Portfolio Touch Up Complete

I was able to make the layout changes to the site before the weekend. I think it’s a big improvement for such small changes. As I said in my last entry, the social networking buttons are now in a z-index fixed position div in the top right, which means as your scrolling through the site content it’ll always stay there for you to see. I think this is much better than being in the footer like it was before.

The content on the index page is narrowed down to three things over four, which are the blog, latest work, and twitter feed. There is no more news database as it seemed unnecessary to have that AND the blog updates everytime. The layout on the index page is 2column based for the blog/work, which is better for combining the content together over the original 1column based layout. So you pretty much see most of the content immedietly without having to scroll down, if you have the right resolution. Otherwise you at least see the blog and latest work together.

As planned, I put the main navigation in the right, though its on the bottom of the header div rather than the top so that its not covered initially by the social network div. The look of it was adjusted too. It was originally over a black bar and much bigger but I shrunk it down and made the bar the same grey as the borders around the divs.

For some damn reason, the “See more in the gallery” sentence is constantly underlined, even though I set the style to not be. It was also bolded for some reason but I fixed that. The weird part is its the same style used in the gallery section. which means it must be coming from a parent style, and yet I dont see the issue anywhere. It’s not a big deal so I might look at it later.

I’ve tested everything to make sure it all works but let me know if any flaws are find that I didn’t catch.

Portfolio Site Tweaking

So, after some suggestions from a few people, I’ve considered tweaking my portfolio layout and content placement just a bit. First of all, I thought I might make the logo at the top smaller and align it to the left, with the navigation set to the right. This isn’t my 100% sure plan but I have changed the way the header/navigation is set together.

I’ve already fixed a bit of an issue where no matter how much content there was, things were past the maximum height of the screen and you’d have to scroll down to reach the bottom, ever so slightly.

I’m reorganizing the content boxes right now to be better centered, since I noticed there was some issue last time with having to give padding to shift it in place properly. This is now corrected.

I want to change the first column on the index page to be 2column split with blog to the right and the most recent image to the left. Under that will be the 3 most recent works and to the right will be the twitter.

I’m getting rid of the database news feed, and keeping updates to twitter and the blog. I find it a bit unnecessary to have both blog news and database based news that are usually just site based. I normally explain the updates of my site here anyways.

Lastly, I’m moving the social network buttons to the top right in a fixed div, rather than on the footer at the bottom. I’ve already made sure this works. Because this is there, I might have to consider the placement of my main navigation still, as I dont want them to overlap.

It shouldn’t take me too long to get this all updated but at latest it might be next friday.

Rough Week. What to do.

I don’t wish to go into further detail but this entire week has been extremely rough for me, emotionally, and so haven’t had the energy to get much done. As well I have to unfortunately state that the Zeyad Mucha picture will likely NEVER be completed, due to certain events. At least I got the basic character piece done in the end.

I did, at least, do a few logo contests to try and occupy my mind at some point in the week

and

I’m trying to consider other PHP/jquery affects to display the most recent work. I found one nice affect but it only is made through basic html and css and I had trouble mixing in the PHP with it to display things properly. Maybe I’ll look back into it again later. Honestly it’s not -that- important for me to do right now.

My 24th Birthday is on the 11th and I’ll be visiting Vancouver soon after so I’ll only be able to do so much before I do. I’d like to drop off resumes before I go.

I’m also considering trying to focus more on my original illustrative and stories pieces that started back in middle school. When I got robed in High school I lost all the written and drawn work for one of the series and only had half the illustrations scanned. Created original character and armor designs is much harder than ever now, especially with WoW inspiring all the time from long play. I’m going to try and work harder into looking at real world cultural references and since I’ll be playing WoW much less and cutting back on new artwork(though want to finish some old pieces) then hopefully I get get somewhere with this.

The other series is more an issue of writing, which I’ve never been very good at, but I may try.

Portfolio Website Release

The website is finally up! I had fun with adding new styles as I did the final day. What was originally basic green headers became a use of z-index and divs looking like tabs in a book. I debated on whether I should make them a colour or just white and I ended up leaving them white.

I also, in the end, decided to include a contact form while I had debated on. If I find spam issues rise again like last time, I’ll either look for a way to stop it or just remove it again. But I’m VERY happy with the styling and how it matched with the site.

I happy with the sites size flexibility and browser compatibility. I’m happy with the small amount of colour and the use of box shadow effects to get things to pop rather than nonsense design.

