Reboot Version V: A Lesson in Procrastination
dorkdance dorkdance dorkdance
So it's that time again -- time for me to make a long, blathering post about what I did in order to create a semi-fabulous layout for the_lj_reboot. This is the third Reboot I've participated in, and the first in which I was so low on time and energy that I literally whipped out my entire layout in a day's time, give or take some minor poking here and there.
Rebooted!
"Yeah, I got time." The phrase came as easily to me as it did to Mr. Incredible on the day of his wedding. Finals? Have to study. Moving? Have to pack. Kitten in a tree? Have to shake it loose with my brute strength. Reboot V deadline looming ahead? No problem. Hell, there's still time to pass out for four days after getting home from my first year at school.
And then I regained consciousness and realized, "Oh, crap. It's the 21st of May, and my Reboot layout is due in ten days." Thus commenced the ritualistic running about like a chicken who has met an untimely end by beheading. And after I was done molting, I sat down and stared at my computer, willing it to create the most fabulous layout possible, for me.
This entire layout is based on a pattern. I was saying to myself as I started to plot out the basic design in Photoshop [I always create a mock-up of what I want things to look like before I code them], "I want something with the guys from Supernatural on it, but I want something to border the side, too." It took me awhile, but I found what might be the perfect pattern for the mood I was trying to set -- a simple, flowery design by 77words. With some minor color adjustment so the pattern would match the header graphic I'd already created in the mock-up, I was ready to start the most tedious part of the design process: the coding.
I've never done a purely CSS-based layout. I admire the people who can do it, but I have to get my hands on the meat of the layout and fiddle with the actual hard coding to make it look the way I want. This often leads to compiling errors in the s2 advanced customization center, as well as, um... interesting mistakes.
An Interesting Mistake
[ large color screenshot]
This is an example of what happens when we forget to put in a bracket when playing with LJ's s2 code.With a few minor speedbumps, I was well on my way to a brand spankin' new layout, this time without recycling any of my old code. The only thing I did recycle was halffling's Opal template [which I continue to heart], although the fact that this is an Opal-based layout is barely noticeable, with as much as I've changed it.
The Design Process
After experimenting with gradients and shading in my first Reboot [#3, spring 2006] and with rounded corners in my second [#4, fall 2006], I thought it was time for a little something different. I knew going into the mock-up that it was going to be a Supernatural-based layout, and I knew that I wanted to incorporate a lot of shades of aquamarine and turquoise into it. I needed to brighten up my LJ -- the previous layout I'd been using was a nice, but somewhat boring combination of gray and smokey-blue.
For the header I used the standard, almost overused Sam-and-Dean-in-field photos that were circulated before the start of Supernatural season 2. I tried to take some pink out of their skin tones and to brighten up the blues in the photos as much as possible before working in the rest of the elements I would need for a good layout design, in the mock-up.
It took me awhile to find the right pattern to start my layout out with. Some of the ones I tried making myself were pretty horrific, before I started combing through 77words' patterns on my external hard drive and came up with this cute little flowered pattern in teal, aquamarine, and tan. The colors matched the header I'd thrown together nearly perfectly. After that, the mock-up was easy like Sunday morning.
The Mock-Up
[ large color screenshot]
Getting the design to match the mock-up was only sometimes tricky. I can tell you right now that the way the layout is set up matches the mock-up pretty closely. It's obvious that I changed the text on the header -- thanks to marishna, who had to kill my joy about Blur's 'Girls and Boys' by telling me that it didn't quite fit the graphic. Additionally, I had a few more borders than strictly necessary in the PS mock-up, so I removed a few of those. I think the hardest parts were by far putting the time/date above the icon [and the username below, on friends view], and moving the tags up from the metadata.
Afterthoughts
I still haven't figured out how to remove the tags from kunzite1's cleaned-up tabled metadata code without getting a compiling error. :| Oh, well. Metadata isn't the meat of the entry, anyhow.
On a whole, I very much enjoyed rebooting my layout. I thought it was definitely time for a change as far as the look of my layout goes and am relatively satisfied with the way it turned out. Mostly, I'm loving all the blue.
Another plus is the load time for this layout. There are sixteen images uploaded into the Reboot Version V folder in my LJ ScrapBook. Reboot Version IV claims 10 images; however, the images are larger in terms of file size than those uploaded for this Reboot. And compared to the 62 images that were involved in my Reboot III layout, sixteen images for Reboot V are a paltry sum.
At any rate, I had fun. I've blathered on for quite some time now, mainly to while away the minutes that remained before I could post this and turn on my layout. I'm looking forward to the next Reboot already, regardless of whether or not the stress of another timed layout will kill me.
As always, it was designed for Mozilla Firefox. Of course it doesn't look right in Internet Explorer.
Make sure to check out the other fantastic designs at the_lj_reboot.