Thursday, October 30, 2014

Help With a New Website

You can find my working version HERE. Our pal Carlo has agreed to help me customize something for global interweb consumption. Gird y'rselves!

So, why a website? List of objectives, from most important to least:

1. Showcase the comic book(s) I have created (so far that means FUME).
2. Showcase any other books or prints I have for sale (sketchbooks, e-books, etc.).
3. Showcase my illustration work.
4. Something that's a blog/news/image fomentor along the lines of what we do here, or on Tumblr (probably just a link to here, with a little window showing what's on tap?).
5. ...?

I do want my art profile to contain this notion of "brushpen," not as the primary aspect, but a big part nonetheless. It does show up on the site--in the gallery of my sketchbook work...it's labeled "BRUSHPEN" (duh!). They've got those fun little labels that levitate up from the lower edge of each image when your mouse passes over them...ah, technology!

Here's what I'm starting with, but it's flat as Kelsey's nuts so far:

But I love those sites that have a cascade of different sized blocks, each block either an image (often cropped, always cool), or some easy to read blocky text ("SHOP," "BIO," "CHIVALRY," etc.). Maybe something like this example:
Here's his site in action, with the GIF's running (something I'd love to have on mine).

So, what would you like to see?

p.s. I am doing the site thru Squarespace, which has been pretty easy so far. Best of all, it includes an online shop. Once I get it up and running, I'll sit back and watch the money roll in...(*WINK*).

6 comments:

Rickart said...

I think this is a great start. There is NO SHAME in totally lifting a design you like and re-purposing it for your own needs. If you like that design then take that screenshot and try plugging your own stuff and color scheme and see how it looks. If you come up with something you like then run with it.

MrGoodson2 said...

The page is good. You have gone with less centered up and focused crops on your art.

If you wanted a little more of the feel of the site you're emulating you'd zero in on your images a bit.

The last panel at the bottom seems like the way to go to give power to your images. And that last image sells you in a way that I think is obvious. As an editorial illustrator.

You could nail a lot of high paying branding jobs with a pleasing- UPA- retro- slightly lowbrow style that comes very easy to you.

Can't wait to see what iyt evolves into. Don't leave out caricatures.

I like that I've learned a new word for selling myself. Multidisciplinary. I knew the word. Just never thought of using it.

MrGoodson2 said...

Googie style was a word I lost temporarily. Looks great with tour brush pen and cartooning ability.

MrGoodson2 said...

So, my big input- whatever the natural proportion of the art you mean to showcase, make that the rectangle you lay into the page. Crop the edges a bit maybe. But have the image mostly intact with all your compositional skill displayed.

MrGoodson2 said...

I had to look it up

At 12:14 PM -0600 1/3/01, Austin J. Gibbons wrote:
>Looking for the origin of the phrase "Kelesy's nuts". It is the
>title of a blues song. I don't know where I first heard it. Have
>mostly heard it used as ". . .dead as Kelsey's nuts" -- ". . . cold
>as Kelsey's nuts" -- ". . . flat as Kelsey's nuts" etc.
>Thank you

There's a substantial entry in the Random House Historical Dictionary
of American Slang, with cites back to 1933 and this comment on the
origin:

perh. orig. alluding (with pun on slang NUT 'testicle') to the
permanency of welded nuts and bolts on wheels manufactured by the
Kelsey Wheel Co., prominent in the U. S. automotive industry in the
1920's; see P. Tamony, "Like Kelsey's Nuts...", Forum Anglicum XIV
(1985), pp. 120-33.

Rickart said...

I had another look at the page you put together Marty... I think that the rightmost image is the most successful on the page as it cropped well and has a central focus. You might want to emulate that look on the other images: Focus on just one or 2 things and eliminate the extraneous stuff.