or character related fanarts, only like 10% visitors are visiting the galleries with all artworks by an artist 5. Installed a grammar checker. *cough* I work on the site every day, even my gf does since she believes in the project and loves art and (good) fanart as much as i do..it gets better and bigger with every week and month but its a damn slow process which is very annoying for me. I wish i had 24 hours for it every day Greets everyone, gbk ps: as mentioned, whenever someone here needs artists for a cover art etc, dont hesitate to ask me, i cant guarantee that 100 people will come, wanting to draw something, but it is likely someone will help if i introduce a interesting OCR project to him Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keiiii Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 That's great that you are open to criticism. You can learn how to design. I STRONGLY recommend this book. For someone in your position, that book is absolutely invaluable. Read it from the beginning to the end, absorb everything, and I guarantee you'll become a much better designer from it. Unconventional/ casual is fine. But that doesn't mean you should use Comic Sans. There are many, MANY casual fonts that are free to use. Seriously, I don't even go near Comic Sans. It's a major turnoff for many design-savvy people, and artists tend to be design-savvy... thing is that i care 100 times more about the content so far than about the site design and when i look at google analytics the growing number of visitors and pageviews per visitor is more than fine.. Of course the content is more important. But that doesn't mean it's okay to have a bad design/ presentation. Your design doesn't have to be amazing, but it needs to be decent and organized. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBK666 Posted November 11, 2011 Author Share Posted November 11, 2011 It is rare that i really care for critique, normally i go my own way, without caring for consequences Today i went trough the posts here again though and changed relative many things designwise on game art hq http://www.game-art-hq.com/ It is for sure not the final designchange Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBK666 Posted January 16, 2012 Author Share Posted January 16, 2012 wow..the thread got down..hope its okay i revive it Not only was a lot done layout and design wise, content was added a ton too but a new Fan Art project (the third one) is on the way too, since its Street Fighter`s 25th Anniversary i organized a fan art tribute project like no other before. Not less than 214 Artists will be invovled if everything works. 113 artists signed up already 90 Street Fighter Characters from SF I up to SFXT (Poison Kiss) will be drawn by 2 artists each. 8 SF Characters will be drawn with a gender redesign /change 8 SF characters will be drawn 10-20 years older 5 "epic" battles are displayed by 10 artists, battles like SF Alpha Ryu vs Ken, Adon vs Sagat, Karin vs Sakura etc I have around 20 entries already, the project starts officially on februar 12.2012 The first tribute i organized which was about Mortal kombat is nearly complete, 79 of 80 characters were drawn, the last one should arrive this week http://www.game-art-hq.com/the-mortal-kombat-immortal-fan-art-project/ The second project was about boss characters of fighting games, it was a great success, around 50 artists draw over 80 images. even katsuhiro Harada, the producer of Tekken saw and complimented it a while ago on twitter http://www.game-art-hq.com/a-tribute-to-the-boss-round-1-fighting-games/ TheChargingRhino 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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