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Webdesign is the best example I can give relating to my own experience of over-ambition. Webdesign is hard. That is to say, designing a website isn't hard but designing a good website is. What's tricky about designing a website, more than anything, is getting the balance right. And that balance can be any number of things, from features/content, Form/Function, Colour/Weight.

Now, I'm no webdesigner, I've only gathered this experience from working on and completing around six of my own webdesigns. So I don't claim to speak from a position of knowledge, I'm speaking from what I've learnt from exploring my own ideas.

To get back to over-ambition, another aspect of Webdesign I find so frustrating is limitations. When I put pencil to paper, I can do whatever I feel like- fulfilling and finishing that notion is my only challenge. With Webdesign, there is concept and reality and often sacrifices between.

As example- http://99reasonstowin, the homepage of FELICITY underwent a massive overhaul not long ago. V1 served a purpose, hosting my comic on its own two legs and allowing readers to come, read the comic and experience what it had to offer. I had no reason to redesign the website, outside of my own personal perspective on it- I felt like it wasn't as good as it could be- dozens of reasons really.

Didn't reflect the character of the comic, the concept, the feel, the colours, the humour, it wasn't 'homely'. Black- a colour that the old design had in abundance is a terrible terrible colour to have on a website and I really hesitated to settle on it after failing to design a site without it prior to V1. Black is a dull lifeless colour void of bounce or reflection, exaggerating only a little- it's depressing to spend alot of time looking at. And I'm not some crazy hippy! There is a science to colours and the effects they have on our eyes and our bodies, colours are vastly important and therefore slapping alot of black around is a good way to loose attention from your audience. And that's another point, interesting to consider, I'm rambling I know but working on a piece of art- our concept of colour and ideas for using it are controlled by our intentions. We'll use certain colours in a comic panel for example to try to invoke a desired reaction or emotion. Websites take this concept of desired effect and multiply it because we aren't thinking about that one time the reader sees a panel, we're trying to think 'How can we encourage the reader to come back or hang about or enjoy it while they're here'.

And perhaps you may read this and think 'He's reading way to much into this' but that is my point! Colour affects us subconsciously and it's an easy way to influence, if we get it right.

Anyways!

When first brainstorming ideas for 99reasons V2 I had a First Person perspective idea, a cockpit, from inside the head of 99, our main character. Below is my first initial concept.

Firstly you can notice my concept is governed by LINES. Horrible lines of RULE. These lines obviously indicating the rough ideas I have in my mind of how the website can actually be constructed, which is the governing thought to design. You can see through my design pretty easily, I'm basically trying to make a piece of art into a website. And that leads me to the next part.

Form over Function, or Function over Form.

It's easy to argue that FUNCTION should always be paramount in design. Infact, I'm not going to argue against that, that'd be dumb. I would argue that context is important to the question, sometimes function can take a back seat to form depending on what it is your trying to convey. In this case, the order so far is FORM over Function- a bad fit. And I'll get into that abit later on.

Important to note now that I do not BUILD my websites. My input is the entire design, graphics and finish. However, everything 'under the bonnet' (The really hard bit as I call it) is done by my good friend Darryl Walker over at Icarus Wish. So by this stage, I've passed my initial concept(above)to him for input on what is actually possible within the previously mentioned limitations. That leads to a revised concept, below-

The limitations this design idea are pretty staggering. To begin, the white box you see center of the image is the intended visual cut off area, ideally for me I didn't want the viewer to see much more outside of that box. That of course is ignoring the possible viewer coming to my website on a large resolution, or similarly, a vistor coming on a small resolution. Without distorting, warping or pain stakingly piecing together, the intended background image cannot exist purely in that cut off point. HENCE! Extended image. Which was a nice idea but it would have caused further issues.

One of which being my content box idea, 99 holding a datapad, my idea being an independent content navigation. Meaning simply that the 'cockpit' image stays static, or locked, while you scroll the content in her datapad. This is problem because firstly, it's too small. Secondly it's too low, some users would log on and not even see the top of the datapad, and thirdly it's going to cause problems being independent from the whole window.

These are all issues that can be resolved using clever code or design skills- I'm aware of that. Flash for instance is one such way to make this design a reality, but when problems occur so readily and do not have an obvious solution- you begin to realise that FORM should not be taking priority of FUNCTION and that if you are causing problems for yourself designing it, how is anyone going to navigate it?

