My site design, simple...but what's missing.

Think your comic can improve? Whether it's art or writing, composition or colouring, feel free to ask here! Critique and commentary welcome.

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Crossstreetartist
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My site design, simple...but what's missing.

Post by Crossstreetartist »

So...yeah...my site is pretty basic....kinda boring lookin.....who knows how i could spice it up a little? Suggestions? Comments? Concerns??Please???
--Jesse
whatever you do, dont think about cheeze.
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Faub
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Post by Faub »

Beer goes in the bread group. 8)

I don't think your site is that bad. It's simple yet strangely effective. I would tighten up your rant at the bottom of the page a little more. It seems to sprawl a bit. Maybe you could frame it and add a little avatar Mega Tokyo style. The Mad cover was last month anyway. The rant doesn't make sense until you've seen the postcard.

A tagboard or something like that would be good but that's up to you. http://www.tagboard.net/ has had popup ad problems lately. I don't know if enough people have complained about it for it to be safe yet or not. I would not include a tagboard on your archive pages, though. That can crash the server.

Your archive pages should be different than your main page. At least you should cut out the rant or use a rant linked to the comic. It wouldn't hurt to include a calendar but it's really not necessary. You have a big calendar. It would be good if you could view the archives on an 800x600 browser without scrolling. I realize some of your pages are bigger than this but it's a goal.

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CodeGuy
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Post by CodeGuy »

I agree. This biggest thing that would help your site is a little table code to straighten up the rant. Maybe make it the same width as the comic.

A light, low contrast background might be nice, but maybe not. Only if it strikes your fancy.

Oh, another advantage of a table is that you can make the "This week's Comic" text be left justified with the comic.

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KittyKatBlack
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Post by KittyKatBlack »

Tables are really helpful. I love them. Probably a little too much. But anyway, you might want some kind of light colored background image. I'd suggest a light powder blue or something, because I think it would compliment the yellowness of the other stuff on your site. That's just me though.

Also, not to nitpick, but your title says "CROSS STREET BLUES DOT COM" but in actuallity your adress is "crossstreet.keenspace.com" It's not really a big deal, and if someone reached your site they obviously know what the real adress is. But technicly, it's not a .com site.... heh... Sorry, I'm just anal about things. -_-

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Bluebug
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Post by Bluebug »

Welcome to Keenspace!

I agree with all the above comments. Sprucing up the background with a light color would do wonders. To give the page a more structured feel, I would suggest adding outlines to all your navigation buttons (characters, archives etc) and your little news header button. And, as faub suggested, putting a box around your news.

I'm not sure if you wanted feedback on the comic itself, but I just wanted to make a few comments on the comic. I've noticed that your characters either appear in 3/4 view or frontal view, and that between different panels, the characters are pretty sedentary. They just stand there and don't do much else. Try capturing them from different angles, or in different postures/gestures. Also the hardest thing for most artists (myself included) is the creation of backgrounds. But including backgrounds in your panels will go a long way in making your art stand out.

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Taiwanimation
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Post by Taiwanimation »

Check your links on the daily template pages, you need a / before all the pages because the daily pages are in the crossstreetblues.keenspace.com/d/ directory, not the root.

Your rant text is rather large sized, there's no reason why it should be that much larger than the comic caption text.

"This Weeks Comic:" seems to be randomly placed, remove it
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Crossstreetartist
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Post by Crossstreetartist »

Thanks for the suggestions. :D I am trying to fix it up a bit, but my comp just crashed so it may no be for another week or so. If you have any more keep em comming, i need all the help i can get. thanks again
whatever you do, dont think about cheeze.
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