Drakenhart Studios

Loylaty & Liberty is Killing me!!

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:20:33 GMT

Newest comic has been updated! ARGH, cliffhanger!!!!!

:)

Oh we all well know Daddy isn't going to say yes. In fact he looks down right angry. But then if you've read up to this point you know it's going to happen. But the Tension that Meezer puts into this piece just sets my heart a flutter!

*swoons!*

What's going to happen next?! OH! I can't wait!!! No fair. ;)

Heh.

On other news, I've been mocking up a few more Carousel creations and contemplating starting a Carousel lovers Blog. Hrmmn, but I'd need article writers, researchers, and more to post their thoughts. I don't want it to be JUST a fan site, I want it to be informative, factual and filled with people of the same love! :) Ooooh! But I need monies, and time, and and and... I MUST get my website DONE!!

First!!

Carousel Horse Proportions...

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:48:19 GMT

There were three major styles wherein the proportions of the Carousel horse were either further from the normal equine proportions or closer to them.

Now mind you every breed of horse is different, and has different proportions to itself. Generally speaking Throughbreds have longer legs then Mustangs, where as Drafts have shorter backs.

Real Equine Anatomy.
Book reference
Another one.
Very detailed, Old master style
Another one still

(( More to come when I reboot my machine. ))

So Carousels are my new Obsession!

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:03:39 GMT

If you haven't seen my latest posts check them out. I've been making people into carousel figures. :)

But since I'm a fan of doing things "right", as it were, I've been doing more and more research! Of course I find that there is no realy Carousel website that isn't designed as if the people were from 1999. Like no kidding. Urgh.

Not to mention, omg, it is so HARD to find info about them online!

How ever I did dig up a few articles that I'm posting here as much as for my benefit as yours. ;)

Searching: Carousel Horse Proportions.

"A carousel horse is not an exact anatomical model of a horse, but a caricature, rather like
a doll. Just as a doll's proportions vary from a real person's, carousel horse proportions will vary
from a real horse's proportions. […] An exact replica of a horse would be very bulky, with a
massive, muscular body, and an apparently disproportionate, small head, and skinny legs.
Carousel horse proportions are modified, much like those of a doll, to make the head and neck
larger and more visually appealing." (Anderson 137-138)

* Also from this article I learned that Carousel horses are hollow to allow for a lighter weight, ease of moving them when they were broken down, and to allow the wood room to move with the humidity. Wow. Just Wow.

This was from the article, Paragon Carousel in Nantasket Beach in Hull, Massachusetts an ORIGINAL that has been saved a number of times. I wonder if it's still operational now?
* True Carousel horses were colored normal colorations. "Park paint", or the unnatural colors on natural animals (like bright green horses) are those paint jobs that were hasty repairs on the park owner's behalf. This happened when the parks didn't care for, or they just didn't have the right people or supplies to fix damaged animals.

Of course Wikipedia has all kinds of information!
Carousel Horse

Random older website with a history of Carousels, including Dentzel, a Philadelphia based company.
A History

A Glossary of terms.
Prancer
Leaper
Standing

Life Size Carving vs Copy of an Antique, Another copy(Stander), Another Copy (Stander),

This one is also an Antique and comes with a series of photographs showing the proportions, width, and general size of the pony.

Dentzel company site?

I found the episode of "How It's made" in bad quality. The portion is at 5: 38 on the video time line. Wish I had a better copy of it. :(
How It's Made
Found a better version! 5:52
* Europe turned clockwise, American carousels turned counterclockwise.
* Carousel Horse Eyes are Round rather then Oval.
* They are half the height of a real horse. So they have shorter legs!
* The Feet are life size however, and they attach real horse shoes to them. :)

A Carousel made of of a variety of horses from different companies. A quicl mock up on American styled Carousel horses.

A Note about a lead horse, and a note about a still functioning(?) Still fully intact Carousel in RI!

And an older website that holds a ton more information!

Long Time no Update

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:10:43 GMT

I've been very busy.

But for fun, check these WIPs out. :)

I was looking through DevArt and saw someone who made a MLP pony body into what looked to be a Carousel poneh. I was done. I started reasearching carousels and carousel poney's.

My first attempt was to Poneh-ize (use the MLP character design) my personal character.
Drakenhart as a Carousel Poneh

After that I started to do a few of my friends. I have plans for a Meezer Carousel kitteh. Muahahha. I just need to do a little more research!

Here's two that I've gotten done.

Carousel Fen
Carousel Nar_butt_fox

Then while talking with Fen about stuff..... She said something about the little river godlings from Spirited Away. :) We both have the "hawts" for the anime character dragon (It's just an awesome design!) But she doesn't like the "chicken feet" style of the character. heh.

So this was born.

Updates

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 04:24:03 GMT

As I pull my head from the sand as it were and breath fresh Air, I realized how long I've been away from here. Oops!

