Crescent Wings
Information:
- URL: http://crescent-wings.net/
- Owner(s): Resha
- Site Category: Graphic Design
- Reviewed By: Jessi
- Stats:
First Impression (7/10)
The very first thing I noticed upon hitting the site was the pop-up style of the banner. It’s not something you see too often, but you did well here. However, the second thing I notice is that the banner takes up most of my browser length and I have to scroll down about 200px before I can get to some real text. I’m using a 1280 x 800 resolution. The next thing I see is that the three fonts on your banner really clash. You have a modern font, an elegant font and then a just plan tacky font. Then when I look back down at your text, I realize that I hate your content font. It reminds me of times new roman. Try to stick with a more simplistic sans-serif font for your content, such as arial or verenda. Just open up office word and pick one you think matches the style of your layout that’s easy on the eyes. The layout is also kind of dark and lacks color once you scroll past the banner. This might cause color fanatics to bail tabs, but some people like it so I won’t be harsh or deduct any points for this. You also mistyped “and” as “nad” in your intro, making it looked rushed. But the layout loaded in rather quickly over my dial up connection, so kudos! Now let’s move on.
The Layout–Design (15/20)
You’re using two different skins, that have the same character and similar designs, but an entirely different attitude on each of them. Graphically, I have to say I like the second more, although some render blending on both of them could have done the images better justice. I’m not to keen on the graphics for the first skin. It just looks like some sparkle brushes and a few leaves. Try not to abuse brushes so much and use textures and effects to make the brushes look prettier, but more subtle. You could also use a lot more color once you get past the banner. Because after that it’s all gray and black and slightly boring. Try using css to make your bolded text red, and your links purple, etc. Because there’s just WAY to much black here. I do like your text headers though, but I must wonder why the ones on the left navigation have light gray text, and the ones on the right are black.
The Layout–Coding (7/10)
Let’s see. Upon testing your layouts in Mozilla Firefox 3 and IE7 they worked just fine. But in IE I had the slight annoyance of having to wait for your banner to load in before reading your content, or being able to scroll at all. This would send dial up users running for the hills. Now let’s check your coding. I’m using the first skin because the coding should be almost the same for the second one. The first thing that sticks out to me in your CSS, is that you’re only using one font in your family. You’re using georgia but you’re making a grave mistake in compatibility.
“font-family: georgia; “
Should be:
“font-family: georgia, “courier new”, serif (or sans-serif if you’re using fonts such as arial);” Or something like that. Always ALWAYS have some back up font. Or else your css will show things as times new roman. Of coarse, georgia is a serif font and serifs generally look kind of like times new roman. But if you were to use a font such as Eurositile, that is a sans-serif you would definitely want some back up choices.
Moving on, your CSS has 5 validation errors. One looks like you forgot to put the # sign before a color, and another looks as though you used the British spelling for center. You always use Amercian spellings in code. I understand it can be annoying if you’re used to British spellings but it’s just how English code works. Other than that, get your css validated, because it will help in browser compatibility and make things load in faster.
Now for your HTML…
You have 72 validation errors and no Doctype. Always put a Doctype in dear, because it will help search engines to find you more easily and load your code in even faster. Now many of those errors are caused simply by the missing Doctype. But some are caused by rotations, cutenews, your shoutbox etc. However I notice some grave errors on your part. The first thing is, you’re not using your stylesheet to the best of it’s ability. You’re defining styles in HTML. Such as the background color and the font color. NEVER EVER DO THIS. Use classes instead. No not classes as in the ones at school, but I mean CSS classes. If you’re unsure how to to them go to Tutorial Tastic and gain some knowledge and coding power. Work on getting your layout to validate in XHTML 1.0 transitional when it’s by its self with out any special scripts. It will help.
Other than that, I didn’t see any huge errors, so clean the code up and reap it’s benefits!
Content (33/40)
Yey! The fun part! Okay let’s see if I can break this down.
- Quality (7/10): A mixed bag here. Some of the graphics are really great. Some are not so great. =/ Everything is sort of mixed and there’s lots of stuff but only about half the pieces seem any good. I suggest pruning down the avatars and layouts and only use your best works.
- Updating (5/5): You update a lot! More than I do!
- Quantity (5/5): Lots and lots of stuff. @_@ Almost too much!
- Site Grammar (4/5): Nothing huge, just try to proof-read your pages and check for typos.
- Creativity (7/10): Not horrible, but a lot of your graphics seem like run-of-the-mill styles. Go a little more crazy with your styles and don’t be afraid to take risk.
- Our Link (5/5): It was on all of the pages. No complaint here.
Your Special Content (3/5)
For your special content, I’ll break down your graphics sections into some general critique.
Pre-Layouts
Perhaps you should name this premades? Or just layouts? Pre-layouts sounds a little odd. Again with the mixed bag of pretty good and not so good. Try to clean up your coding and make the graphic standard for these higher. And as far as the not so good ones, they seem to deter between doing to much and too little to them. This one is my favorite. It’s well designed and has great colors. Anyway, try pruning some of the older ones and the ones you personally don’t like.
PNGs
All of your PNGs look good and well extracted. The page is nice and organized as well, with good previews. No problems here.
Avatars
Let’s see, you have so many categories so I just clicked “By Resha Valentine” assuming that was a view all. Break these down into a few more general categories instead of by series. It’s much easier to view that way. Most of these are either too plain or too full. Clean up your texturing! Feather lasso it off the face area to lower opacity in certain spots! Also saving as a gif hurts image quality. Unless it’s animated always go with a “very high” quality JPEG in photoshop. Also REALLY work on your text because it’s hurting your avatars.
Your best icon is this one and your worst one is this one and all of the really early ones with identical white borders.
Prune the icons and work on developing your own style. And work on that text and neatness epically.
Forum Sets
Some of these look okay. But I’d really suggest deleting this page, because people who go on forums usually make their own sigs. It’s sort of a pastime on that side of the anime internet.
Wallpapers
It’s never a good thing when my favorite wallpaper was a winner of a contest. O_o; Work on neatness and concept. Wallpapers a big and take a lot of time to make so the quality > quantity is applied one thousand fold. Always spend at least an hour on your walls, you’ll thank yourself later. Take a look at Anime Paper’s wall gallery to see what their standard is. Try and find what styles work for you and your staff and make something close to their standard, your standard as well. You may even consider going to Session Zero and getting critiqued. Again pruning is needed.
Abstracts
Are these like textures? There’s only one and it looks pretty neat. I’d consider using it. You should make more stuff like this! That’s what lands you on credits pages.
An Overall Wrap-Up (12/15)
Not bad Resha! You need to do a cleaning though and up that quality standard. Also consider what pages are necessary and which you don’t need. Hone in that focus and you’ll be a great site someday.