"web_style_002.png" and "web_style_001.png" I found to be annoying. There's too much space up top before any actual content gets delivered. The same is true for the other templates, but the other ones make up for it by being aesthetically pleasing. I liked "
web_style_003.png" personally. Particularly, I liked the way the content was presented and the general color scheme. However, I think links should be colored a shade of blue. I have poor eyesight in my left eye so it's difficult to distinguish links that have pretty much no contrast to them from the surrounding text. Hence a light shade of blue may be good. I somewhat like the shade of blue used on these forums for links, as an example.
I agree with Wolf. I think if "web_style_003.png" were modified to be a bit more compact but still visually pleasing (though, genre independent perhaps) you'll have a winner.
I'm probably going to look into contracting an artist relatively soon (perhaps in a few months) for a project I'd like to pursue. One thing I'll be avoiding are sites that take too long to load (if they didn't optimize their site, how can I trust their models will be optimized?) and also that if they're doing a specific style of artwork (on the site) that it's in the same style as said project.
Anyway that's my completely unprofessional opinion. Good luck on your site though!
Edit: Also, no social media icons up top, please. They're just taking up space (meaning more scrolling). I've read before that almost nobody clicks on them anyway, and in most cases if they actually want to share the page they'll just copy and paste the address. (If I find the article, I'll post it.) I personally have always just copied the address of the page and posted it. e.g., in Twitter of Google+. Plus, there are a lot of social media sites out there. You could support the most popular ones, but then you alienate users from the other sites. Or, you could try to support all of them, but then that gets ugly and/or annoying pretty quickly. IMO, since they just add clutter and are likely not to be used very often anyway... remove them.
If you feel they should be kept, for whatever reason, they should be moved to the bottom of the page. This makes more sense anyway (to me at least) because I prefer reading or seeing everything of interest on the page before sharing anyway. I don't go "Oh hey! That's an
awesome banner! I've totally gotta share this page!"
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“I'm going to punch DXGI in the face. Repeatedly.” ~Aras Pranckevicius