However at this stage in design, my affection for the concept caused me to push on, trying to patch over the holes caused by previous concepts-

In this concept you can see the perspective from the initial design has altered quite significantly, allowing a larger and higher up content box, as well as a wider more 'roomy' cockpit image. Despite glaring issues with the idea I did somehow get as far as even rendering part of this in the intended fashion, seen below. It's when I got this far though that I realised I was reaching too far.

And that is because, this entire concept so far has only covered the Homepage of the website, how could it incorporate the Comic page, how would you read the comic? Would it have the same image for all pages with different datapads? Different arms holding the datapad? How does the user get home or navigate from pages other than the homepage. It becomes a nightmare because one piece of the puzzle has taken so long to get nowhere. And that's where I want to point back to the fact that designing websites is hard. And to ignore even, the previous statement of quality is hard, the actual physical elements of creating each individual part, designing each individual page, the content, the flow, the navigation- it's a TREMENDOUS amount of work to follow through on an entire design ethos.

So, keep it simple.

Red White and Black are FELICITYS colours, the team wear the colours between them, the ship sports them, the theme of Crimson runs through my work. These colours are so obvious as representation of Felicity and yet they weren't present in the webdesign, not in abundance. Keeping it simple, I birthed the idea below-

2010 saw the rebranding of Felicity, I had redesigned the logo, tightened the style, explored artistically to resolve questions I had begun to answer and I took all of that on board when approaching a new look for the website. I wanted it to show character, stand out and communicate Felicity but over all else I wanted it to be-

Neat, Tidy, Clean, Approachable and most of all Easy to Navigate. Simplicity goes leaps and bounds because all of us can connect to it, some read farther than others but all are welcome. And it's an obvious thing- often ignored. Think about when you visit a website COVERED in links and boxes, content- mess of words. You don't ease into that site, often you'll simply just leave to gather your information elsewhere.

On alot of my goals for V2 I feel I succeeded, in the sense atleast that I feel I have a homepage for my comic that is an extension of the comic itself not just a website where you can read it. I feel like it's easy, it's simple. Of course the process of getting it there wasn't! But when you've forced your friend to sit up to 1 am on a work night so you can see the pieces of your design become reality it is an awesome feeling. He may hate you with a burning passion but isn't that what friends are for? Hurrhurr.

http://99reasonstowin.com

-T

A note to myself

There are no excuses.

Expressing yourself is never easy but always necessary.

Freedom is always present to do what you can with inspiration.

Stop wasting it.

Creativity is a gift and should be shared.

Never doubt your own ability to express and perform.

Art is what the beholder makes of it.

Art is your language, our language.

Always tell a story, even if that story is a bad one.

Never ever stop.

And stop holding yourself back.

-T

99reasonstowin V2

Today Felicitys website http://99reasonstowin.com relaunched with a complete overhaul. It's the result of a lot of work and I'm so pleased to have the website reflect the spirit of the comic now. I'm planning on doing a few indepth blogposts exploring the design and concepts prior that I decided against and really just cover my own thoughts on webdesign.

-T

Lines video

Doctor Who

My leg is really hurting for no reason, so I shan't stay for explanation! Doctor Who- my first proper attempt. This is basic lines and color, I might go ahead and give it some proper treatment later.

-T

Thinking out loud- The Do-better Conflict.

Over the last year I've surrounded myself with more and more artists that far surpass my own abilities, that I admire, that I want to learn from. Part of this comes in the form of simply watching them on Deviantart; constantly being subjected to their updates, their journals- it's very easy to be connected to an artist through that community- to be inspired. Twitter is another huge contributor, allowing me to share in not only an artists expression; but their own mind, thoughts and direct advice.

It has however caused something of a conflict-

As my own creative thoughts and processes become torn between two trains of thought.

One tells me what I should and shouldn't do, it's one that speaks from experience- one that reflects success and a wealth of practical skill. These are the people who are professionals, who are talented, who aren't talking about when they're GOING to be a success, they're talking about why they're already a success(and I should stress, with a few exceptions, they don't do so with an ego.) In a funny way, having all these rules of success put a real limit on creativity, these DOS AND DONTS making mistakes feel like they shouldn't ever be made and I'm really not sure that's good advice.