Well I've uploaded and installed Word Press.... and didn't have a design in mind for my site. Why?

Focus. I lack Focus. I have so many different experineces, and use them at different times that I feel fragmented. At first I wanted to start a Design Studio focusing on Website Design, Accessibility, SEO, SMO, and other such Consultation (Oh I've gotten quite the education in the last 6 months!). Then I find other buisiness that i LIKE ( and this hurts cause I then don't WANT to compete with them ) that does the same thing but more.

And I'm like... buh. Okay now what?

So I look at my design and sneer. What happens? I start to see the fouls in it and want to scrap it for something else. *head desk* So I need help. I'm asking my desgin buddies here on LJ to give me some crits. Be brutal as you want. I want to improve, I want to debate my ideas to find the holes in my logic, I want to be challenged.

Leave a message here if you want in on this. I NEED to get my site up and running!! So I can stop worrying about it!

Focus - Webdesign needs.

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:40:15 GMT

Still working on a focus for Drakenhart-Studios.

The Design is going slowly, as the more I learn the more things have to change to fix it and make it more usable. SEO work keeps me aware of what I need to fix in order for my site to rank high. High-rankings = more traffic... But oddly enough more traffic and back links = better rankings. *sighs*

So Focusing on what I want is very important. What I seem to find is that I need to diversify and grab other url's, split the site into its separate sections. But how to divide?

Illustrations as a separate section isn't a bad idea. Animation and Motion Graphics could feasibly be combined into one section, but at the same time they could be divided off as well. Design has its various subcatagories: Web, Graphic, Tradeshow (Graphics), and Business Identity, to name a few. *ponders*

Then there is the aspect I'd love to add to my sites, the updates of my art journal. If I could do that by tag rather then all at once as a typical rss feed-reader offers, that would be amazing!! :)

So what should be the focus of Drakenhart-Studios? Web Design? Graphic Art of all kinds? A splash or jump page to the separate sections?

I've hmmn and hawed over this for a while. The url itself doesn't lend much to SEO, or a Focus for that matters. A Studio is by definition one of several things. An artist work space for one, a place where films are made for a second, and a type of small apartment that has most everything all in one or two rooms.

It rather fits what I'm about at this stage in some ways. Small business with everything under one person. My show case of my personal works, updates, notes, and information. And..., well okay so I'm not a film studio, but I do animation work as well.

So what to do?

Focusing is very hard work, especially if you have more then one specialty of ability. But one thing I caution, is to find that niche and try. Though you may be skilled in multiple abilities doesn't mean you'll be great at them all. Even if you are businesses may not like that, as they see you as being too far spread thin. Businesses like specialists for the most part.

So I've decided to focus Drakenhart-studios into a specialists site for webdesign that caters to creative artist types. To give them the freedom to focus on their art while I make frames for their online folio. I will have my other Galleries (until they get enough meat for themselves to become their own sites), but they will be secondary.

:)

Span and Div tags

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:37:30 GMT

Nesting div tags can sometimes give rise to problems with the overflow acting goofy. The example being when you have a single div acting as a "container" for other divs - where in the container div has been formated aligned, and given specific heights or widths - this some how causes the other divs' content (normally text, but this can be a graphic or other such content as well) to overflow and "break" the border.

This is beacuse for some odd reason the outer div tag doesn't expand with the inner div tag's content. logically it should, but it doesn't.

Many designers use div tags in place of other html or xml mark up. Some use it to entirely replace tables. But they don't expand the way tables do. So in some cases designers are forced to use tables where they normally wouldn't use them.

It is a design nightmare.

There are a few ways that I have found that can fix this.

One is to not use divs inside of each other like that. Change some of the internal divs into span ex: < span></ span> tags instead. You can use a "container" div and inside of it use the span tags for other content positioning. Or even better, just make use of the ability to position individual elements ex: < p></ p>, < em ></ em>, < i > </ i>, etc through the use of CSS and limit the number of divs you use for positioning and design.

It will also save you a headache later when trying to find what tag didn't get closed.

Another way I have discovered seems to involve labeling the tag of display as a table instead. Thus giving the div (or other tags it seems) the qualities of a table. o.O

http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-CSS21-20070719/visuren.html#display-prop
http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-CSS21-20070719/tables.html#table-display

This is now causing havoc with my transparent background trick. In order to get the transparency to not cause the rest of the content to become transparent also... I have to place the element behind everything else. Putting it inside the container div STILL causes things to go transparent even in the other browsers. It is very odd.

There is no way to get it to "skin" the background, that I've found, purely as Css. Maybe using a javascript element it might work. As of right now using the trans div needs to be done on something that has a fixed height and width so that you can copy the container div's CSS to the transparent div's CSS (and add the transparency snippets). So this would work better for menus then for body content.

