Moving Forward with Portfolio Homepage

I’m finally moving forward on the homepage for my porfolio.  Here’s what the current Mock-up looks like:

The frame is composed of very small tiled images, so text I turned into an image to preserve the effects, and two Flash elements.   Here’s a link to play with the left menu Flash Element:

Link (Click away, but it’s not connected to anything yet.) I will do a a couple of little Javascript rollovers for the Contact me link and the link back to omarissister.com.  I could do the same thing for the Flash elements, but I’m a little worried about responsiveness and I can make the elements look “slicker” in Flash.  I’m still not happy with middle, but I have the text I want convey there as a place holder.

I decided not to fight my innate style and go with the colorful construction paper/childlike arts and craft look.  I suppose, I really would like to design websites that cater to the young and folks that like cute rather than design sterile looking “businessy” website. Still, though, I don’t want to be pigeon-holed.

After this, I need to redo my translation website into something with more punch, pink, and playfulness.  I also need to accommodates my scanlations.  It would be nice if I made an embedded reader so folks can’t easily download and then upload my work without my permission.  Plus, it will be easier for the folks that visit my website.

Sigh … I’ve got a lot of work to do.  But it should be all down hill with respect to my portfolio once I get the frame into HTML/CSS.  Because the site will be modular, I can then just plug in the different elements I’ve already made.

Fireworks has been a great tool to Mock-up the websites and to create the graphic elements.  It has some nice file saving features that allowed me get the images into very small file sizes (some of them are less than 1KB!!!) while balancing image quality.  I like it for this purpose more than Photoshop.

Portfolio Mock-Ups: Version 3

I’m back to designing my portfolio again.  I’ve learned some new Flash/ActionScript tricks and I’m going to apply them.  I’ve decided to stay with my colorful style, and use my portfolio work to show I can do subdued also.   I will reuse the Flash gallery I made for my paintings and drawings.  I have yet to come up with basic layout for the wallpaper and vector art galleries.  Those pages will have downloadable content.  Here’s what I’ve got for the home page and the basic layout for the Web Design and Flash galleries.

ZHD Info Site — Buttons Better

I played around with the navigation bar until I got something that blended in more with the scene and the nature of the web site content (fits the story more).  I feel the new nav bar is less obstructive while clearly being present.  I cut the height of the bar nearly in half and changed the button font and colors (I think the earlier nav bar felt like something for a SD Charger’s website — hahaha!!!)  So here it is.

Eeked out v3 Very Early this Morning

I managed to eek out another turn of the ZHD Info site very early this morning.  All I did make the intro movie match the interactive part of the website.  I need to work on the buttons more, but I think I’m at a place where I can begin porting elements into Flash.  I’m also improving the intro narration.

With respect to the buttons, I think they don’t fit in well with the overall theme of the story or the webpage.  I guess I feel they are not delicate.  I haven’t imagined yet what kind of buttons would look better, so I’m going with this because it’s relatively quick and easy to to swap button images in and out of Flash.

ZHD Info Site Story Board

Here’s the first go at the ZHD Info site board boards.  Updated the main character page.  It’s getting better, but it still needs work.  It may be easier to do this in flash so I can experience the interactive elements.

Playing with the Lovely Items Prototype and Exploring Turnkey E-merchant Options

Fireworks, so far, has been a great tool to use to design the layout for the Lovely Items website.  I made a 3-page prototype complete with links to get a feel for how it will look and navigation.  So far I’ve discovered that I don’t like navigation at the bottom of the page, the red motif distracts from the items, and the gallery has too much emphasis on horizontal.  I like the cherry blosson motif for the main theme though, so I think I’ll see how I can work it without having the theme detract from the contents.

One another note, I’ve been doing some preliminary research into turnkey e-merchart options.  So far I’ve looked at services from Amazon, Yahoo, and Paypal.  The Amazon service looks like it would be the easiest to implement and it has some nice features to the help the business manage inventory.   This is probably the best option to protect the merchants and buyers from fraud, plus, the merchant shows up in Amazon searches which means they will have access to a huge available customer base.  The big draw back is the cost at $60/mo plus 7% commission and the Terms of Service which basically says “What’s Yours is Amazon’s” and Amazon can give your artwork and code to  anyone it wants.  There are also limitations with respect to what you can sell.  Basically,  Amazon makes it difficult for e-merchants to undercut Amazon on items that Amazon sells.   I couldn’t really tell what Yahoo was offering other than it being cheaper than Amazon.  Paypal has a a few different options that range from hosting e-commerce directly on the merchant’s website to having all purchases routed to Paypal via an API.  There’s also an option that looks like an hybrid in which the merchant’s customer is routed to Paypal only at the time of purchase.  It seems that Paypal is interested in skimming the pennies off each transaction through credit card service fees rather than from hosting the service all together.  My current inclination is to explore the Paypal options more thoroughly.  I also plan to check out the offerings from Go Daddy and maybe give Yahoo a second look.

You are probably asking what it is that I want to sell … hahaha … beyond the stated potential services … I do have my eye on something else as well .  My goal is to have this all going by the end of October independent of whether I’m employed (dear God I hope I’m employed by then…)

Anyhow, for now I will be concentrating on tightening up my HTML for searchability (doing a pretty good job so far ;p) and continuing to learn PHP and Javascript.  BTW:  Google will find Flash Objects if you make good use of the alternate text and naming the SWF.

Using the Ladybug

Here is some wallpaper I made for my little iPhone using the ladybug I made earlier this week.  I made the leaves tonight.

I’ve always liked ladybugs with “farm checks” in the background, so I did a few different versions to see how it would look.  I’m still playing with the construction paper look and this looks very cut out.  The leaves sorta look like the veins were drawn with a fat Sharpy.   It looks like bad craft after eating too much paste — haha!!!  I think, though, when combined with the farm checks, it’s cute.  Feel free to grab them if you want.