My main ideas and intentions that I was trying to express in the project were:
To develop a comic book themed website that gave viewers the illusion of reading an open comic book on-screen, to place as much content as possible in the constraints of comic book style boxes to reinforce the idea of reading an open comic book. Through using the themes of comic books, superheroes and hand drawn art, I was hoping to represent myself immediately as an animator, creating a contrast between the rawest form of animation ‘traditional’ and the more modern 3D computer animation in which I specialise in. To create a website which had a creative design flare and was aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but which also maintained simplistic elements in terms of an easy to use navigation, understandable language, good communication and a constant layout. Finally the main aim was to grab the attention of future employee’s, to represent myself as ‘not just another designer’, using taglines, logos, biographies, blogs, portfolios and suggestive buttons to hopefully impress viewers enough to contact me for possible future work.
The methods I use to develop my ideas were: (brainstorming, , visual research, storyboards etc)
To begin with I analysed various online portfolios to gather inspiration, there were two search categories, simplistic and creative. This allowed me to understand how online portfolios work; on one side I gathered ideas for making my portfolio unique and interesting while on the other I learnt how to keep my site understandable and easy to use. Next I went about deciding what elements my portfolio would incorporate; I found an interesting online tutorial entitled ‘The 10 golden rules of successful portfolios’, which I followed closely, I selected features from this tutorials which I could use, features such as using taglines, logos, blogs and biographies. Later I created a mood board of my interests and feelings at the time, this provided me with recurring themes, colours and fonts I would use to create the main concept for my site. Next I decided to compile a board of popular logos and taglines to see what stood out and made a lasting market impact. As I was going with a comic book theme I had the idea of researching existing comic book pages for layout ideas, I would use the comic boxes size and positioning to create my own custom layout for my content. Once I’d decided everything I wanted to include In my site I created a wireframe to visually represent these ideas, I used this to reference while producing, so I didn’t go off track. Finally various other online tutorials were used along the way, varying from Photoshop effects to Online hosting.
I took a risk by trying something new. (Explain):
Well basically everything about this project was new to me, I’d never used Dreamweaver properly before and had very little web design knowledge. But if you’re talking about the most daring thing I attempted which deviated from the lecture basics, I would have to say using JavaScript for my pop-up video gallery. I had to use code found on the internet and customise it to my requirements, It took some time to develop and before long it had become a large part of my project and I was unable to turn back. Luckily I fixed some errors in the code and was able to present my pop-up gallery as I desired.
Some of the unexpected problems I had to solve while working were:
I faced varied problems throughout, these included; I couldn’t find suitable pictures to use on the internet, div tags going out of position on different browsers and monitors, custom fonts not working on other computers, internet explorer not displaying my website and the positioning of content in an unconventional way.
The decisions and choices I made to help solve these problems were:
For not being able to find suitable pictures to use on the internet, specifically an open comic book for my background image, I decided to collect multiply comic books and magazines to scan into my computer. There was a lot of trial and error but ultimately I got my custom desired look. For my div tags positioning wrong, I had to research a solution on the internet, I finally discover that I had to use relative positioning on my container tag to correct the problem. Likewise with the internet explorer problem, I found information online to correct it. I had to replace the custom fonts with web-safe fonts for accessibility. As some of my content is positioned using absolute I had to change certain values you wouldn’t usually have to, I improvised and used extra padding to display background images.
The things I have learnt from this particular project were: (Specific examples should be cited.)
I have learnt that it is extremely important to actually realise what the code means and does, as Dreamweaver did a lot of the coding for me, It was difficult to understand what’s actually did what, It was especially bad when I encounter a problem and had no way of knowing how to identify it. That creating an online identity is crucial in today’s society; getting yourself out there and branding yourself will get you noticed and open up possibilities for future work. I have learnt some core design skills in visual language, including the importance of repetition, contrast, colour and similarity. Finally I now understand the Dreamweaver software at a beginner’s level, I am more confident in creating and working with web.
Areas for improvement , If I were to do this project again I would change or do differently:
To use a more conventional way of positioning, my method is unstable and may not work on all monitors and browsers, I would have researched wright from the beginning to avoid this problem and discovered the proper way in which to achieve my desired positions. To add some kind of mailing features, so the user can simply click on my email address or a section and be transported straight to a text box to send to me, this would eliminate the need for a viewer to copy and paste information. Finally I would reduce some of my image sizes and change some file types to increase download speeds.
A new project that might grow out of my experience maybe:
I am thinking about developing a business website for my Dads building company.