Le Sigh.

Laughter Makes You Smarter!

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:19:53 GMT

Heh. :) Go ahead and try not to laugh.

~~

And to add to the fun:

On the twelfth day of Christmas, draken_art sent to me...

Twelve slayers hellsing

Eleven tattoos roleplaying

Ten anthros a-creating

Nine animations cartooning

Eight xanatos a-gaming

Seven anthropomorphs a-reading

Six males a-drawing

Five ani-i-i-imated movies

Four werewolf movies

Three art trades

Two kingdom hearts

...and a goth in an allegory.

The Artist's Way.

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:02:13 GMT

The Artist's Way A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron.

A couple of years ago when my son was still very small and portable, I took a trip to Rode Island. On my way back I stopped to visit my good college sister, Erin. We went to a Borders and we chatted, drew, talked, and explored the passing of our lives and what had happened to us since the last time we met.

She spotted my crippled artistic soul and suggested this book to me. Skeptical at first I raised an eyebrow until she began to extol its virtues and how much it helped her artistically. Please keep in mind, Erin has always been a wonderfully creative person, but had so many blocks and stresses in her life that she eventually began to give up on the inside and stopped producing anything but squiggles and doodles.

I had seen her improvement myself when I was visiting. As she attributed it to this book I began to wonder. So I picked it up. I didn't really read it right away. So much in my own life was keeping my insanely busy. But the small portion in the beginning caught my attention.

But as with many things artistic, I didn't finish it. Childern needs, house hold needs, life and emotional needs cropped up in looming and larger layer that threatened my ability to concentrate. I had quite taking comissions before this and was glad of it. At that time in my life, life was such chaos that nothing was getting done.

About a year after our move when we finally settled, I picked it up again and began reading it. Suddenly I began to have flashes of inspiration as I felt a weight of self doubt leave me.

So I began my journey.

Now I am in the midst of a serious re-design of my site, re-educating myself on the updated rules of CSS, and tweeking designs. The information I learn I've been sharing, both on a business front as well as a design front, because honestly they are interconnected.

I have begun planning animations, as in actually plotting out, and working on old past projects.

New drawings and small doodles are popping up in my sketchbooks, from site design doodles to actual creature doodles.

And I haven't even finished the book yet.

:)

Go, read, explore its pages. You'll be glad you did.

My Wishlist

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 06:34:44 GMT

Okay so this is more of a checklist of the things I wish to somehow obtain. I don't expect people to gift them to me, that'd be silly. ;) Many folks have helped me in the past in a lot tighter and more terrible situations, so I'm not going to actually ask for stuff.

Feh. Nah.

Below is a list of things I would like to eventually own or obtain. Some of them are dream-goals and may never be obtainable... but its good to dream.

~~

* A fifty pound bag of fifties. (I forget who said this before, but it's stuck with me.)
* My debt paid off in full. (Hey part of this economy's slump is -because- people can't pay their bills and debts so the companies go into debt. o.O)
* A House of my own. (Perferably my gram's farm.
* The fish-rancher business I had envisioned in High School. (Go ahead laugh. I have alwyas had a better time keep fish then any other creature!!)

* More time to do art.
* Less stress so I CAN do art.
* The ability to finish personal projects!!! *hisses at her own website*
* More focus and less distraction in general inside my own head. (Too many good ideas, not enough time/energy to write them all down!!)
* Finish more artwork. Sooner, Faster, better, neater, more awesome.

* A new Wacom tablet ( in progress? ).
* A nice, quality webcam (cheap animation tool). ;)

* Learn Belly dancing (Yeah Youtube!!)
* Improve my inking skill set (broaden out into different styles).
* Work on more colored art work.

** Self Improvement **

Div and CSS W3C Compliance.

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 20:22:07 GMT

Okay so in my effort to make my site as awesome as possible without using tables I have encountered a problem. Div's don't properly expand and surfing the net to find a solution hasn't come up with much. This "issue" seems to be a problem for a lot of designers.

Yet I see sites that use only divs.... Hrmmn.

Older versions of IE compensated for a div filling up. It would a read the "height width" as suggestions of a minimum. But newer versions of IE are more W3C compatible. It seems divs are not meant scale larger in the way we've become use to with tables, rather they adhere to what ever height and width you make for them.

Yet, even making all of my nested divs range to the 100% mark still causes issues.

