WEBSITE PROGRESS
Seeing what's already out there...
A lot of my favourite freelance artists have their own webspaces to portfolio their art. Most of these are manga-driven sites and they have beautiful layouts. Here are examples of sites I could find, some I like and some I'm not as keen on;
These first three are all japanese artist's sites so they may be a little difficult to navigate but this is the closest to how I want my own site laid out. With a nice opening illustration and on the side all the different links you could want to explore, including a blog.
http://tonic-art.com/artworks
I don't like the layout of this one as much as any of the others but it's good to look at various ways to do things rather than just jumping straight into the first one. Too much scrolling on this one though!
http://www.kenart.net/
LOVE the layout and the way you click the thumbnails to open the picture bigger, but I don't think I'd want all my pictures on one page, I want there to be different sections on the sidebar you can click on.
http://www.ulimeyer.com/
This one is the website of a 2D animation company I did work experience for last summer and because it's a company website it's obviously a bit different from the others but it's something to think about overall anyway. The layout used to be slightly different with a mouse in run cycle that you had to click on to enter but it seems they've gotten rid of that now..
Thinking about my own site...
What I would like on it is a blog so that I can write various things and talk about any new pictures I post, a section for animations, a sections for any comics I make, one for original characters I have designed, a sketches/storyboards and life drawing section (maybe or maybe not on the same page...), and one for digital art, both original, observation and fanart! Also a link back to my website and contact details of course...
Asking friends for help..
One of my friends is also trying to set up a website at the moment and has given me some useful tips on it. There is a program on the MAC called 'iWeb' that is very useful for this sort of thing. 'It's realllly easy to use plus it lets you add ads if you want, they're safe google ads and they give you a lot of features. For a web host, google "1and1" it's about £2 a month for a .co.uk domain or £12 a year for a .com domain.'
So there's one way to make a website.. I also asked another friend of mine from Canada how she made her website and here is the correspondece;
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Michelle 'Shrimp' Vinall 15 September at 10:52
Hallo Betty!~
I know this was awhile ago now, but I remember that you used to have your own portfolio website that you put all your art on. Was just wondering whether you used a program like iWeb to make it, or whether theres a place you can go that gives you a template or whether you made it yourself..
an example of what i mean is kurot's site here ;http://moecon.net/area27/
just wondering I want to start making my own site atm and need some help D8 Sorry to disturb you.
Hope you can help me and I hope you are well! :)
Betty Kwong 15 September at 17:05
Hi Michelle! :D
I just use basic html to build it LOL. I use to have some much free time, I would look up html tutorials like (http://www.lissaexplains.com/) and just use a notepad to build it from scratch. LOL OTL;;
Another way I know how to build websites is use Adobe Dreamweaver. They provide a lot of templates and layouts for you. I had to do a simple one for class in University
www.ecuad.ca/~bkwong/
and that is what we used. I hope that helps a bit! :<
Thanks Michelle! Good Luck to you!
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This was perhaps the most useful information I've received so far about it so I will continue with the website progress later!
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DISSERTATION
I haven't done nearly as much work on my Dissertation, but I have been thinking about it! My research topic is 'What causes longevity in the music industry?' and I've already gotten about 2000 words of it done but still need more ideas. Before we broke up for Summer, Freddie Gaffney gave me advice on where to look next;
-Talk to academic - search Music + popular culture and interview author or academic
-Contact British Music Rights (Fergal Sharkey)
-Andy Kershaw - Radio 1 Broadcaster
-Look at back copies of Music Week try http://www.westminster.gov.uk/services/libraries/special/music/Maybe
-think about chapters - talent, collaboration, opportuniites, management, pr,
-Talk to academic - search Music + popular culture and interview author or academic
But aside from that I think my question is starting to have a wider answer. I believe now that it isn't just music popularity that people are fickle about, but all things; television shows, videogames, films etc. So I also want to try and look into that.
Co-incidentally after realising this, on the 17th of August I went to the Forbidden Planet Bryan Lee O'Malley book signing (the guy that drew the comics) with my classmate Emma Wyton and in the queue I met some other fans and made some new friends! Somehow the subject of my dissertation came up and one of them named Sophie Scott gave me a new lead to information.
Apparantly there's a useful book I can look into that explains slightly why people's interest is so waning and fickle called 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?'. There is a wikipedia page that tells more about it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_Google_Making_Us_Stupid%3F) so I will have to look into that.
Aside from that nothing else so far! But I'll probably look into that more after I've finished working on my pitch..
Till next time :)
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