Ofcourse, before explaining the other side of the coin- I know that this 'assumption' of rules is just that, an assumption- while some artists do indeed come across as DO THIS and DONT DO THIS, it's really just advice; a guideline. Hey pal, if you want to succeed in this business? You gotta start doing more of this and fixing more of this and stop doing this.

The other train of thought is that of optimistic adventure- it's the train I've rode my whole life- the freedom to express myself however I see fit, it's the train that got me to the Felicity station. I've arrived where I am so far, as an artist, through my own self discovery and passion for what I love, I've gotten here through my own hard work and stupidly large amounts of dedication(much to the annoyance of many sociable friends I've lost in the process.)

The conflict therefore is the pressure to grow and get better, seeing more work from people beyond me- making me feel like I need to try harder. Rather than go at my own pace. This ofcourse, is no bad thing- it's the equivalent to me stepping on the gas, to evolve faster than I have so far. It is however a double edged sword as the feelings of frustration associated with it- cause distress at the non-standard I'm currently at.

One side of me wants to succeed; ofcourse! but another wants to tell stories and keep doing what I love. I guess if you want to be blunt about it you could say, do you wanna draw as a hobby or professionally? I'm not sure it's so black and white. We live in a day and age where anything can happen thanks to the internet- Scott Pilgrim is an easy-to-go-to example. But I'm not comparing my work to that, I'm not saying it has that potentional- I just know that I don't need to play by rules to succeed, do I?

I think all artists need to ask themselves why they spend so much time hunched infront of a computer. For me it's the same as it's always been, to express myself, to tell stories. When I was on the Sunnyside Podcast(A local comic-themed podcast)I was asked what my plan was for Felicity as a book, interms of printing and selling- interms of it outside of being just a story.

I was staggered by the question, I didn't know how to answer it because I honestly never thought as far as that- I never thought, hey- I can sell this story.

My lifestyle as now, holds barely a commitment, so it's easy for me to say 'Oh I draw for the expression man, not the money!' but I don't have endless bills to pay and a family to feed. When I get older and I gain the burdens of adult life heavier on each shoulder perhaps that spirit of expression will change. Or perhaps it never will, I'll just realize that if I want to keep drawing I need to focus on making it a success and not just a personal satisfaction.

To put it in context, I scrapped what I had done on Felicity Issue 3(about half of the issue)through the conflict caused by the pressure to do better. On one hand, I can't say that this is a bad move, obviously it's going to strengthen the comic as I come back at it with newer ideas for how I go about it. But at the same time- it's something that I fought hard with in order to get 1 and 2 done.

The feeling of 'IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH YET, SCRAP IT' is what stops 99% of independent comic creators ever making a comic and I think I can say that with confidence. Sure, I hate Issue 1 and 2s art looking back now but the point is I got it done, so is the fact I stopped thinking that way for Issue 3, is that a bad road to go down?

I see improvements in my work and I feel like my return to Issue 3 will be stronger for it. I just still wonder is it right for creativity to be governed by 'rules of success' or should it be an animal, free to run wild until someone realizes it just needs to be tamed?

Harrrum.

-T

Old Skool Felicity

I was inspired by some vintage covers and I think subconsciously for a long time, the work of Matt Kaufenberg over at (http://skutterfly.deviantart.com) has been inspiring me to do this one off retro-vision of Felicity, a bit like I did with the fake NES game cover.

I pulled out some of the oldest comic covers I could find, curious most of all what a retro Felicity might look like, I looked primarily at old artwork and designs of the Batmobile. Essentially I wanted to make a version of the ship that looked way old but still recognizable. An easy way to do that was to turn that 'Cool' dial all the way down, haha- Yikes it's ugly! For T-gate I figured even though it'd be a futuristic story, a retro version wouldn't quite be ready for a holo-head and as the robot designs I researched contained re-occuring domes and curves I decided on a 'Light' Bulb type head- fitting ofcourse as 99 nicknames him Lightbulb.

I threw colours on the inks making sure to try and limit my palette and go over the lines now and again(for that authentic retro-look!) I also made the choice to 'down-grade' 99s goggles, seemed it might look out of place to be the 'hovering' Neon orange of her actual design. A cool little thing was that the goggles she sports here are the actual original goggles, that were a design element for a long time during the characters initial conception.

Lastly I applied visual effects like textures, grain, stains, dot-pattern. The 'child scrawling' is of course a nod to past ventures but primarly inspired by the previously mentioned Skutterbug, plus it just adds a cool, real aspect to it.

-T