I might take out the divider in the about section or I might leave it. I’m pretty satisfied with how the gallery turned out and if I change anything, it’ll be what the font is for headers. I still might add a very faint design to the bottom of the main column div but that’s not important.

The group of social network buttons are no longer while, like I originally planned, and are now coloured specifically to fit their site. They are not exact pulls from their colours but gradients I put together using a base simillar to theirs and then another colour I felt would work well with it. There is also some css3 affect that Jason Fever once showed me. I looked for it and added it for it’s hover effect. Note that it, unfortunately, doesnt work in IE. I’ll look into a different effect for IE.

When I have the money, I’ll make sure to add my saved CSS for this wordpress blog as well, as it’ll make sure it fits even better with the site. For now it’s white background and boxes, coloured text, and natural icon and link colours it uses fit the site pretty well. So it’s not a big concern yet.

http://www.sampowelldesigns.com/

Enjoy.

Week’s Work #4: Portfolio

I’m expecting my portfolio website up by today. The gallery section is finished, as I replaced the Fancybox jquery with something called PrettyPhoto. I was able to work in very small descriptions this time.

The about section is nearly done and I just have to touch up my resume before I add it to the site as a link. I want to make sure there isnt any information I want to keep hidden from online viewers, like my address or phone number.

I’ll probably fix the social networking buttons on the bottom to use proper colours rather than white, since they dont stick out properly as white, and give them a hover style.

I’ve added a “blog feed”, sort of, in the index page and I’m thinking of adding a very faint graphic behind the top left corner of it’s div to make it obvious it’s a wordpress blog. I’m still considering other graphic subtleties but not sure what, yet. Since I want the site to be released today, I don’t think I’ll worry about it. I’ll just add them later on.

My main worry is making sure everything works when I transfer it out from it’s testing folder and into the actually main folder.

Portfolio Progress: Gallery

Alright. I have mostly finished the gallery section of my portfolio. I needed to go through the folder and database to figure out which pieces to keep displayed on the site. Whats not there will be available at my deviantart, with the exception of a few pieces I seemed to have forgotten to post there. But if its not on deviantart then it’s likely on facebook. I’ll make sure to add a note at the top of the page for it.

After picking out the work I wanted on the portfolio, I took the images into illustrator and made new thumbnails for them. I then styled them in css to be more spaced out and to pop out better, matching the style of the rest of the site. I think it’s turned out wonderfully considering I’m using very basic gallery organization.

I need to edit the small png pieces used for the fancybox javascript so it matches better but I cant seem to figure out where I can change how much the background page is overlayed. I thought I found it but it didnt change anything so I think I have it wrong. i also can’t figure out how to add titles and description to the image so I’m probably going to have to go without that stuff. It’s not that important this time round, as I wanted to avoid going into big discussions over the work. That kind of stuff is left for facebook and deviantart posts or behance.

 

Now I have the about page left to do and some anchor links for the footer nav. Want to make sure they go to the right sections of the gallery. I’m not very good at personal bios so I’m wondering how that’s going to turn out but I need to get a new picture for it, I think. I’m doing well so far with styling so that shouldnt be an issue.

Hopefully with how I’m doing, I’ll have this finished by the end of next week.

Week’s Work #3

So I’m trying to focus back into my portfolio site, when I’m not touching up the Faith and Sacrifice: Bahais in Iran site(the next hurdle being the SEO). I’ve been able to get the basic gallery PHP up and running but having an issue with centering the images in CSS without it going nuts on me. I’m going to need to go through the whole portfolio gallery and pick it apart to decide which pieces to keep. The stuff that’s not very important can be found at my deviantart so I figure it’s not a big deal to cut down the gallery to less than half its current.

I’ll also have to make new thumbnails for the images. The current ones are leaf shaped but I want to go more simple and basic to make things more clean so I’ll make everything small boxed thumbnails that crop the images.

I also need to find a new gallery jquery effect that I want to use. The previous was lightbox but I’m going to look around to see if I can find something better.

And this week I finished the character half of Zeyad’s portrait:

I’m hoping that, with the progress I’m at, I’ll have my portfolio up by the end of this month. As long as I dont reach some new painful hurdles. The layout still continues to work, so that’s good

Wish I could figure out a very basic way to display WordPress blog entries on the site. Everything I’ve found is not what I’m looking for or over complicates it.