See Images Below:

Some solutions I found:
* Check for floats in code above other divs. Use the Clear attribute in later coding.
* Check your height and widths and get rid of them in some instances. (Doesn't work on all browsers).
* Use tables instead. *head desk* *thud*

~~~~

So what to do? I broke down my code as before. I find this a tedious process but when I'm not seeing the code hiccup, sometimes it is easiet to open up notepad and cut out chucks of code (thus keeping them together), and pasting them with Tilde dividers between them for organizational needs.

This way as I re-construct what I was doing, I can -see- where the hiccup is happening. It is a lot like going back through your algebraic notations and math work step by step.

The Process:

* Trim out all sections and levels in groups associated together. (Footer elements as a group, design divs as a group, content areas as a group, transparent div bg, .)
* This leaves me with my "Container" div and my "content" div.

** Container is my positioning div. It holds the #content and the #footer.
< div id="#container">
< div id="#content">
< /div>
< /div>

This may or may not actually be a part of the problem. So the first test is to insert the "content" code into just the #Container. The content is a group of tags and other text medium set to test the look and feel of how it looks live. All sorts of various HTML markups, Headings, blockquotes, italics (I often use italics or bold tags instead of divs or paragraphs when working inside of groups of text. Sometimes instead I'll use span tags.)

So my initial attempt (without editing the .css:

#container {
height: 100%;
width: 70%;
background: none;
border: 3px black solid;
padding: 0px;
margin: 0 auto;
position: absolute;
top: 210px;
left: 90px;
z-index: 76;
}

I have the same problem. My text pokes outside of my div box. So then I add the clear: both attribute and take out the height: 100%.

#container {
clear: both;
width: 70%;
background: none;
border: 3px black solid;
padding: 0px;
margin: 0 auto;
position: absolute;
top: 210px;
left: 90px;
z-index: 76;
}

Okay now it is working at least in IE. So I check my other four browsers:

IE: ok
FF: ok
Op: ok
Ch: ok

Hrmmn.., so what does this say? Why does it do this? If I place the height as being 100% of the screen why doesn't it grow to fit?? Let's go looking: W3C CSS 2.1

It reads like VCR instructions but worse. *chuckles*

But I did find out a few very interesting things!!

On to experimenting~

So I have it working now. More or less, so let us add in the Footer. UhOh! It overlaps the bottom of the #container. Why?

You see the text itself is dictating the size, so since the < div id="footer">is a position: absolute; and aligned to the bottom of the div #container, it overlaps the text.

So then what if we make it a position: relative;? Nothing changes. Why? Again it is the text that is forcing the box container to resize!

BUT!! if we make BOTH the footer and the content position: relative; Then it works!! We have the content pushing the container box to as wide as we need it.

You could try placing the footer as a div outside of the container and making it relative, but this could have some unforseen issues as often this relates the footer to ALL the divs and their general sizes. So it may cause issues.

Another method perhaps, is somethign I discovered here: Table Display

You aren't using tables, per say, but making the elements behave like tables!!!

:)

Chrome and CSS

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 14:39:15 GMT

First Impression...

Chrome is "broken", picky, and buggy.

Why?

As I am working on my site I discover that the code which works in Opera, Fire Fox, and IE doesn't always work in Chrome. o.O Once I get the base html, xhtml, and CSS cleaned up and done I'm going to try and tweek it for chrome. It seems Chrome requires very strict styling, or to re-phrase, a very specific set of requirements to their coding.

A previous example I ran into before involved my transparent background. Where all the other browsers read it as it was meant to look, Chrome requires that every element has a z-index. Otherwise it automatically overlays things on top of everything else, rather then behind. It doesn't actually adhere to the "Cascade", or better yet the "Parent--> Child" logic that the other Browsers do.

So with this in mind I will try to poke about to see what is going on with the compatibility.

Why is this so important? Good designers know that cross-browser compatibility has been and will always be an issue as long as there are competing companies with their own browser program. Addtionally, Chrome is Google's answer to the "Browser Wars". Since Google is so popular, coming up with tons of widgets, free programs for websites and more "stuff", the inclusion of a free browser program in their offers means many people will be using it to view sites.

It may well be that Chrome is a very CSS and html STRICT. That if you leave out one small thing that the other browsers often overlook, it will cause several issues.

~~

So after backing up my edits I found the problem.

Yes. Chrome is in fact very strict with its CSS coding. It really does not follow the Parent--> Child inheriting property. I removed an absolute positioning tag as well as the left and bottom positioning style code and the page in Chrome "popped" back into place.

This is interesting to be sure.

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:14:02 GMT

From ellenmillion : The first ten people to comment in this post AND repost this meme in their own journal get to request a sketch on the topic of their choosing from me!

If you are not a sketcher, I'm sure you have an art form you can use to "sketch" for others. This totally counts. :)

(They will be simple sketches, folks - no requesting seventeen highly detailed characters with animal companions...)

