Precious Amaranth

Information:



First Impression (6/10)

My first thoughts as I entered your site on my dailup connection were: "WHY DID SHE SLICE HER BANNER INTO .PNGS!" This was annoying because I had to refresh 3 times to get your banner to load in. Now getting past that, and ignoring the minor annoyance of only half your banner loading, my next thought is how bright and blue everything is. While the color is fresh the whole site kind of rubs off as icy and almost sad. The next thing I notice is how I have to highlight your text... =/ it's hard to read you should make it a darker blue. Moving on, your navigation looks quite nice and I realize I like your navigation headers. Your banner has now loaded in, and I must say it would be quite nice if it weren't so white... the whole thing needs some reinforcing midtone blues and maybe some purple to just make the visual look more interesting. By this time I'm reading your intro paragraph and I'm happy to see that you did a nice job. It's profesional while retaining your personality. It gives me a good insight on what I can expect whilst I browse your site. It worked fine on all of my browsers (IE 7 and FF 3). Also I could see much of your content from the top of the page, which is a major plus.

The Layout–Design (13/20)

Hmmm you see the layout has tons of potentual to be really nice. It's just there are no dark reinforcing colors and your text is a pain to read. The banner almost looks like it's glowing. Although I see that you were going for bright and breezy, this can't be done properly if all of the colors are too similar. Contrast is the key to a great layout and I'm not seeing much here. Remember, contrast not only makes things easier on the eyes, but also makes them more interesting. We always want people to be interested in our work so you should always work tword that goal when making layouts. Do not be afraid of design risk! Remember our experiances make us better designers, and you seem like you were afraid to take any sort of color risk what-so-ever. It's like someone who painted their wall white because they were afraid another color would scare the neighbors. So definately work on contrast and visual interest. Moving on, I like your banner design and I also like your navigation boxes. Those things are nice and show off your skills. I also <3 they way you listed your affiliates. =) It shows your creative side, and makes me wished you had used some of those colors in your layout, as well as the blues. They look really nice. =D Again, I'll remind you of the banner file problem. ALWAYS ALWAYS save as a high-quality jpeg! Don't slice up a giant png into a million tiny pieces. It saves we dailers no time at all. Other than the colors, there are no huge problems, I just need to see some personality and interest is all. It's not bad though, keep up the good work.

The Layout–Coding (5/10)

Eh-HEM. I think it's time someone tell you about tables. You know how bad they are. That you aren't supposed to use them.... yeah that. Tables are bad. End of story. They take longer to load, they use more bandwidth, and anything done with tables can be done with a div with some CSS magic. Getting past that fact, you have no doctype. =/ Not good... you need a doctype for the browser to tell which code you're using. The HTML validator found many errors. A lot were soley because you did not have a doctype and some were because of the tables. Now I'm not a validation purest but here's my philosopy-- all layouts should validate nude when they do not have any extra applications attached. (cutenews, cboxes, rotations... ect;). You should go to Tutorial Tastic and read their tutorials, gain some knowledge on vailidation and learn some more about good layout fundumentals.
Moving on to your css you have 5 errors which you should not have. All but one having to do with the non-exsistiance of the font-weight value. Be sure to double check your values and css so everything turns out as planed during the coding process. I also must say that I see a major no-no in your font family. Always have more than one font family so that there is a back up in case that person does not have your first choice font. Always make sure to end that line with sans-serif. Like this:
font-family : verdana, arial, sans-serif;
^Something like that. Anyway, I've seen worse, just work on your fundamentals and you'll be good to go.

Content (32/40)

Ok now for the best part... or maybe the hardest...

  1. Quality: (6/10) To put it quite bluntly... a lot of your stuff is messy. Your icons for example, have way to many textures and the text is missplaced. At best, the colors are quite nice on some of them. You would benefit greatly from selective color! Look up some tutorials. Elusive and my site Splatterheart have some that would probably benefit you. That is your best icon I believe. Anyway you also need to start saving them as high quality jpegs, so they aren't as grainy on high def screens. The layouts generaly need a lot of work, and just delete the signatures page. =/ I'm afraid forum standered is quite differant from site standred, so you should either join a graphics forum like Anime Blend or Lucid GFX if you want to continue to make them and cater tword that crowed. Their critique will also help you with your layout banners.
  2. Updates: (5/5)You update enough for me. =) Keep it up while working on quality!
  3. Quantity: (5/5) Enough to enjoy, but you're still growing.
  4. Grammar: (5/5) Better than mine. XD
  5. Creativity: (6/10) Needs way more style and some personality. I get the feeling you're still searching for that. Remember, you don't want to be the crowed, you want to be above it. So definately work on that. Your site does have some charm and you get some more points here for that.
  6. Our link: (5/5) No arguements here, we were at the top of every page! =D

Your Special Content (4/5)

Ok since Josh defines this as what the staff thinks is best on all of your site, I say your textures, brushes and bases have great potentual. Your grunge brushes remind me of what I'd see at places like Misplaced Moments and your icon brushes remind me of Aethereality or Ashikiyoko. Obviously that's a compliment. But remember, you don't want to copy them so make sure these little gems show off your style and have your own touches. Your textures are also quite good and your bases look useable. I love your first texture and I think if you focus more on resources you could really shine quite a bit there. Although, be sure to work on color and depth with the textures. Anyway, this is where you shine. Find your forte and perfect on it.

An Overall Wrap-Up (11/15)

Not bad. You have skills you just need to tap into them. You can be great one day... I can smell it. But can you improve enough for your site to really shine. Only time will tell. Also, you need to find a style that's yours. One that screams "Hello world, I'm one of the webs best growing designers... respect me!" So turn up the heat and get to work. Your site is your mark on the web. Make it reflect you in the best way it can. So with a cup of creativity, a dash of passion, and a pinch of comfidence, your site can be all you want it to be. All you have to do is find out what that is.

FINAL SCORE: 71/100…. C-