Past Layouts
People who know me well know I have a thing for decorating. My desktop theme
and Winamp skin change monthly. And you should see me go nuts in the Sims.
That being said, Crimson Sky Creations went through a couple of changes before
it reached where it is now, and it will probably change in the future.
I'm going to try to keep it down to once a year now.
I can't afford to color over any more gray hairs.
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Ahh...my very first...storage space. I won't even call it
a page because I certainly didn't use it as one. I only put my artwork
on the World Wide Web because I wanted to be able to show off new artwork
to friends without having to mail it to them, and because at the time
I was entering a lot of contests, and it was easier to send them a link
than it was to upload a file through the mail. The site didn't have a
name other than "Crissy's Fanart". Those weren't the actual
thumbnails I used--I wasn't that bad!--but the originals have been discarded
long ago... |
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I only decided to make a real webpage when I ran out of
room on the Geocities account I used for my storage space. I tried to
upload it to NBCi, but it was right about then they closed down their
member sites, so, ironically enough, I kept the space in the same Geocities
account, which, still more ironically, is still the address I keep my
counter on and my links to. It's just easier that way, people don't like
having to change their links all the time. Anyway, the name was brainstormed
by quite a few of my friends, but I think it was Hime-chan who hit on
Crimson Sky Creations, which had everything I wanted in a name: Crimson,
because my favorite color is red and I identify with Sailor Mars, Creations
for obvious reasons, and Sky because I've always had this trippy kind
of metaphysical star child thing going on. I drew the layout picture of
me with the grownup Chibiusa because she was the character I drew the
most. All of my layout pictures for this layout were me dressed in some
shade of red and the pose and clothing usually had something to do with
what section it was. The backgrounds were really cheesy looking ones I
made myself in PhotoMAX that were supposed to be crimson skies. I made
the buttons myself and I made the really cute sign/view guestbook buttons
myself (I really miss those!) All in all, it wasn't fancy looking, but
it was MINE. For all intents and purposes, Crimson Sky Creations was born
on June 6th, 2000. |
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Interestingly enough, this layout change came about as part
of a pic exchange. I had planned to do something new for Halloween, of
course, because it is my favorite holiday, but I hadn't really decided
on what, when Susan Torres offered to make me a new layout as her half
of a pic exchange. Well, since my other layouts were not exactly ringing
successes, I was really curious to see what she came up with. What you
see here is not exactly what she sent me--hers had a guest art as the
main pic and wasn't themed for Halloween. I made it a bit more "mine"
by duplicating all the layout pics I had in the first layout but with
a Halloween theme. But the backgrounds and the general layout of all text
is hers. |
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I didn't intend for a layout change to become a monthly
thing, really I didn't! But I couldn't leave a Halloween theme up after
Halloween, you take that sort of thing down when the decorations come
down. I knew I'd be redoing the site for Christmas, so I wanted something
simple for the brief interlude of November. This came out way better than
I expected. It wasn't that much different in concept from the original
layout: Layout pic on left, crimson sky backgrounds. I took graphics of
different sorts of crimson skies off of Google's image search, and I used
guest art (with permission, of course) that went with the different sections
as the layout pics. It came out really pretty! Plus, I made all of the
text a lot smaller, so this layout looked pretty good in small resolutions. |
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Oh...my...GOD. I went ALL OUT with this layout. Never, never
again. Though, to be honest, this is *exactly* what I wanted. Some of
the aspects of this design--most notably, the expandable border of the
table--dated back to what I originally had in mind when I designed the
first layout of Crimson Sky Creations, but I didn't know how to do. To
be honest, I still don't quite know how everything on here was done. I
had a LOT of help, most notably from Paul, Alex, and Simon. It's definitely
recognizable as Crimson Sky Creations, though, with a few improvements.