** My Notes **

Yes an I mean sketches. Rough, no ink, no color, loose, fun and fast. :)

Coding for cross browser compatibility...weirdness.

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:55:03 GMT

So I normally work between Fire Fox and IE, as a large portion of web-surfers use either one or both of those two. Not a big deal really as most of the issues that crop up are because of certain bits of code not working in IE that do in Fire Fox and vice versus.

I had found an old Web Designer book from like 2000 that talked about how XML was the wave of the future. Yada yada yada, right? But much of the advice and points in the book still stood true. They also pointed out that Opera was what a lot of other users use..., and the fact that Opera IS NOT JUST FOR Linux users kicked me in the head. I was like, HEY! cool. I bet not many people realize this!

Also Google just released its own version of a browser, called Chrome. So I decided to down load both (retaining Fire Fox as my default, just because) and see how my work on the redesign of my site was going along. Talk about oddness.

I had a strange glitch in Chrome that didn't show up in any of the other browsers. It took me about an hour to figure it out, and honestly it was a logic issue. My transparent background was in the foreground making everything look strange. So after a bit of tweeking I realized it was a CSS issue with the z-index. The z-index, buh? Yes.

In Chrome if you have a layer effect in place (to compensate for the transparency Cascades issue) you HAVE to label all of your divs, class and ID, as well as some of the other elements inside those divs, in your css code, with its own z-index.

In some cases the child of a div will adopt the parent's z-index. In the case of Chrome, not so much.

To be sure, it was an interesting glitch.

~~

Fonts. I have a ton of fonts on my machine. So I try to use them as much as possible when coding, this way my load time is lessened. The only down side to that is the fact that not everyone has all of the same fonts that I do. There are ways to get around this, to be sure.

But before I offer it up for DL, I realized something as I was adjusting my studio name's position. Chrome, Fire Fox showed my selected font. Opera, IE, and aren't showing my selected font. *blinks* At all.

**** Time to go researching this issue.

~~

Also I'm trying to add my copyright and other footer information to the bottom of my page and find that Chrome, Opera, and Fire fow display it funky, where as it displays properly in IE. o.O

**** Time to play with settings.

AniBoom 2008 Annual Animation Awards

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:43:08 GMT

Here are some of my favorite!!

Website work

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:41:41 GMT

After much research and work just on the design front, I think I've discovered a functional design. The color pallette I'm loathed to change, but I've had some folks tell me it isn't quite right. Don't know.

So I'm going to have to invest some time into color theory research, and to see what the "new black" is for this year up-coming. ;) I like bolder color choices, but I also like the natural colors and neutral tones as well. So yeah. Not sure what i want to do.

Time to go visiting some more sites.

The design itself actually borrows some from KhaosDog (http://www.khaosdog.de/index.htm), Toonaplaooza (http://toonapalooza.net/index.html), various flash-based sites, and some aspects from my old employer, among the list.

I'm keeping the "sitters" as that is a key element in my site. They will be animated, miminmally, for flavor and be a link in and of itself to its own "about" page and gallery (like how Google does when it makes the special banners and links to the old list of all the banners). The background image will still change, but I've found that it takes too long to load. I may have to vector-ize the images and make them clear gifs of a smaller size. Hrmmn....

I still haven't figured out my "focus". But Meezer did make a good point or three. a) It comes with time and understanding what it is that "sells" best. b)I tend to be very people oriented...

Hrmmn. Something to think about.

So..., finding a focus. It begins.....

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 03:24:58 GMT

The next set of posts are self notes. Each touches upon the various points that I've learned, discovered, been taught, researched or otherwise had dropped on my head in a moment of stupidity "DOH!!"

I take a lot of notes from websites, books, old school class notebooks, and stuff. They get jumbled and mixed up quite a bit and then my thoughts are as jumbled as the notes. GAH! So this is for my benefit personally. ;) But if you benefit from it to, my adventurous readers, then all the better.

~~

1) Understanding my business goals is a foundation for building a successful website.
~ Target Market - you need a clearly defined target market.
~ Are you feeding a passion or Hobby? Is this something you are moved to do out of desire and fun, or need and the desire for cash? (You can really tell the difference between these kinds of sites. urgh. )
~ User usability - How interactive is the site? Is there a log in? Membership? Can people contact you in fast and easy ways? What is there to draw people into poking around the site?
~ Budget - know what you can afford.
~ How is your site going to make money? Membership dues? Ad revenue?
~ How will you be marketing your site? ( Marketing is, in and of itself, its own post. TRUST me. Marekting is what will make or break a business... It is so powerful that politicians use it to win races. When was the last Independent or Libertarian elected as President? Hmmn? Did you know there was one on the ballot this year? )

2) Design. You need to know who's looking at it and why.

~ Give customers reasons to come back to the site (even if you don't see a lot of return - keeping up with the incentives shows stability).
