Author Topic: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D  (Read 4219 times)

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Offline xxxchihiroxxx

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HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« on: October 06, 2007, 12:43:52 pm »
alright im exited much! its cool to finnaly see the site made up for next years con... it feels like its iching closer and closer each day. xD so any one else got gittery feelings or am i just kinda the odd oen out agian?
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Offline Syd-chan

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #1 on: October 06, 2007, 01:08:22 pm »
Aw, me too! Last year, I had to go for one day without costume, just to check it out, so I'm SO excited that I'll be going for all three days. I don't think I'll be staying at the CON hotel, though I found some Holidays Inns and such a few blocks away.

Offline Antares

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #2 on: October 06, 2007, 05:30:27 pm »
Yay!

Nice job Jeff!

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Offline superjaz

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #3 on: October 06, 2007, 05:32:30 pm »
yatta
wow it looks really nice too!
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Offline kylite

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #4 on: October 06, 2007, 06:31:58 pm »
not to bash on the site but... the sidebars dont blend with the top graphc. anything we can do about this?
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Offline totemo_oishii

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #5 on: October 06, 2007, 07:52:06 pm »
Yoku Dekimashita !!!! (good job!!!)  ;D

Offline Ren+Pocky

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #6 on: October 06, 2007, 07:53:23 pm »
*loves it* =3

Offline Evaldas

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #7 on: October 06, 2007, 08:08:25 pm »
The site looks great. Nice touch with the hotel in the background, that should be done a little more often. Though I wouldn't have done the mascot in the menu like that. Makes some of the links hard to read. Not a biggy...then again, I kinda do the design stuff for a living. >< Perhaps make the mascot a little opaque or do a two tone thing to make it blend into the background a little more so it doesn't compete with the text?


Offline leashy

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #8 on: October 06, 2007, 08:54:46 pm »
not to bash on the site but... the sidebars dont blend with the top graphc. anything we can do about this?

I agree with the blending comment but I love the color scheme and the hotel in the background, really great job Jeff!  I am excited for it to be all "2008" whee ^^

Offline MichaelEvans

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #9 on: October 07, 2007, 06:21:36 am »
The site looks great. Nice touch with the hotel in the background, that should be done a little more often. Though I wouldn't have done the mascot in the menu like that. Makes some of the links hard to read. Not a biggy...then again, I kinda do the design stuff for a living. >< Perhaps make the mascot a little opaque or do a two tone thing to make it blend into the background a little more so it doesn't compete with the text?

Please excuse the jpeg compression artifacts, I didn't get good results scaling the window down under the size I took the screenshot at, and the forums only allow 128kb for image data.  Never the less, the item placement seems very good and I didn't have any issue reading the text under Firefox or Konqueror (Both linux, 64 bit).  Does it look different on your end?
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Offline TomtheFanboy

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #10 on: October 07, 2007, 07:45:37 am »
This is the new version of the site, I'm sure they'll be improving it and tweaking things here and there as time goes on.

Like turning the graphic at the top into an animated gif so the elevators go up and down. ;)
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Offline DancingTofu

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #11 on: October 07, 2007, 08:32:03 pm »
Needs more cloudy.

Also, the banner would probably look better with some surroundings.  Just having the building makes it look like an AutoCAD model and not a banner.  Perhaps just some trees and a blurred downtown Portland in the background?

For the side bars, we could have the grey at the bottom of the header extend into a cloud for the sidebar, then the left sidebar could have some nice drawing that extends a nice distance down the page and the right sidebar could be just a raining cloud or something, with a looping image for the rain so that it can go as far down the page as necessary.

Just some suggestions, not heavily thought out or anything.  It looks fine, but it could definitely look better.
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Offline risotto

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #12 on: October 07, 2007, 08:35:40 pm »
The site design's not bad. I think it'll change as we get closer to '08 so I wouldn't judge yet.

Offline MichaelEvans

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #13 on: October 08, 2007, 08:17:45 am »
This is the new version of the site, I'm sure they'll be improving it and tweaking things here and there as time goes on.

Like turning the graphic at the top into an animated gif so the elevators go up and down. ;)
Unlikely unless the image is broken down in to a very small section that has the animated portion.  The reason I state this, is that a rough sample that's definitely within the bounds of the actual source image contains 77642 unique colors according to the GIMP.  This is most likely due to the large number of gradiants, as well as the chibi logo.  Though now (as I recall) finally patent-free, gif files may only contain 256 colors of indexed pallet.  There are alternatives (embedding video, flash, or .mng files (the PNG version of animated GIFs, though practically no one supports that format)), however their either high bandwidth/client side load, or not commonly supported.  Also, I personally feel it kind of tacky to use a video or flash Just for moving elevators.  It would be sort of like walking up to a fast food counter, moments before the lunch rush has arrived, and expect to break a 100 dollar bill.

(Modified, this line and fixing an unclosed () pair.)
« Last Edit: October 08, 2007, 08:19:19 am by MichaelEvans »
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Offline TomtheFanboy

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #14 on: October 08, 2007, 09:21:42 am »
Michael.... dude.... That's a pretty in-depth analysis. Wow.
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Offline melchizedek

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #15 on: October 08, 2007, 11:21:31 am »
It looks nice, though I'm not sure how much I like the kumoricon font.  It looks good in the side bar but a little boring in the top.