I made the backgrounds (both the clear, and the slightly obscured one)
myself with some help again from Google's image search, and then I recycled
with a free snow script. The layout image is the familiar from times past,
but updated with slightly more CLAMP-ish eyes--and dressed for the holidays,
of course. The main layout had an iframe that the sections loaded in,
and the sections were not subdivided as they had previously been, and
once more I made buttons for them. Also, this month saw a move for the
content of CSC to Tripod, as I had outgrown 4 (count them--4!!!) accounts
at Geocities, but I left a splash page on Geocities with a counter, and
a choice for visitors to visit either the layout I had envisioned, or
a toned down version for Netscape and slower connection users. Incidentally,
the higher your resolution, the better it looked. It was magic. But I
don't think I'll ever be doing that again. |
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The layout for 2002. The idea for this layout came to me
6 o'clock in the morning one early November morning, while I was still
puzzling out how to do December's layout...yes, I do need professional
help. But I saw it in my head and was attracted to how simplistic and
elegant it looked, and I knew it was just what I needed for the new year.
I felt a little bad because there is no Crimson nor Skies in it whatsover,
but that's still me (in a very Naoko Takeuchi style) at the top there,
and the main sections still exist, only now they've been joined by much,
much more. Just some very simple frames and tables involved here, and
still the splash page at the Geocities address. This was my experiment
to see how interested visitors might be in things other than my art. |
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A slight improvement from the one that had stayed so long--this
layout included Javascript that let folders open just like they do in
Windows Explorer. Sadly, I had to make a second layout for users with
Mac and Netscape and whathaveyou. |
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A stroke of genius on my part, if I do say so myself. During
October 2002, when you went to my site, you saw the 6th layout...for all
of a minute (if that long). Then, the layout slowly dissolved to....EVVVIILLL!!
Mwa-ha-ha! Seriously though, all it was was a redirect script and a dissolve
effect, and then the same menu script as above. |
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After the quick changes you can see above, I decided that for one year, the basic layout would stay the same, but that the theme (consisting of font and link colors, navigation buttons, and a layout image and matching 404 page, and a few other odds and ends) should change monthly. Oi. I missed the month of April entirely due to site and work problems, and most of my updates were late. Still, it wasn't a bad idea. Just a lot of work. |
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My layout for all of 2004. I wanted to get back to the site's roots of being a Crimson Sky...and somehow ended up with ALL PINK. I don't know how I tolerated it for a whole year. (Yes, I do. I was LAZY.) This was also my first attempt at making an image map. I'm really very proud of that little film strip graphic. |
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As you can see, this is really just my December 2000 layout, tweaked a bit, and reworked to be all red, white, and black. I chose to redo this layout because, as I mentioned above, the December 2000 layout really was very close to what I had in mind when I originally designed CSC, and I thought it was a shame that it only got used for a month, and I really wanted to see what it would look like in my favorite colors. I also knew, after last year, that I was probably going to have to look at it for an entire year, so I tried to make it something I wouldn't mind seeing 365 days straight. Perhaps I should be ashamed that I reused a layout, but all in all, I really liked the way this looked, and I'm glad I did it. |
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It wasn't until I saw the RENT movie in November of 2005 that I found inspiration for my 2006 layout. After all, RENT is one of my all time favorite musicals, and I thought it would be really neat if I went with an even more image-laden layout, inspired by the cover of the RENT CD. All of the thumbnails I made can be found in the Past Layout Images section of Storage. Making all the graphics was a lot of work, but it was balanced out by the fact that the HTML was very simple--nothing more fancy then tables. Which is probably why I lost my mind when it came to deciding on a layout for 2007. |
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The inspiration for my 2007 layout was some of the production art for a PSP game, Every Extend Extra (made by the same people who made Rez for the Playstation.) I talk a little more about the visuals on the "Past Layout Images" page, so let me mention some of the technical aspects here. I designed all of the pages of links to the galleries to be image maps, this was my first time using the new "Table within a table" feature without having to resort to iFrames, and I used CSC to make a single cell of the table scrollable. The transparent scrollbar (though it only worked in Internet Explorer) was a particularly neat touch. |
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