Planning Your Portfolio

A digital portfolio can be laborious and time-consuming to build and maintain (especially when you’re busy with client work and/or a full-time job). Proper planning can make

Most video sharing sites also allow you to upload video for free and can

the difference between a portfolio that requires a complete serve as a good venue to showcase

rebuild in six months and a portfolio that will be viable for your animation (see the “Publishing

years (with minor updates).

for Broadcast” section later in this chapter).

While planning your portfolio, it’s important to first determine which parts of your site will change frequently and which parts will remain fairly constant. For instance, you will probably want to update your work samples often, but your name will likely remain unchanged. To facilitate easy upkeep, you’ll want to separate frequently updated portions of your site from portions that will not change (at least in terms of how the file and the ActionScript are set up). This type of modularity (having independent parts) also has additional benefits. Site visitors will benefit from only needing to load those pieces of your site that they actually see.

As you begin to plan your site, consider the following questions about potential visitors to your portfolio:

. Who is your intended audience? Art directors? Business

people? . Is your audience technically savvy?

. What do you want your visitors to take away from your

site?

Chapter 5 Sharing Your Animation

The answers to these questions will inform the requirements for your site. Once you’ve addressed the preceding questions, you’ll want to generate a list of the attributes required for your portfolio.

Here are the site requirements for the portfolio you will build in this chapter:

. Easy to edit and update (keeps work recent) . Concise (limited window of time to catch the viewer’s

eye) . Reasonably low-bandwidth (load indication for large

content) .

A space reserved for text (to describe the work and your role in the project, as well as credit for anyone else involved)

. Must show some design and animation skills but not draw attention away from the work itself

A reasonably large area for displaying work samples . Readable text After you’ve listed the site requirements, make a list of

methods for meeting those requirements. Solutions (site speciﬁcations) include:

. Arranging buttons vertically to accommodate varying numbers of work samples

. Using a two-color design, which is less likely to clash with the colors in the work samples

. Using vector artwork for the site, which is low bandwidth, but including a preloader for work samples that may be larger

. Adding an area for descriptive text with the capability of including links

. Loading content from an XML ﬁle that can be edited without opening Flash

. Using a sans-serif typeface (Myriad Pro) that is easy to read onscreen

. Controlling the site animation with ActionScript, which is also easy to update

Animation with Scripting for Adobe Flash Professional CS5 Studio Techniques

Additionally, you want to consider the monitor size and the likely Flash Player version that your visitors will have installed.

After you’ve established some of your technical speciﬁca- Deciding which Flash Player version to publish to is

Flash Player Version

tions, you can start thinking about how your site will look. usually a decision between the latest/greatest fea-

As you start to envision your site, you’ll want to consider tures and maximum compatibility. As a general rule,

you’ll want to publish to the lowest version that the organization of the visual elements onscreen. Which

includes all the features (and ActionScript methods) areas will deserve more attention than others? Certain used in your project. If your intended audience is a

areas of the screen will command more of the viewer’s Flash-based design or animation studio, backward

attention. You’ll want to make these areas correspond with compatibility will be less of a concern.

the content that you most want the viewer to see. It’s easy enough to write an explicit list of items that you

For statistics on the acceptance of a specific Player version, see the following site: www.

want the viewer to see: clear title, easy to locate links/ adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/

options, prominently displayed work samples, and so version_penetration.html.

on. Then sketch the elements of your site (on paper or onscreen) and see if you can make the elements work together as a cohesive whole (Figure 5.1). It may take a couple of attempts to render a visually pleasing layout that meets the site requirements that you’ve listed (Figure 5.2).

A more polished digital mockup created in portfolio site.

Figure 5.1

A rough pencil mockup and notes for the

Figure 5.2

Flash.

Planning Your Portfolio