Making Something I'm Finally Proud Of
I've been working on my neocities website for a long, long time. I've tinkered with that damn site longer than this blog has even existed. I've had probably 5 different redesigns, ranging from a really basic site to look like the 90s, to a site that had an art direction I lacked the skill to keep up with.
This whole time, I've been trying to find something that says "me". Something that actually feels like a big part of my identity. My last design was kinda neat, but I wasn't super passionate about it and the art direction was something I had no chance of keeping up. So I went to work.
Well, I've finally did it! My site finally feels like an actual showcase of who I am and what I enjoy.
You may be looking at this site and might be wondering what is up with this design? My last design was kinda minimalist, and took heavy inspiration from the Sly Cooper series. This design is... something else. For some it may look familiar, especially if you grew up in gaming circles in the 2000s. I took this design from the XBOX website from 2004. I wanted something that felt closer to the 2000s gaming edge era I was raised in. Older-Brother Core: The Website, basically.
And I think I did a pretty decent job. It was a lot of work to try and make something that looked tangible (appealing to my addinity for skeumorphic design). Glossy buttons, metallic silver backdrop. I spent a lot of time experimenting with gradients and box shadows to get it to look "right". You know what, even if it's not everyone's cup of tea, it's something I'm actually proud of. Hell, I even whipped out Affinity and made the banner at the top of all my favorite games.
You know what might actually be my favorite thing about the site? the little badge at the top. I made it to look like a badge you'd see during the XBOX 360 "blades" dash era for when you looked at someone's profile.
This website is meant to be an exercise in self-expression, and for the longest time I was really struggling with that. I wanted something that felt unique to the sea of beautiful sites that are out there on the indie web, made by people who are oozing with artistic talent. It took time, but I've finally got something that keeps me returning.
I do plan on making the code open source, I'm just lazy as hell and haven't gotten around to it.
I am planning on doing more with the site. I need to do a lot of cleanup first, my /src folder is an absolute dumpster fire. I'm having fun with it. I'm also working on some shrines, my classic halo shrine is testing my will to live. I'm basing it on the Bungie.net site from 2007, I wanna know who the masochist was that designed this site, because ho-ly shit is it jank, but that was web design back then I suppose.
Anyway, I'm just ranting about this little thing I made that I'm proud of. If you do visit the site, leave a little message in the chat box, and check out my favorite songs I've got on there.
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as of writing this...
This is my first day back actually in office since my vacation. I'm just trying to survive until Friday because I'm going on another week-long vacation. In the meantime, been tinkering with my site. Finally made the current design the index page. I'm trying to rework a lot because I wanna incorporate the artwork my friends had made into it. Went and saw Ed Sheeran in Vegas on Saturday and it was fucking phenomenal. To not make this part long as hell, I've written a post about it on my microblog, so check it out if you care.