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Hello everyone!

GMM's Gallery Design Contest

After much thought, and not knowing who to turn to, I have decided to hold a little contest to bring our best designer's out of the woodwork and get my site some much needed design work. When I originally did my web design I did not take into account how HUGE my galleries were going get, and even on high speed it takes a while to load all those thumbnails. A case in point:

My Alpha 40k Page

See how long it takes to load that sucker.

What I am after is a collage sort of image that can load and show, without words but image representations, all the 40k armies. Each representation (for example, a Space Marine) should be clickable and will take you to each armies own seperate version of the above. A realistic battle scene would be amazing, but it can be anything you can come up with. A collage of my work sort of like my gallery page, a battle scene like GW box art, anything fun.If you have visited my site you know I like the sort of Tartakovsky cartoon style, but you do not have to stick to that (and that might be somewhat difficult). All I ask is that it doesn't clash with the site. You don't have to do any HTML work, all you have to do is the image.

I wiill also ask the winner to do one for Fantasy and the Privateer games and a main Gallery page, but the winner will be judged on the initial 40k version first. Doing all at once is a plus however.

The Fun Part - Prizes

The winner will receive a painting package of Alpha level painting. The package consists of five "points." The points can be traded in for the following:
1 point - any 25 to 60mm based Character or Monster model
1 point - any Land Raider or smaller vehicle
2 points - any one unit up to 20 man (using Force Org to keep it simple - for example a unit of 10 Dire Avengers, but 20 conscripts is a choice for guard)
3 points - ANY Forge World vehicle (Anything smaller than a Titan)*
5 points - A Titan (Yes, a Titan!)*

Rough value of $500-1000.

Nice and simple, but hopefully worth some good design work! Please note that * items do not include the model itself!

The only caveat, and I don't really want to say this but I feel I have to - this is assuming I get entries that I would consider professional enough to be put on a business website. I would assume I get some entries more than a stick doodle in hopes of a free Titan (heck I probably would too! ) I reserve the right to not name a winner, but I really want to!

Deadlines
Deadline to submit entries is November 14th. I will choose a winner that night.

For image size info and all the other boring details, and to enter, email me at gmmstudios@gmail.com.

Thanks!


Also to clarify - "Any Forge World vehicle" is anything that does not have a plastic kit version and is larger than a rhino. As examples - a Preheresy FW Land Raider would still only be 1 point. Grot tanks are FW exclusive but are smaller than a rhino - 1 point. Krieg Gorgons are neither, so 3 points.

While I can make these exceptions, the caveat of "models not included" still applies to all Forge World.

REally like how you did the pink on the Cleaved.

One criticism I do have is with the photographs the middle or inset details of many of the models are quite dark. Do you use multiple light sources when you photograph completed models or IP stuff? I usually try to have 3 different light sources: Natural (daylight), Incandescent, and fluorescent.

I personally like your site and the simplicity of your galleries. A simple option would be to have a thumbnail of each army linking to a separate page. You wouldn't havent to load everything at once then.

A clickable image linking to other pages like a battlescene would be nice but I wonder if that is going to far in the name of coolness? Simplicity and ease of use is always best in web design. Your excellent painting speaks for itself so why complicate things?

Just my opinion anyway, feel free to disagree!

I. Earl -I considered that as well. I thought that might be a bit too boring. That's an option people could run with though.

There is also the option of just using a php based gallery, like Coppermine.

I can certainly recommend Coppermine. The other thing you can do to quickly speed up your page is to compress the thumbnails more efficiently.

Currently each one is 8k in size. If your using Photoshop/Elements you have the "Save for web" option. In the Jpg settings, if you change it to medium quality you'll get this down to 4k each, which will halve the download footprint of your page.

Having said that... it's not going to stop me having a think about an entry

These are possible options, but a lot more coding, which I am trying to avoid until a few years from now when my site is 100% outdated and I ill likely hire out a redesign.

With this, all I have to do is make a few pages in dreamweaer, and it looks better.

yeah,
I wish I had the skills to enter this comp! Your eldar stuff is amazing!

I use Jalbum on my photo website www.cut-out-and-keep.com.
I use the desktop version not the online one...

Jalbum is easy to use. you update the albums Via the Jabulm program then upload to your site.
It has multiple community based skins... some of which have options to me advert free (like mine).
It's also free.

Panic...

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