Zero Hour

I'm writing this now that I've just finished the redesign of my site, Scenarios, after only a month. Can't say it's a record, but it is a quick redesign by my standards. This would be my third design, one I'm pretty happy with. I suppose I didn't really know how I wanted my site to look at first. Consider that a rough draft. This new one is completely a design of my own.

It's quite peculiar how long I've been doing "creative" things that I still have no idea how the creative process works. Or else I have some kind of epiphany, thinking I've final got it. That I'll never despair or lose hope when things aren't turning out the way I envisioned them in the beginning.

I thought that I knew that when anyone first starts out doing something that they are a little confused, lost, frustrated. They don't know if they will ever figure something out (even when millions or billions of other humans across the centuries have did it before). That goes for XHTML, programming, writing, anything a person is new to. In this case it happened to be web design.

I don't really know why I've never built a web site before other than messing around with a free authoring program or the included stuff with graphics programs. If I can find the answer to that, then I would know why I don't have an "eye" for web design or any design for that matter yet. I've never really been the kind to just want to draw pretty squiggles on my paper or do newsletters. Bluntly, I've always been pretty boring when it comes down to design other than maybe trying to make another spandex super-hero costume.

Let me not beat myself up, that's not entirely true. I have always been in the business of designing characters of my brothers and my own, furries, as well as super-heroes, and normal people. Character design is design. Especially when it comes to cartoon characters who use the same look all the time except when they occasionally either change costumes or wear something else over their built-in costume. Hair, jaw, nose, shirt, shoes, damn near patented, repeated expressions. That's design. Whether I knew it or not I guess.

All the processes start out the same I guess. Even if I don't usually get inspiration for just making things look pretty.

It took me about the same development time as the previous site. Not so long designing the damn thing, the larger part is spent working out the bugs. I mean, this time I swore I got everything right, no flaws in the HTML, nothing. But when I started adding the scripts and putting the files on the server, it stopped working, so I had to take hours trying to figure out why. Usually I don't figure the problems out, so I end up having to take it apart piece by piece to see what part is making the code not work. It was an incorrect usage of a link in the iStrip tags is all. I was relieved when I finally figured it out. The rest of the pages were a snap.

Still don't have the comic up yet though. Luckilly tomorrow, whoop, today is Labor Day. It is right? I really don't look at calendars much and don't want to.