~ State what the "company" does in a place that is easy to access and obvious.
~ Place ordering and contact information in plain sight.
~ Update frequently to bring clients back. (see below on content)
~ Educate your clients about your products or industry. ( see #3 )
~ Offer specials, deals, coupons, vouchers, hints, tips, tricks, exciting pictures or helpful advice.
~ IMAGES: Balance between what you need, what kind of clients you are looking to serve (geeks versus artsy folks have different aesthetics), and load time.
~ KNOW your client demographic!!!!
~ Create pages with a wide range of screen resolutions and monitors sizes in mind.
~ Use graphics to add color, texture and interest.
* Graphics I like to imagine are the spices in cooking. Too much and they can overwhelm what you are trying to accomplish. Too few and you have something plain and bland.

~ Keep in mind what you are trying to showcase (the focus) and don't overwhelm it.
~ Graphic artists should keep in mind that their sites may hide their work instead of frame it.
~ Light on dark or dark on light? Debate.
~ Frames are evil (see below).
~ Index pages should have 8 buttons (main links) or less.
~ Stay away from designs that end up requiring the users to scroll both horizontally and vertically.
~ Flash adds sizzle.., don't over do it. Use flash in a way that adds flavor, but don't make it important since not everyone will have the most up to date version of flash on their computers.
~ ANY NEW TECHNOLOGY could cost you business instead of bringing it out. (This is a core issue with people who keep up with the newest in CSS and other designs, but forget to try and find a way to let the "little guys" see their site as well.)

~ Eye tracking. This is a concept that is true for any art form.

3) Content is the most important element of your site. By providing useful info to visitors you establish that you are an "authority" on the subject matter, you give them a reason to come back (bookmarking), give clients something of value (tutorials, historical tid bits, trivia, notes, process notes) for "no charge". It also helps in Search engine effectiveness.
~ Keep it fresh. Changing content brings people back.
~ Keep it interesting.
~ Make it informative.

EXAMPLES:
* Comics updated daily/weekly get more attention then comics updated monthly.
* Homestar runner has aspects of the site that gets updated very regularly. The interface changes and you can select from different interfaces... AND play with them. Strong Bad answers fan mail.
* Google's logo changes with holidays and seasons.
* Ill Will Press has regularly updated (and collectible) flash animations that are both critical and funny.

~Membership? What extras do you offer to memberships, donations, or the like?
* If a membership, how do they interact? Do they interact?
* Interactivity!!! ( Web 2.0 baby )

~ Selling items? How does this work? Do you use other sites, or can you sell direct from your site? How does THAT work?
~ What makes YOU different from the competition? Illustrators all may do similar jobs, but some are better at sci-fi involving space and ships then they do alien creatures. Where as others are better at making book covers then full sized paintings of an abstract design.
~ What is the over all functionality of the site? What is it FOR? What does it do?

3) Logo design
~ Logo design is vastly important to identifying the company.
~ This becomes a part of your corporate identity.
~ What does you logo say about you? Your products? Your services?
~ Eye-catching Logos buys you a GREAT first impression!
~ Logos hold a lot of symbolic significance and say a lot about the company they represent.
~ Logo Colors should be simple, bold, and comprehensible. Don't mix and match too much and try to keep in mind basic color theory and color psycology.
~ Keeping logos to a base color pallette of 3 (or fewer) colors, not including black and white (normally) increase sight recognition.
~ Style and choice of font are equally important.
~ It should in some way reflect the target market.
~ Yet no matter how "kiddie:, it should look neat and professional (uniformity every time its reproduced)
~ Connecting a symbolic meaning to a logo conveys more then a mission statement. (Think Nike's swoosh - Its a simplified representation of a "wing" and has a color and feel that represents speed and thus athletic potential.)

4) Color in the Design
~ Research your color theory as well as your demographic. Kids sites tend toward bright powerful primaries where as more sophisticated furniture sites might be more muted and earth toned with scroll-work fonts.

5)Don't use Frames (see #2). Search engines often don't read frames properly!

6) Having a web log (not a blog) that follows statstics is helpful to finding where your business is weakest and how it is doing in its primary objective!

7) LINKS!!!! - ONLY offer reciprocal links. ONLY link to sites that have something to do with your site.
~ Be careful of link exchanges with sites that may have exchanges with sites that have bad content (pron for example). Some search sites may ban your site, or remove your links from their engines because of this.

** I actually had the wonderful experience of working right next door with the marketing department. When Google went hard core about the kinds of content they allowed, Hotmoives.com lost of business because they linked to "teen porn" sites (even though most of the actors were of legal age, the subject matter itself was consider too taboo for Google). So ANY reference either in site content or by the LINKS!!! got their other sites banned.

~ Try to not link to sites that are, by their nature, only link farms.
~ Never link to sites that you don't want to help.
~ Don't link to sites that don't have content your viewers won't want to see.
