Minisite 2 Feedback

Yesterday, I got feedback from Justin for my minisite 2. There are 3 things I can improve on.

1) The presentation of images - The way images are placed on the page seems a bit too dull or barbaric..."like it's just plonked there". I should find a more aesthetic or interesting way to present these images. CSS play seems to have a good examples of how to just do that.

2) The navigation menu - This also needs some work on. Seems a bit plain... Needs to show some more interactivity.

3) The overall site design - Since I'm using a futuristic robotic-ish theme, I should focus on how I can use visual elements to represent that on my webpage.

Futuristic Fonts?

Fig 1. Induction font

Fig 2.Checkbook font

The fonts used in my webpage is going to be absolutely important. I'm using a futuristic/sci-fiction theme, so i'm going to use some futuristic fonts.

I've downloaded some sci-fi and futuristic font to experiment with and there are 2 I like: checkbook and induction. These are just free fonts you can download off the net. I will use checkbook for sub-headings and induction for the main title of the webpage called "MINISITE 2".

However firefox and explorer don't recognise these fonts, unless all users in the world has this particular custom font. So therefore I would have to type these fonts up in photoshop and save them as an raster image.

Minisite 2: Progression

I'm still working on my minisite 2. So far I had to re-learn CSS from scratch and it took forever...(echo-ing)

Yeah, but I must say, my tag muscle has beefed up and I'm glad I went through that hard training. Now I know how to use the "div id" tags in the html document in conjunction with the css file.

In my minisite 2 so far, I've got the header, main body background, text and the navigation menu. Soon I will put image documentation of my project to assiociate with those links. Here's how it looks so far (see above)

Users will be able to navigate through the website by hovering their mouse over the menu. I wanted to use this other way of creating a menu, but it was quite differcult at this stage, because it requires nested layers. Perhaps I will do that for minisite 3.

Even though the website looks simple, it took me like 4 days to set up all the images and links to work right. It required a lot of trial and error, because there was a lot of coding problems. For example, the menu would disappear into now where until I set the left and top location and position to be absolute.

Production Documentation: final concept design

Using the previous inspirational images I aquired online, I came up with a creative looking robot CD stand.(Look at above sketch)

The Robot will be medieval in nature, because it's appearance will suggest so. The robot will hold a shield which will incorporate the custom CD case. Users will be able to slide the CD slot out from the shield and get the CD out or in.

Weapon:
In terms of appearance, the robot will use a chinese Halbard which the chinese hero Guan Yu uses in combat. It comprised of a long pole with a extremely large cresent-shaped blade attached to the top.

Face:
It will have eyes of a cylon shown in figure 6. It is a red horizontal strip. It looks sinister that way.It will also have a face mask plate hiding and guarding it's nose and mouth.

Body:

The body will be somewhat medieval english knight looking. It will have a simple body with a chest plate armour and shoulder pads displaying the holy cross.

Flags:
In figure 5 of the previous documentation, it illustrates a model of a japanese samurai on a horse. He is bearing a large tall banner on his back which represents his clan. I will use this idea and apply it to my robot and the flags will illustrate the different sub-assignments within that subject.

I will now attempt to work out the scale and dimensions of the robot parts including width, height, breath and angle of it's legs, arms, body, head etc...These dimensions will be the basis for my construction.