Wednesday, August 01, 2007
work damn you work brain work! you know, one real downside to not smoking anymore, is that i don't have any way to distinguish between my brain's relaxed mood and its working mood. before it was pretty easy. i felt stoned and happy, or i felt awake and aware. now i feel caught in some sort of in between state all the time, never quite at full capacity, and never quite as content as i would like. guess i should have seen that coming, oh well.
so anyways, on to the new friv. i am still not quite satisifed with how it turned out. the concept is much better. the css files are all smaller (not that 1.3 kb is particularly large), and instead of having 6 images, i now have one image that stays on every page. it has definitely been something i have dreamed about, having the color switches be a literal color switch. the only thing that really changes now are single words in single lines of code, and the main logo just stays loaded in the cache the entire time. but the gif file still isn't working the way i would like. the current version you see is the 10th version i have had so far. there was a 2 hour period where it was changing every 10 minutes or so as i tested it out on the live site. i still think it would be funny if someone was actually surfing during that time, and kept seeing things change. but anyways, i know what is wrong with it. i am not quite sure how i want to fix it yet, so i think i need to work through this from the beginning.
originally i had this simple picture of a stylized circuit board i was using as my base picture. it was blue and turquoise, so i ran it through photoshop a few times, i set it to greyscale and reversed it, then tried to make a copy of just the parts i wanted, then tried to make a solid white overlay over the entire thing, but it didn't quite work. i had a few decent options that ended up being second only to the version you see up now, but the were nowhere near acceptable in terms of the transparency theme. so i tried different techniques with photoshop, and different source drawings, but nothing was working. so in the end, i went into paint and did a pixel by pixel drawing of the pattern you see now, white on black. it was just a pattern of random lines i made to give the representation of a circuit board, since that was the theme i was going for. it turned out pretty good, and went well in photoshop when i removed all the black parts. but stupid gifs and their stupid lossy file format, half of sections that are supposed to be filled with transparencies are now filled with god damn grey lines instead. i am a little irked. the image works incredibly with the grey theme, and ok with the lighter green and yellow themes, but looks like shit with the blue and grape ones. also, looking back, the pattern isn't really great. i wanted the whole friv.net text to be a little more subtly imbedded in the pattern, instead of popping out immediately like it does. and, it just looks kind of stupid. all in all, there are a lot of things i really like about it. i really like the combination of the big white friv lettering and the more subtle black :// symbol. i really like the way the image itself makes the top and bottom borders on the right hand side. but it doesn't work as well as it should.
so, to fix it, i have a few ideas. right now the whole circuit mess is a little blobby. i wanted it to taper a little more, and be a little more open. i still need the one part thick with wires to overlay the friv.net text over, but it doesn't need to be as thick as it is. i also noticed very quickly that it needs to extend farther to the left. i made the title text bigger so there isn't quite the void on the left as there was, but i can extend the circuits a little more. i also really like the idea of having the white circuits come from the friv text, but right now it doesn't quite work. i think it should either just come from the R through the top of the F, or just come from the bottom of the F. i haven't decided yet. also, there needs to be less random twists, things all need to flow in one directions a little more, instead of looping as much. the circuits should extend more as a fan, instead of meandering around so randomly. also, there needs to be more variation in the sizes and spacing of the wires. right now, there are only two big wires, then the upside down u. all of the others are the same. the spacing on it all needs to be a little more to make sure the colors pop through on the transparency. also, i need to see if there is a way to save it at in a little higher quality. right now the image is only 30 kb or something, so a little more sharpness wouldn't make it too big.
so far, the ideas are working alright though, they just need to be refined a little. i am not satisfied with the results yet. i am not really looking forward to making a whole new paint drawing again, although that was the tactic that definitely worked the best. oh well.
so anyways, on to the new friv. i am still not quite satisifed with how it turned out. the concept is much better. the css files are all smaller (not that 1.3 kb is particularly large), and instead of having 6 images, i now have one image that stays on every page. it has definitely been something i have dreamed about, having the color switches be a literal color switch. the only thing that really changes now are single words in single lines of code, and the main logo just stays loaded in the cache the entire time. but the gif file still isn't working the way i would like. the current version you see is the 10th version i have had so far. there was a 2 hour period where it was changing every 10 minutes or so as i tested it out on the live site. i still think it would be funny if someone was actually surfing during that time, and kept seeing things change. but anyways, i know what is wrong with it. i am not quite sure how i want to fix it yet, so i think i need to work through this from the beginning.
originally i had this simple picture of a stylized circuit board i was using as my base picture. it was blue and turquoise, so i ran it through photoshop a few times, i set it to greyscale and reversed it, then tried to make a copy of just the parts i wanted, then tried to make a solid white overlay over the entire thing, but it didn't quite work. i had a few decent options that ended up being second only to the version you see up now, but the were nowhere near acceptable in terms of the transparency theme. so i tried different techniques with photoshop, and different source drawings, but nothing was working. so in the end, i went into paint and did a pixel by pixel drawing of the pattern you see now, white on black. it was just a pattern of random lines i made to give the representation of a circuit board, since that was the theme i was going for. it turned out pretty good, and went well in photoshop when i removed all the black parts. but stupid gifs and their stupid lossy file format, half of sections that are supposed to be filled with transparencies are now filled with god damn grey lines instead. i am a little irked. the image works incredibly with the grey theme, and ok with the lighter green and yellow themes, but looks like shit with the blue and grape ones. also, looking back, the pattern isn't really great. i wanted the whole friv.net text to be a little more subtly imbedded in the pattern, instead of popping out immediately like it does. and, it just looks kind of stupid. all in all, there are a lot of things i really like about it. i really like the combination of the big white friv lettering and the more subtle black :// symbol. i really like the way the image itself makes the top and bottom borders on the right hand side. but it doesn't work as well as it should.
so, to fix it, i have a few ideas. right now the whole circuit mess is a little blobby. i wanted it to taper a little more, and be a little more open. i still need the one part thick with wires to overlay the friv.net text over, but it doesn't need to be as thick as it is. i also noticed very quickly that it needs to extend farther to the left. i made the title text bigger so there isn't quite the void on the left as there was, but i can extend the circuits a little more. i also really like the idea of having the white circuits come from the friv text, but right now it doesn't quite work. i think it should either just come from the R through the top of the F, or just come from the bottom of the F. i haven't decided yet. also, there needs to be less random twists, things all need to flow in one directions a little more, instead of looping as much. the circuits should extend more as a fan, instead of meandering around so randomly. also, there needs to be more variation in the sizes and spacing of the wires. right now, there are only two big wires, then the upside down u. all of the others are the same. the spacing on it all needs to be a little more to make sure the colors pop through on the transparency. also, i need to see if there is a way to save it at in a little higher quality. right now the image is only 30 kb or something, so a little more sharpness wouldn't make it too big.
so far, the ideas are working alright though, they just need to be refined a little. i am not satisfied with the results yet. i am not really looking forward to making a whole new paint drawing again, although that was the tactic that definitely worked the best. oh well.