I however do like the cloud  :)
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Offline MichaelEvans

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #16 on: October 08, 2007, 11:56:31 am »
Michael.... dude.... That's a pretty in-depth analysis. Wow.
Actually I didn't need to look anything up, except for using a function I was pretty sure would be included in something I already had.  You can generally tell if something could fit in to a gif with tolerable (or no) colorloss at a glance, since 256 colors isn't much at all.
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Offline Kimiski

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #17 on: October 08, 2007, 01:54:26 pm »
wow, it looks amazing.
I was wondering if we would start Kumoricon in August for 2008.
Now I can make our hotel reservastions final.
But it makes it look like less time to make cosplay... O.O


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Offline JeffT

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #18 on: October 08, 2007, 11:10:48 pm »
not to bash on the site but... the sidebars dont blend with the top graphc. anything we can do about this?
Though I wouldn't have done the mascot in the menu like that. Makes some of the links hard to read. Not a biggy...then again, I kinda do the design stuff for a living. >< Perhaps make the mascot a little opaque or do a two tone thing to make it blend into the background a little more so it doesn't compete with the text?

Indeed, this is only the first version, and I admit the sidebars and text are not quite right. Evaldas, if you'd like to make a mockup, we will definitely consider using it. We can use help with graphic design in lots of areas in Publicity, actually, if you're interested.

This is the new version of the site, I'm sure they'll be improving it and tweaking things here and there as time goes on.

Like turning the graphic at the top into an animated gif so the elevators go up and down. ;)

Tom, you and I think alike. :)

Just having the building makes it look like an AutoCAD model and not a banner.

The base for the building was indeed a 3D model done in Rhino. From that, the simple shapes were drawn in Illustrator, as were the window/balcony grids, and then the reflections, trees, and other effects were done in Photoshop.

Keep the suggestions coming because I definitely want to have a version 2 which is far more complete and doesn't have the blank walls and stuff like that. We have all the source components for this so can relatively easily pump out new versions without starting all over. Even changing the viewing angle would only require restarting from the Illustrator stage, because we have the 3D model. :)

This might be used on the posters and flyers so we have to make it higher resolution anyway.

Unlikely unless the image is broken down in to a very small section that has the animated portion.  The reason I state this, is that a rough sample that's definitely within the bounds of the actual source image contains 77642 unique colors according to the GIMP.  This is most likely due to the large number of gradiants, as well as the chibi logo.  Though now (as I recall) finally patent-free, gif files may only contain 256 colors of indexed pallet.  There are alternatives (embedding video, flash, or .mng files (the PNG version of animated GIFs, though practically no one supports that format)), however their either high bandwidth/client side load, or not commonly supported.  Also, I personally feel it kind of tacky to use a video or flash Just for moving elevators.  It would be sort of like walking up to a fast food counter, moments before the lunch rush has arrived, and expect to break a 100 dollar bill.

The site is heavily based on transparent PNGs so there's actually quite a lot we can do. Best of all, this still works with IE6 (which we need to support or at minimum gracefully fall back on) because there's a hack for transparent PNG support in IE6. I think it's pretty easy to use JavaScript, DHTML, and preloads to make PNG animations. After all, that's how the sidebar button mouseovers work! The site already has several JavaScripts on it:

The four boxes re-arrange and change height based on the browser window size (resize it if you have a wide monitor and see!)
The calendar has mouseover popups on days where there is an event.
The sidebar buttons glow when hovered over.
The countdown timer (hidden except right before the con but you can see it in the page source).

There's actually a lot we can do with reasonable bandwidth consumption. A really cool front page will get our con extra attention, notice, and memorability, and is fun for our fans.

One point for GIFs: Most programs still save them with a "restricted" palette. But by using "adaptive", they look very good and not grainy, for small images. (I think I got the terms right; not certain). Like my avatar. It seems to work in the browsers I've tested, including even IE6.
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Offline MichaelEvans

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #19 on: October 09, 2007, 03:29:52 am »
Jeff, I'm not sure on the terms, but yes, there is a 'web safe' or standard pallet based off of the common sub-pallet for 8bit color Mac and Windows/Dos systems (the standard being determined way back in the 80s when CompuServe designed it.).  The Wikipedia page mentions several interesting things I didn't know about the format, and gives specific dates for when patent expatriation occurred.

The obvious method, in my mind, of trying to animate a portion is to slice that section out of the image, and store each section around it in containers that are best suited for the data.  However then the situation where they aren't rendered tightly can occur.  I am not as experienced as Jeff when it comes to the subtle design exploits DHTML/XML support, an alternative that would also work (if supported) would be to overlay a second image right on top of the first, and have that as a nearly entirely transparent GIF file, with just the elevator animation.  The final method, before resorting to video files/flash files, is the other one Jeff mentioned, of having a script on the site 'update' that image with the subsequent frames.
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Offline Evaldas

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Re: HAH! the site is finnaly up for next year! :D
« Reply #20 on: October 15, 2007, 01:10:38 pm »
Hey, just wanted to say that I like version two here. The menu buttons look great!