I have decided: the time has come to spend some money on sorting out my website. I designed it myself in Dreamweaver 8 years ago, and have been adding to it ever since. It is now a pretty humongous beast. It still works pretty well, considering, and is of course full of my animals, so very visual, but these days it looks a bit clunky in places. The main problem though is that it's very labour-intensive to update. As a result, it's been neglected of late and I've been pouring my love into this blog instead!
I spent this morning with a local web design company, chatting to the very helpful Diego about all the things we could do to make life easier. I'd also like to create an animated masthead, plus maybe occasional bits of surprise movement. There is so much movement implicit in the illustrations, it shouldn't be hard to find something. Like the zooming snails or swinging rhinos above (from When You're Not looking! ) or perhaps this skipping girl (from Two Feet Up, Two Feet Down). 
Of course, now I'm all excited, but I have yet to find out what it's all going to cost. Diego says that, to set up something that's 'smart', and uses a database for easy uploading and for updating its own links, it is going to start at around £1000, and go up from there, depending on how much I want to do. Eek!It sounds like at least my, albeit limited, pockets of techy knowledge will help to keep costs down a little, because Diego can show me how to do certain things for myself. We'll see. I want to get going straight after Christmas if I can. So, watch this space (or actually, watch this space)!
In the meantime, what do you think about a scratching gorilla? We could even have scritchy-scratchy sound effects...Or am I getting carried away now?
Postscript: not only is the website redesign now finished, but I have since revisited it again, adding loads of new features, like free educational resources for teachers, and lots of films of me demonstrating how I create my pastel artwork, talking about how I became an illustrator, or giving step-by-step instructions on how to recreate some of my drawings. Take a look and let me know what you think!
11 comments:
I love the idea of scritchy scratchy sounds, but they must have the serene sighs of satisfaction when it hits the spot!
Oooo - good idea!
I think you have a very good website, but the new one sounds very exciting! I will look forward to seeing how it goes after Christmas.
Very good idea about the scratching gorilla (perfect character desing) and Granny´s contribution. I like too the little skiping girl.
It's always great to have your website updated or over-hauled! Make sure to do comparison shopping and get more than one opinion! :)
i love this gorilla - and very love the rhynos too! best wishes to your new website, it's always a hardest job working to ourselves...
I think the idea of bits of movement here and there is great,it will add even more humour to your already funny pictures.A Scritchy-Scratchy Gorilla would be fab.
How exciting to be teetering on the edge of a new phase for your website.Can't wait to see what comes of it!
What a great blog you have! I fell in love with it when I first saw your IF: Vacant (with the mule.....) Your characters are so fun!! I have a couple of awards waiting for you on my blog. Merry Christmas!
there's no such thing as getting carried away (unless the bells and whistles conflict or distract too much from the content). I settled for a template for my site - but customizing will make yours much more personalized. Good luck, and I can't wait to see it! Make sure they make it so it's easy for you to upload and change!
Like you, I've always done mine myself. Partly because it's cheaper and partly because I like to have complete control of it. It gets very time consuming though and as you say - it's hard keeping it up to date.
I've been thinking about getting someone else to take over so I'll be very interested to see how yours comes out.
the tarzan rhinos are AWESOME, so is the itchy gorilla!
im picturing the rhinos animated swinging from tree to tree - each tree being a different page of the website.
i really like your other work too!
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