Graphics Done for Omari’s Sister Refresh

I took extra care with the pink flowers on the bushes.  By ungrouping all elements completely, I was able to articulate the details of the flowers with shadows.  It adds nice texture to the image.

Here’s a link to a larger image.

I like the way the scenery wraps around the info frame, moving from water to land to sky.  I wonder will other people follow the path of viewing I had in mind.

Mock-Up of Mobile Version of Translation Website

Here’s what I have in mind for the mobile version of Omari’s Sister Translations.  I designed these on a 320×480 px canvas to match the size of the screen on a iPhone.   I will use a liquid layout for these pages.

Mock up Omari's Translations Mobile Webpages

Mock up of a manga page

I thought about what I would want in a mobile experience and all I would want to do is read the manga.  So I stripped out everything accept for the manga.  I made the header small and made a scaled down version of the logo.  I felt maintaining the header was important to reinforcing the Omari’s Sister brand (yep, I’m serious, even though it sounds silly). I will have to crunch the logo to a small file size so load time is brief.  It will be divide into 3 parts — the flower, at small strip of the yellow pattern to be used as a repeatable background, and the text will be part of the html/css.   I put next chapter link at the bottom so it’s like turning a page and I put a link back to home so the user can choose to read another series or select a different chapter.  I also put chapter navigation on the right so the user doesn’t have to go to the home page to select a chapter within the same manga series.

Hopefully, I will have the pages done today, but only as a demo.

Lovely Items

“Lovely Items” is a concept that I got from years of watching anime and reading manga.  It’s the idea that a character needs a lovely item to endear them to the other characters within the story and with the viewing audience.  There’s a good discussion of this in “Ouran High School Host Club” in which the Host club tries to make the son of a yakuza boss more approachable.   The idea of a lovely item can be as abstract as a personality quirk and as concrete as a signature piece of jewelry.   In essence, a lovely item is something that gives an object or and individual a distinct personality and facilitates approachability.   And so, that is what I want to do with my Lovely Items website.  I want to share the lovely little graphics that I make with who ever wants them so they can add some personality and friendliness to whatever web or print project they are doing.

This idea was born out of a little discussion I had with my Dad last week.  I had just finished redoing my personal website and I was feeling very empowered.  I wanted to do more work on websites and expressed to him that I’m willing to do it voluntarily for the experience.  Our concern, though, had to do with my “cute affliction” in that if I can’t get passed it, the range of customers I can design for will be limited.  My feeling is practice, practice … but at the same time, I should get the most out my cute affliction and develop it.  So here are some short term and long term goals for myself with this website:

1. Give away lovely graphic items I design for web and print (practice makes perfect and spread the joy while building a portfolio and credibility as a designer).
2. Do some voluntary design work — web, print, and vanity books to get experience and recognition
3. On a limited basis take on web, print, and vanity book projects for actual paying customers.

This is something that I would like to do on the side while having full-time career.  I figured that now while I’m looking for a job and while jobs are scarce I should use the time to learn new skills and develop my innate talents.  I would love to do this sort of thing, too, for a company, focusing on the usability and visual appeal of web, web-to-print, and print-to-web projects.

So please stay tuned as my Lovely Items adventure begins.  One of my good friends suggested that I start by making some lovely wallpapers for mobile devices like the iPhone and cell phones … .

www.lovely-items.com coming soon to bring loveliness one pixel at a time.

Omari’s Sister Website Update Done

Well, I finally did it!  I completely re-did my personal website.  I used Dreamweaver and all the fancy new tricks I just learned in the class I am taking.  I also learned how to use the new Adobe website tool, “Fireworks.”  It’s a tool that should be apart of Dreamweaver that can be used to mock up website graphics really fast.  Other tools I used were Illustrator for the title graphics and the flowers in the menu bar, Flash to generate the graphics for the menu and to create all of the galleries, and Fireworks for the content graphics.  I absolutely LOVE the way it turned out .  I’m so proud of myself.  I feel now I can take on any personal or small business advertising website design assignment.  Now onto expanding my knowledge of javascript and some server side scripting so I can start putting together more complete solutions.  Anyhow, check it out!

Link

Snowball’S World is Live

Check it out!  It took me a total of ~12-hours from blank sheet of paper to website.  Most of the time was spent prepping the photos in Photoshop.  I had to fix the color, crop them, crank down the resolution, and resize the images to fit within the browser window and to reduce the overall file sizes.  I also did a little “magic” to some of the pictures.  Since this was part of an assignment, I had to do some goofy things I wouldn’t do  like use tables.  I’ve very pleased with the way it turned out given the boundaries of the assignment.   (I’m so glad I know Flash!!!)   Here’s a link.  Enjoy getting to know my guinea better and some more of my incessant cuteness.

Flash Assignment #4: Interactive Flash Website

Okay, here it is.  Due to the constraints of the assignment, I had to add sound and animation.  Without those requirements, I wouldn’t have added the bee’s movement or the butterfly noise — I think that stuff is a little much.  Some of the pages are blank because they aren’t planned yet.  I’m also impressed that with all the stuff going on, the file is only 70KB!   Enjoy!

Link