~ Don't link to sites that are competitors (yes even your friends) without a reciprocal link. (Think about how that might look.)
~ DO link to other helpful sites that have similar content.
~ DO link to sites that will link you back ( as long as they are not link farms).
~ DO link to sites that YOU support or that your company supports (World Wildlife Fund for example), even if you don't get a link back from them.
~ DO link to other sister sites of your site (like if you have a facebook fan account for an aspect of your site).

** Why is this? Many search engines rate a site's popularity in part by how many other links there are linking to it as well as how many other sites link TO it. So the more people that link YOU the better off you are. But if you link to sites that are, by their nature, nothing but links upon links..., you are giving THEM the boost that you want.

8) Search engines are powerful tools and the site should be geared to make the most use of them ( and vice versus). (see above about the links)

9) Favorites and Bookmarking sites. - Make sure you have ways for people to use these sites to mark your site as a place of interest. ;)

I'll be taking these and further working on them. For right now this is my incomplete set of notes.

Website Re-Redesign

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:17:53 GMT

Yes.

Silly isn't it? But it is something some designers and other artists often have as an issue I've found. I have seen sites go through transformations time and again. Some become very abstract, others very plain. I just want mine functional.

The problem comes with the way the net has evolved and changed in the years when I first learned to code my own site in Notepad(tm). The recent design is okay but it is not quite up to par with current web 2.0 existence. :P

Web 2.0? To put it very simple terms, it means community and interactivity. For example:

* Comics have forums, or group forums of "sister" comics where fans can go to chat and yak at each other, and where they might get the chance to chat with the artist of said comics.
* Some Comic sites offer links to interactive portions of their site. Comment pages, forms for questions, or other forms of interacting. Some have RSS feeds, mailing lists

Examples:

* http://loyaltyliberty.com/
* http://www.dreamkeeperscomic.com/
* Reconstruction
* Black Tapestries

Comics as I grew up with them never had such a thing. They were stapled-spine collections of paper, ink, and color. You'd collect them, put them in bags whether you read them or not, and stick them in a box if you were of a mind to do so. Someone had the brillant (indeed very brillant) idea of putting them online.

Even many early webcomics were about the story line and not the fan base. People might save them to their hard drives for future reading ( again that whole collecting thing ). Some might print them, staple-spine bind them, and put them in bags to be shoved in a box somewhere.

It has since changed.

Webcomics are only one example, but a good one in my opinion.

Others are business sites. No longer just a "web based print-ad medium" they've become interactive. A Non-interactive site doesn't get many return visitors.

Disney.com - A for-kids site dedicates ap ortion of their space to games, and fun things, trip planners, stores, searching locations and more, so much more.

You Tube could merely be a place where people can upload their videos.., but it is not. It is its own community where you can comment, post, and interact with people.

Look at sites like Facebook which is just a massive social networking hub. Even there in there is games, and people can upload their own content to share it with each other.

~~

So what does this have to do with the creative types?

Let's go back to the webcomic for a bit. As I said, many of them have branched out into ares where people can do more then comment. They can interact and become mroe involved. Black Tapestries spawned other comics (by the creator) which in tunr facillitated the intrest in the RP where the idea was originally spawned.

So now not only can one comment on the comic, pay for membership-only goodies, read the comic, collect it if they felt the need, go to a comic-aligned disscussion forum.., but they can investiagte more and find the RP chat and actually immerse themselves into the world that spawned the comic.

Interactivity.

~~
So we go back to the artists themselves. What good does this do for the common artist just trying to get their portfolio online?

One could go one of several ways.
Build a mini-online community for your self. (Not going to work too well for most start-ups.)
Build a comment/user driven site that has the potential to expand into its own thing.
Or link to other sites, using the artist's online portfolio as a jump-point.

Many people do a combination of these three and develop a hybrid.

Blogs by Word Press(tm) have gotten popular for posting art. The blog can be fully customized, has its own content management system, and the posts themselves can be book marked, quoted, commented upon, and shared.

Some websites used such simple systems in order to fuel their site. This gives them the basic interactivity, and with a little CSS help, the site can be re-arranged.

~~
So what to choose?

This is always the hard question. Portfolio sites aren't meant to be communities in their own, they are SHOWCASES. The frame that surrounds and supports the artwork. If you want that community feel with that kind of deep interactivity, there are communities already in the works. Rather then beat a dead horse, why not join the live ones?

So then what about the personal site?

Well the question I posed to myself is.., what am I offering? What products and or services am I offering? What it is that I want to showcase..., and why?

~~

It isn't as easy a question to answer, to be sure.

~~

(More Later)

Fellow artist in need...

