Art Web Site Designs

[Semjaza]

As some of you may know, I spend most of my time on here making web sites. None of which ever get enough content to go anywhere... I mostly like just finishing the designs.

Anyway, I know I'm not the only one here that makes sites. I'd like to see some others from various members here. Meaning, you had to have done it yourself... I'm not interested in seeing a blog made from some other designer's template or whatever. Preferably stuff heavy on design, but whatever.

I have a few, I'll just start with the one I've been working on the past couple days. I wanted to make a comics based site originally... Just in terms of the graphics. I started off with X-Statix, but that never went through. Instead I looked into Golden Age crime comics... most of the images I used are at [url]www.crimeboss.com[/url].

Golden Age crime comics (and even before that age) are generally really horrible in terms of content. They're not worth reading. What is cool about them though are the covers. They're often very detailed, and some are [i]incredibly[/i] violent, especially considering many go back to the 40s and such. The site has plenty to check out, it's worth the time.

I thought the name fit the comics idea... plus it just sounds rather weird. On top of that it's one of my Marilyn Manson songs. A triple threat! heh


[IMG]http://www.slownerveaction.org/interweb/wip5.jpg[/IMG]

This is basically how it looks right now. The site itself is linked in my sig, if you want to check it out. I mostly made use of layers and iframes.

I spent a good deal of time just removing various characters from their backgrounds. I played around with the halftone filter to make that comic ink looking effect, which did exactly what I wanted it to. Honestly, I hate Photoshop... but what can you do.

The top banner is random, and I plan on making more. It's just various comic covers with stupid inside jokes I stuck in. Bonus points to anyone who knows where "Mmm... Pistol Whip" is from.

The background is from a comic. I actually did quite a bit of editing to it that isn't obvious. The street curb had to be redone, I had to remove a signature and a few other things... then I blurred it out of focus so it looks like it is in the distance.

I made some more side characters as well... I might stick them in from time to time. They all look a bit jagged because I had to make them into transparent GIFs so my layering idea would work.

[img]http://www.slownerveaction.org/wip/images/model_pearltheif.gif[/img]
[img]http://www.slownerveaction.org/wip/images/model_tiedup.gif[/img]
[img]http://www.slownerveaction.org/wip/images/model_gunman.gif[/img]

They basically go where the girl with the gun is now.

Site logo thing:
[img]http://www.slownerveaction.org/wip/images/wiplogo.gif[/img]

Again, slightly jagged because I wanted it transparent... it doesn't really let you easily do nice fadeouts through Photoshop unless you want to spend a long time (and I don't).
---------------

So, all in all, about 4 days worth of work from start to finish. Most of it done in about 7 or 8 hours total, I'd estimate... that's counting graphics and coding.

So yeah, any comments would be nice. I'll post some more older and newer sites eventually.

I'd really like to see other people's sites too... so feel free to post yours in here. I was told this was the forum to do this thread in, so just go ahead.

Edit - Oh yeah... It's basically a blog site. I'm restructuring Slow Nerve Action, and putting the blog on this page instead. Seems a bit more focused this way.

I'll be moving over my posts later, and resuming new posts tonight (yay for all the people who complain I never update -- you won!).

[Mitch]

[size=1]Well, looks great, Tony. I am taking Computer Programming next year...maybe that will help me get more into this stuff. Don't know. O.o.

Yeah. Seriously, you could make a career out of this..which I guess is what you're probably going to do anyways. You're just really great with computer art stuff..so of course I love these. They have an entirely comic book feel to them, which is great.[/size]

[wrist cutter]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Mitch [/i]
[B]Well, looks great, Tony. I am taking Computer Programming next year...maybe that will help me get more into this stuff. Don't know. O.o.
[/B][/QUOTE]

Computer programming, assuming it's the same at my school, won't cover any web stuff. You'll learn how to make Craps games instead of websites, heh.

Anyway, I've made a few layouts in my day. They're all linked to screen captures I took of them, so some gradients come out looking kinda crappy.

[url=http://jikannohizumi.hypermart.net/nihongo/gallery/galleryfom.jpg]fragment of memory[/url]
This is my only layout that doesn't use frames of some sort. It's always one of my favorites, I just sort of like the way it laid out. The background image actually looked a bit better than that. It was edged right up against the left side of the screen, so there was a big white gap to the right if you have a resolution bigger than 800x600.

[url=http://jikannohizumi.hypermart.net/nihongo/gallery/galleryyubikiri.jpg]YUBIKIRI[/url]
Probably my favorite layout. I try to avoid using black backgrounds, because they're so overused anymore, but what can I say, they just look so cool heh. Overall, this layout just worked really well... and it had little hide gifs at the end of every update, which makes it better than all the rest by default.

[url=http://jikannohizumi.hypermart.net/nihongo/gallery/galleryflower.jpg]flower[/url]
This was going to be used for a fanlisting but someone beat me and already had a L'Arc~en~Ciel fanlisting, the bastard. So this never got used, but I like it. The members picture on the right loaded a random member each time, so you got someone different everytime you came. This was the first layout in which I really went crazy with the CSS too, now that I use it all the time.

