Final Porfolio Homepage Mock-Up

I’m now in the process of creating the graphics from this mock-up and setting up the basic webpage structure.  Most of this will become a template for the other pages in the site.  I think this captures my colorful and playful spirit.  It should really come to life when the Flash is active.  It’s been a real struggle for me to let loose my true spirit.  I think my playfulness is my strength and that I really would rather work on playful sites rather than serious.  I don’t know how this will work out career wise, but I believe I should follow my heart and express my true nature.  This has also taking me a lot longer than I anticipated, but I think needed to take my time and dig deep into my soul.  A big part of me is eternally a child and I should treasure that wonderful part of myself .

When I get done will this, I will completely redo my translation website to showcase my fan-art and fan translation hobby.  I think I really should go “bold” like a manga magazine.  I imagine this will take me a while to do, so I consider my project for 2010.

Getting Closer on the Portfolio Homepage

I felt the center panel looked way too plain, so I added a picture.  This drawing of cat contains a big part of my spirit — playful and a little wicked ;p.  It also reinforces my strengths as a designer.  I’m learning to embrace my cute affliction, so I feel like I should let it loose.  I feel that this is getting closer to something  I like and it will do for now so I can get to doing other parts of my portfolio site.

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.

Mock-up Gallery for Displaying Wallpaper

Here’s what I have so far.

Most of the wallpaper I make is in widescreen format, so the vertical menu would not work as well as a horizontal menu.  The question is which technology shall I use.  I can make effects easier with Flash, but if I use Javascript, then I can make it more extendable and automated.  I think in this case, I will try the javascript approach and have some fun playing with visibility.  For selection, I will do a simple border.  It should be a nice exercise.  I will start planning the code tomorrow.

Porfolio Mock-Up: Version 6 — A Gradient

It’s subtle.  I’m not sure about this yet.  It does seem to help the to bottom balance more.

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.

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 v2

I thought the original concept for the info pages looked too much like Power Point Slides, so I redesigned the basic look to something like a fancy picture frame and I made the main page look more dramatic.

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.

ZHD Info Site Mock-Up

I’m working my way back to doing my portfolio.  I’ve been spending lots of time looking at websites at Design Meltdown to get some inspiration.  I’ve also got some new Actionscript tricks up my sleeve to increase the possibilities.  My biggest stumbling block remains, though.  I need to maintain my style without letting the background overwhelm the work I want to present.

But before I get back to my portfolio, I must complete another project first.   This website will be an interactive informational website for “Zettai Heiwa Daisakusen.”  I decided not to do the website completely in Flash because of the “back button” problem.  So I will use the same strategy as “Snowball’s World” and embed separate Flash swf’s into HTML/CSS (and maybe some Javascript to preload assets and redirect folks on mobiles that don’t support Flash).  There will be 5 pages in total on this site.  I’m doing some mock-ups now to help me lay things out.  Here’s what I’ve got so far.  The site will intro with a little animation that gives the basic outline of the story and end with link to the main navigation page.  Here are the beginning and end of the sequence (It goes from a movie to an invitation).