Artist Portfolio

In trying to find a portfolio to critique, I clicked randomly through the large list of names of previous digital art students. Several names that I clicked on led me to incomplete pages where links didn't take me to their intended destination, but Ellie Bockert's page is where I stopped my search when all the simple navigation controls checked out. Ellie Bockert's page doesn't include flash animation or any of the latest and greatest eye catching effects that some websites have these days. The layout is very simple, but effective in its purpose. A picture of a blue elephant is present amongst the white backdrop of the site, giving Ellie's portfolio a personal feel of her taste. For me, this is very important as a portfolio should express the artist's personal style. Upon entering the site, I have five different navigation links to choose from: Home, Info, Art Works, Links, and Contact. I was already at the home page so I clicked on information. This page included a couple paragraphs describing Ellie's history with art, and her upbringing at home. This is effective as it gives the viewer some insight into possible inspirations of her work. Next I navigated to Art Works. Once I clicked this page, I was presented with four more options to navigate to: Videos and Animation, Modeling, Digital Imaging, and photography. Each category had a picture of one of the works from that section which is a nice visual reference into what you are about to travel to. All pages contained her different works and were easy to view. I clicked the Links tab next, but this page was empty. This tap probably wasn't really necessary in the first place, but it brings down the overall portfolio given that you are presented with the option, yet it contains nothing. Last is the Contact tab which simply displays Ellie's email address. I think Ellie could have done a few things better making her online portfolio. Her home, links, and contact pages all seemed a bit pointless to me. All the home page has is a list of the different tabs to navigate to, which are present in all of the other sub-pages anyways. I think it would have been effective to post her contact information in the home page to actually give that page a purpose, something to look at. Otherwise the site is divided up unnecessarily. On the positive side, it is very easy to navigate and has a great personal feel to it. This online portfolio has everything it needs to show online viewers Ellie's work and even to get a little background story on her.   http://digitalarts.bgsu.edu/portfolios/ellieb/