[url=http://jikannohizumi.hypermart.net/nihongo/gallery/gallerymusichour.jpg]MUSIC HOUR[/url]
My latest work, I don't like this one very much. It was hard to work with the rainbow theme... and the end result is just kinda corny (and the rainbow theme is from WORLDILLIA, I'm not gay >_>;). This is another fanlisting, you can see Transtic Nerve and I are the only two members heh (it's not open yet anyway). Again, the background image doesn't really look so crappy. It's just the screen capture.

[img]http://jikannohizumi.hypermart.net/nihongo/gallery/mainpage.jpg[/img]

This is the "splash image". I just like it.

I also have a website, [url=http://haruka.vze.com]LOVE STATION[/url]. Again, black background. But generally I just played around with this, it wasn't supposed to be a real marvelous thing though I do think it looks pretty cool in the end here. My [url=http://jikannohizumi.hypermart.net/crap/index.html]CD Collection[/url] site also looks pretty cool, but it's not much of a design layout or anything.

[unique.identity]

I designed [url]http://www.unikue.net[/url] (my site)

And helped with [url]http://www.cubeix.com[/url] (not up at teh moment) I did the entire forum redesign.

[Semjaza]

There has to be more than just us three. I know of a few others here that design sites offhand.

wrist cutter - I've seen a few of these before. Specifically fragment of a memory. I also remember the CD collection. I liked how every other cell was clear. Not a huge deal, but it creates a cool effect. It doesn't seem like many people do their tables like that.

I think I like LOVE STATION the most. Makes good use of pink shades heh.


----

Unikue is cool too. Very clean. You need some content though heh. I see you're relaunching soon though.

[terra]

Ah, the first time I glanced at this thread I thought it was just for [i]your[/i] website design. Which, by the way, I really love. Gives you plenty of space and has a great retro feel. Though I've never thought I'd have a use for the little windows like the three you have on the side ... Well, you use them, so whatever :p.

Unfortunately, I couldn't see any of your links, wrist cutter ... they all give me a 404 error.

unikue.net is nice and streamlined ... Like Tony said, you do need some content. :p

Anyway, I design websites, but they're all very simple. Actually I got a job designing the computing websites for my school this summer, but I'm too embarrassed to show those, hehe. Here's a screenshot the current layout of my personal website, which is mainly a blog. The picture is a picture of me that I took and turned into vector art. (I guess this is the closest to a picture of me I've posted on the forum as well ... Although when most of my friends saw it, they were just like, "Who's that Native American girl?" ...)

[img]http://pantheon.yale.edu/~elc23/fun/screenshot.gif[/img]

[Semjaza]

I've not seen you before, so I dunno heh. Look more asian to me, but I cannot tell for sure heh. I like the design, personally. It looks like you did it in Illustrator?

About the iframes... the funny thing was that long ago I thought I'd never use them. If you look around at most blogs, they make use of so many of the damn things that it drives you insane.

However, for this site... I didn't know what else I could really do. If I wanted to put a decent amount of information in each box, it would never fit. If I made the text an image like a lot of people do, it would be a pain to update. I figured this was the best route.

I wanted a single page for once lol.

[wrist cutter]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by terra [/i]
[B]Unfortunately, I couldn't see any of your links, wrist cutter ... they all give me a 404 error. [/B][/QUOTE]

Bleh. All the images are fine, it's just that hypermart isn't working right now... wait awhile and you'll be able to see all my pretty layouts OK.

[terra]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Semjaza Azazel [/i]
[B]I've not seen you before, so I dunno heh. Look more asian to me, but I cannot tell for sure heh. I like the design, personally. It looks like you did it in Illustrator?

About the iframes... the funny thing was that long ago I thought I'd never use them. If you look around at most blogs, they make use of so many of the damn things that it drives you insane.
[/B][/QUOTE]

Hehe, yeah, I am Asian ... though my skin isn't that dark anymore.

Anyway, I did the picture in Photoshop, manually selecting each piece of the photo with the relatively same color and dying them. Yeah, that took a while. But it was fun :p. Layout was done in Notepad, of course.

The first time I saw iframes I thought they were such a cute idea, I immediately wanted to put them in [i]some[/i] website, yet I still haven't found a use for them so far ... Yours fit really well and are functional, so that's good.

Unfortunately Hypermart is still down, wrist cutter, I'll try another day :). I did go see LOVE STATION though, it's nice. I've always loved the combination of black and pink.

[Semjaza]

Well, in a desperate attempt to save this thread I'll post another site.. This one originally started as a few comments between Charles and I. One day I just showed it to him. He didn't seem to think I'd actually bother to make it, at least not to the degree I had.

1-Up Gaming was the name. It pretty much always looked like its current incarnation, but I did edit quite a bit of it... mostly so it didn't look so Nintendo-centric.

I learned a few new things with this site... mostly how damn imporant CSS is. I went back and redid all my other sites in CSS thanks to this page. I also learned some new stuff with PHP, which was nice. Some new Movable Type tricks as well.

I think it turned out rather well. It has let to truly launch though. Charles, Rob and Zidargh all provided content, but eventually I think we all just became too busy. What is finished is up though (namely the review and hardware sections), and there are actually a few pages to read.

[url]http://www.slownerveaction.org/1up/news.php[/url]

You'll need to go there to get the full effect. If you didn't notice, the banner at the top is totally random. I made about 180 of the things heh.