Updated Jumbalees site

[Arpeggio]

I made it about 6 months ago but have updated recently, very pleased with it. I got rid of the Flash animated Bamboo curtains as they were too slow to load up. The characters are now animated on an actual background too rather than just white background (thanks to skech for originally suggesting how to achieve animated characters for mouse over by masking the mouse off layer).

http://www.jumbalees.com/index.htm

Hope you like it!

[gwpriester]

Love it. Wish I were about 67 years younger.

[Cloud]

I liked this site the first time around and still do, i think though that the books bobbing about on the sea doesn't quite work as the animation is not smooth enough but other than that really well done. and I have to say that I am a massive asterix fan and it is great to know that you worked on one of the movies.

[Arpeggio]

Thankyou both, glad you like it. Some of it was new ground and fairly tricky. The frame rate is 12 per sec, now you mention it skech I notice they do jerk a bit, it would be easy to make it 25 per sec I will do that soon. My dad worked on the cartoons I (Gareth) made the site for him, most of it is adapted graphics from his books (like all the backgrounds). I like Asterix, have a few harback copies of the comic book somewhere.

[Cloud]

I remember going to our village library every week to get an asterix book out, they were the paperback versions and were the best thing going (for me at least) I have probably read all of them a few times each as well as seen the animations and the really quite good film adaptions with gerard deperdiu as obelix. If you can increase the frame rate it would be perfect. Also one more thing, on the page for the characters when I click on a character for information I have to scroll up to view the pop up, I am on a laptop with 1366 x 768 resolution, perhaps move the box slightly down so that no scrolling is required on the average size screen.

[Arpeggio]

I remember going to our village library every week to get an asterix book out, they were the paperback versions and were the best thing going (for me at least) I have probably read all of them a few times each as well as seen the animations and the really quite good film adaptions with gerard deperdiu as obelix. If you can increase the frame rate it would be perfect. Also one more thing, on the page for the characters when I click on a character for information I have to scroll up to view the pop up, I am on a laptop with 1366 x 768 resolution, perhaps move the box slightly down so that no scrolling is required on the average size screen.

The floating books on the home page are now 24fps. They are a bit better although not quite as much as I'd hoped for, but it will do for now. The "Guitar for Kids" floating book is still only 12 fps and animates better so it probably has something to do with how different sized objects look as they move on pixels, I think small detail would look better animated on normal television. Originally I took them down to 200dpi (300dpi looked bad) so lowering the resolution of them might be another option so that not as much detail is moving around relatively few pixels.

You're right, I had considered the distance of the text box to the characters, but because Elvis is tall I only wanted to go so close to the top of his head while if he was front row he would obscure part of whoever is behind and the mouse-off layers sometimes seem to get mixed when they overlap. e.g. for Freds mouse off I swapped his arm around, originally it was the one you see on his text box with him pointing upward but that went over Elvis, meaning his and Freds mouseover's didn't work independantly. So next update for that page I might put the text below the pics in the white box, and on the home page lower the resolution of the 24fps floating books.

I read through Asterix comics more than once, I was into Calvin and Hobbs too. Hopefully one day some might say the same of Jumbalees!? lol

[Cloud]

The home page books do seem better now, but the large book on the guitar for kids books is still far smoother so I think that you are right a combination of a higher frame rate and lower resolution may work. And I am sure that asterix took time to reach a global market; Jumbalees rule!

[Arpeggio]

Thanks. Having published the books it's interesting how it goes and what you learn, they are on most online major retailers but don't sell themselves, while "in stock" status for POD is another matter. I use Lightning Source but also CreateSpace because they are owned by Amazon which means they will always display as "in stock" on most Amazon sites, otherwise POD is like "whackamole" as to where it's in stock to direct your marketing efforts. Occasionally I google terms like "Business without advertising" or "Business dies without advertising" and find not advertising is the exeption to the rule which I find reassuring because I'm only just about to start marketing. Although I guess really that's obvious but doing everything yourself you're busy and can't think about so much at once. I guess perhaps if Asterix was just wonderfully written with it's great artwork and put on some shelves to sell and that was it, then we might not have heard of it, who knows.

[pauland]

The front page copy could be trimmed a bit - it's a lot to read and is more functional than inspirational.

"Welcome to the world of the Jumbalees!

We are the Jumbalees, and we live and play together on our exotic island in the ocean.
We're always having adventures and fun; helping each other as we go along and learning lessons in life in a safe way - even our scary adventures are fun!
No matter what we do, our stories always have a happy ending and we will always be friends.

The Jumbalees - stimulate children’s imagination and amuse them, there is no crudeness in the stories making them acceptable for a young audience.
Take a good look around and see how the Jumbalees can be fun and promote positive values and role models for your young children."

I'd ditch the bobbing books - make them static. The movement makes the covers look terrible. You also need a border around their edge - the white top merges into the background. You could have a fish or sealion pop up near the books to give a bit of movement.

Make the books clickable so curious people can go straight to the page for that book. Give those books a hover state.

On the characters page I think a hint of a shadow would lift them a little to draw attention to them.

For the activities you say "Answers on answers page" - perhaps "Click here to see the answers" and a link directly to the answers page would be better? I would ditch the answers link in the menu altogether.

The first book price has a "£" missing. The dashes in front of the currency aren't necessary and makes me think of "minus".

The home page title says "index". You should be using the titles to help SEO and be properly descriptive "Welcome to Jumbalees, exciting books for the young reader".

Fantastic artwork - hope it goes well.

Paul

[Antspants]

Great advise from Paul and I agree.

The characters are simply fantastic soooo cute and I love the 'mouse_over' effects for all of them.

Best of luck with everything.