Thursday, October 29, 2009

Website Update

I've been working on my website a little bit. I've been working on some minor updates to the index page. I decided I wanted a rollover image over the buttons that would play a little scribble type effect.

First, I plugged in my tablet and opened up PS for some quick concepts.
I created a little animation consisting
of three frames of just some horizontal scribbles, for each button.
Of course, it took me around an hour just to make some scribbles for three buttons; I just couldn't get the right look.

Getting the rollover was pretty easy, but implementing it was a bit difficult. My index page was a few layers combined in PS. The problem was, the rollover images were little gifs, but because my index page was a giant picture, I couldn't just replace the gifs. Which leads to the next step. The idea was I would have to split the main page up into pieces, that would focus around the areas I wanted to replace.

As you can see in the image, I had to cut an area around each place I wanted a rollover image. Each red shaded area is where I wanted them. The other red boxes show where I had to make the cuts in order for the whole image to work out. I'm sure there is an easier or better way to do it though.

After the index was sliced, I cut the shaded area out, and placed them into PS so I could put the scribbles over them. Once I overlaid the cut areas with the scribbles, I merged it together and saved as a gif. Switched back over to DW where I
deleted the shaded areas from the index - leaving holes there where the rollovers would go. Insert>Media Image>Rollover Image brings up a box with some options for choosing an image, and what to switch to upon rollover. Once done, upload index to your site and bingo, all done.

Overall I'm happy with it. Of course, I could spend my time actually making my site useful, and put up my art section with some galleries. I guess I can get to that soon.



-Aaron Jones|ParasiteArtist-