Saturday, September 2, 2000

 

1:19 a.m. So, I've been working all day and all evening on my old, original reason for getting onto the web in the first place. No, it wasn't eBay, and no -- it wasn't online journaling, either.

The whole idea in the beginning was business, as usual. I was supposed to build a nice, meaty, informative web site for our book production company, Shadow Lawn Press. Simple enough, you would think. But not for me. Not the way my mind works.

Yes, I've had the domain for all this time, and yes, there's a little index page sitting there, patiently place-holding, and yes, our business is healthy and constantly growing and yes, I'd certainly like to advertise that fact.

But I've not been able to come up with a layout that looks even halfway decent, and there's a very simple reason why, and it's because the big old clumpy shape of the books that must be highlighted keep throwing everything off balance.

Aha! But tonight, I think I've got it.

And do you know why? Animation. After much grief and head-scratching, I've managed to come up with an animation that is really going to help pull this whole project together, thanks to that nifty free Gifbuilder program that I found -- somewhere.

And here's the result of (oh, let's just round it off and say: 5 hours, give or take);

Is that not the most impressive thing you've ever seen? Yeah, it's a little heavy on the load size, and there's only three different book covers highlighted, but golly me -- it surely looks cool to my eyes. Sometimes, it's the small silly stuff that gives you the jumpstart you need to get the rest of the work done.

I've still got a whole lot to do: lots of laying in of shadows and scanning in covers and optical character reading ... all the really fun stuff that always makes me feel like I'm out of harm's way because I'm really busy. I love the grunt work -- it's the design work that nearly does me in.

I really don't know how artists manage not to go mad. Oh, right. They don't.

But give me some alphabetizing and some typing and some nit-picking pixel polishing and I slide into the happy zone. I turn on the radio, suck on a Jolly Rancher, and work as long as my wrists will let me. And then I take a nice stretchy break and run up and down the stairs a few times and grab some soda from the fridge and I'm right back here in a flash and I'm back to work. Happy.

So -- that's where I am right now. Not a creative thought in the world. And I really must dash -- I've got hundreds of thumbnails to line up. Ta.