Buttons With a Hint of Style: A Prototype Website

Helvetica? Check. Red font? Check. A metal background? Maybe? Does it look like a panel taken from a transformer? Indeed. Does it have more buttons than the starship enterprise? Wait! Nothing can have more buttons than the starship enterprise.

If you are not aware already my course the Art of Game Design at the University of Cumbria have given us the task to build ourselves a website/ online portfolio to hold a gallery of all our work we will be creating in the next few years. So we all get down and try and add a little personal touch to creating our employment weapon which will hopefully shot competitors in the face so we get the job of our dreams. So as you most likely guessed I wanted to go for a mechanical look, like a panel of a beautifully filed terminator, just without the screws. 

So yes you are already thinking where i am going with this idea or my thoughts, well I am a visual person so the first thing I like to see is pictures, or moving images when I first go onto a webpage, so using these rollover images to give the viewer a sense of communication while not taking the eyes away from the centre, and yes my little sketch of Jehuty from Zone of the Enders is rather fab, don't you think?

Now look above, now down, then above! Then BACK TO ME! Just kidding. I created 2 galleries one for my 3DS max work (models) and the other for my artwork (2D photoshop and sketch concepts). As you see again when you look at the page the first thing you will see is one of the thumbnails enlarged, Again visual people like thinks that are visual. So I decided shoving a picture in your face would be the best way to interest the viewer with my work. However, you won't be able to see all of the image unless you scroll down, and that's where my cute little thumbnails sit.

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Now the fabulous thing about my thumbnails is that when clicked they change the main image being displayed. Done even in a fun way where it fades into the changed image, my friends the power of Java scripting. If you don't know what Java scripting is, it's giving certain elements in a webpage behaviours like movement, change in size, highlighting, fade/ appear and even the combination of any of these like my image swap and appear. I felt this would work better than a button to choose previous or next because a website should give the viewer complete freedom and nothing spells freedom like thumbnails that change (or GTA).

The Blog page and About me page is basically the same as the homepage except with text and a photo of me so I will leave it to your imagination to visualize what they possibly look like.

As for the website as a whole this is merely the first creation of a prototype and an upcoming war against dreamweaver to come up with new ideas of a perfect website for me. However any feedback is welcome. Also a little note to those who are building websites with Dreamweaver, don't freak its just as stupid as Adobe illustrator, so cut it some slack. Peace.