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:32:40 GMT

www.RaptorArts.com

We all have Bills to pay. They had an ebay auction up that got no hits really and I felt horrible. He's another dragon fan, and we all got to stick together. This artist does amazing sculpture work on a near (if not totally) professional level. All sorts of themes and subject matters, primarily fantasy cridders, but he does other stuff as well.

If you can't afford to commission him, please feel free to post this to your journals and get the word out. The person's work is absolutely amazing!

Ideas

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 22:57:59 GMT

Ideas.

Shark vs Squid

Underwater would be generic. Having them both thrashing about above water might be a bit more dynamic and more difficult to draw.

Maybe make a set of panels showing the action. Maybe make it an animation? Who knows.

Just an idea.

Writer's Block: Annals of Animal Warfare

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 22:54:16 GMT

Putting the laws of time and plausiblity aside, picture a battle between the megalodon (a prehistoric shark with a six-foot jaw span) and a giant squid (reported to be the size of a school bus). Who would win?

Submitted By menocidesavior

View 500 Answers

That is a hard one but a great idea for a drawing.

Working on Gyspy Vanner Lord

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:55:31 GMT

(Artspots)

Also At~
Deviant Art: http://halfbreed.deviantart.com/art/Gyspy-Vanner-Lord-103527905
Furaffinity: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1711263/

Art Block

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:44:59 GMT

Too much Mundane Stress and crap in my life right now. Too many obstacles and hiccups. *sighs* No real support from the partner because he doesn't -understand- what it is I need.

When I ask him to watch the boy, he uhmn..., kinda does? If I crit him on it he gets really upset and cranky. "I'm trying". *sighs*

Honestly he doesn't try hard enough. Me? I get on my son's rear and make SURE he leaves daddy alone. My Partner? Not so much. He won't even grab him up and plop him back in his seat. He'll just yell at him and expect him to snap too. DUDE. The boy's two! Sometimes you have to get physical to reassert your place as "parent" Duh.

So I have no really art time. When I finally get relaxed I find I... can't. I just sit and stare. o.O

So I've picked up my copy of the The Artist's Way and got to reading. Going to try and jump into it starting next week. (Its a weekly basis thing). But I'm going to try some if its suggestions while waiting. *sighs*

I really just need to DO. But its really hard to do when your son comes up and draws on what you are drawing on. Or when he comes up for a self-assurance snuggle and jams my elbow just hard enough to cause a misclick or somethign else more tragic. He doesn't mean it, but he's two. *sighs*

~~

This is an old sketch I've been tweeking with. Might draw more.

Hrmmn

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:23:18 GMT

Today I'm going to try and continue to work on Sean's Machine. *sighs* Why does it have to be so difficult?

*shrugs*

After that I have to go to a friend's place to help her pack. I am HOPING to get some actual art time in.

Nighteyes and Gushi: I need to actually chat with you two about Comissions. Artspots has a feature (and i LOVE them for it) that helps to keep track of such things. All the relavent details and such. :) Whee.

I have sketches for NE's Coffe Wolf. But I need to re-hash details I've done forgotten!!

I also have conbadges to finish up. But with the havoc around here I haven't had time to think. :P

So yes, I haven't forgotten and a lot of the work has been sketched. I just need to ferret (pun intended Gushi) in some time to actually sit down and ink/color pieces. :P This is why I opted out of this past round from the conbadge community. I saw this coming, and know I have things on backorder that need to be done first.

:) Whee!

Well well well.., Good news bad news.

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:31:48 GMT

So My apartment has an issue with a leakage of major issue. Okay simply put, we have a leak that is causing problems in our bedroom. It is coming from either next door or above, since our bathroom is NOT the one making the mess (Its on a different corner.).

So In this mess, I go digging to allow Maintainence to get to the problem. No biggie. I find of all things my dun dun duuuuuun wacom tablet plug! Whoot.

After ALL DAY of it not working, trying everything I can think of, I call them. Guess what. My 8 YEAR OLD Intuos Tablet has no Vista Drivers. *head desk* No I'm not shocked. But I AM half tempted to offer it up to the Genesis Book of World Records. ;) *chuckles* Why?

It STILL WORKS!! No joke. When I plugged it in, and futz around with its pen, the little green light flickered like it is supposed to. ;) So it does "see" the motions and pressure, but with no driver I can't use it. La sigh.

So yes, in order to art more easily on my laptop, I need, Note NEED a new tablet.

I don't dare work on Sean's machine for several reasons. Mostly it is an older machine (not much but still older by computer standards), running XP (which is known to be flakey at best), and has a tendency to BSOD when it is over-worked (shock?, oh no, no shock.., its XP). So, add to that it is SEAN's Machince, and any time I've done something and its faulted, suddenly I'm The Bad Guy!!!!

So yeah, NO. I'm not going to deal with that head ache. I'm having video card issues with it as it is. :P Feh. THAT is something I need to tackle in a short set of tail flicks, once I'm done here. GAH.

Hey btw anyone need s Serial to USB device? I don't need it now. 9 pin.

~~

So it looks like, once I get Sean's Video Card Issues settled, I'll be doing some of my digital work on his machine when I can.. If I'm "allowed". ;) teehee.