Website Work

Well, I did a 30 minute go at designing a new blog/website the other day and have got a lot done since. I started with sketching out ideas, what I wanted and what I liked, then moved onto the computer. Since then I've spent so much more time on it. I really trying to get it so that it looks good and professional. I don't want to add all these bells and whistles to it, but rather make it functional, full of information, but also looks good. I've been learning a few things from my Graphic Design class and the number of tutorials on the web and I see that the point of the design should not to be to look pretty but to rather enhance the user's experience. So that I'm trying to do, going through every little bit slowly tweaking it to my liking. I've also looked over a number of well designed blogs to get ideas of what my things should look like. Hopefully I'll be able to get the blog to something that I think works and that I like sometime soon and then I'll be able to start thinking more about the main site. I've done some sketches and things about it, but haven't come up with anything final.

I need to really start working on "The Hole" some more too, but I've realized that I think that the site is more important than getting that done. I've already spent more time over a longer period of time on the site and I would like to get it done and finished so that people can enjoy it. If I get around to it and don't have too much homework, I'll try to balance out my site and claymation times.

Web, and Tutorial Updates and a Video

Today I worked a little bit more on the video tutorial, blurring the spots that need to be blurred. It's taking a while, but it should be done soon. Hopefully not more than a week. I also worked a little bit on figuring out the new photo gallery system. It seems really easy to use and looks nice, so you can see a little bit of how that will work in the image above.

Also, here's a video for you since I've been posting a lot of personal updates lately. It's a neat animation using clay on glass.

Kramer Klaymation Going Shiny - Website Update

Click to see larger. I added some annotations of a few things I wanted to note.

The last couple days, I've been working on the site design some more and I decided to give the site a more shiny Web 2.0 look(It's not going to be 100% 2.0). Some things could probably be worked on a little bit more, but I think it's almost done, the index(front) page at least. After that's done, I'll start reworking some of the other pages. I may start on the About Us page first since I have some ideas already. I'm still thinking about the videos and where I should upload them to. It's going to take forever no matter where I do it, so I'm wondering whether I should go quality (Vimeo.com) or more views (Youtube.com). I'll figure that out later, I'm probably going to go for Youtube though because none of my animations are that great anyways. If you want to see other things I've planned, check out this post I did a while back.

Oh ya. This blog is probably going to get a make over as well if I can manage it.

New Site Design

Well, my brother has been too busy to do a web design for me, so I started to do my own. The image above shows a glimpse of what the site will look like. It's not final, I'm pretty sure I'm going to change a few things and get the actual logo(my brother designed that a while back when he had time). I'm not quite happy with the look yet, I'm not sure exactly why, but I think it's some size and spacing issues. I'll also need to implement the words Kramer Klaymation into the title area somehow. Yep, it still needs a lot of work.

Some changes in the new site will be:

- Getting rid of the fun and projects pages. Neither have shown much potential or use. Any future projects I may have will be recorded in a separate blog at blog spot or another most likely.

- Adding a links and resources page. In the site that I currently have right now, I haven't been too open to sharing other people's sites and links. When getting this blog however, I decided that I should do it so that I can share some of the nice resources I find with other people more easily.

- The gallery and videoclips will probably get a face lift. I may switch all my videos over to you tube or some other host just because of ease of use. For the gallery, I'm going to try to find out a new way to display photos so that I can also add captions. I think that I already have an idea of what to use using javascript.

- Adding a tutorial page. All the tutorials that I wrote will go into this. I originally designed these as JPG images, but realized that it wouldn't be a good idea because of slow loading and such. Because of that, it will take a long while to redesign these into html. More tutorials will probably be added later on as time goes by and as I get ideas for more.

- Store. The store will most likely go. I'm going to be busy and also moving overseas for the next couple years so it will be too hard to keep that running. I haven't had much success with it anyways. The ad in the image above is just a spot that will be used for random ads for my site or Google ads or something.

- About Us Page. That will be made up to date. I may rewrite the whole thing or just add a little section on the end. My goals for the site will also be added.

I sure have got a lot of work cut out for me. New site design estimated arrival will be within a year. I'll probably try to get it done sooner if I can get myself into the habit of working on it.

Remodeled Front Page

Today I remodeled the front page. I wanted to give it a fresh look, but I also wanted to adapt to the change in the update system. If I would have kept the old look, there would have been wasted space that used to be taken up by the old update areas. Also, since I also took off the old update links, I'm going to post them here if any one is interested.

Old Web News
Old Claymation News