I was challenged in our DTC 355 course (Multimedia Authoring) to build a narrative website. We studied the different methods that websites use to relate a story; in addition to the variations in navigation structure and how to create an interactive experience for the user.
After some consideration, I settled on the idea of creating a website to showcase my writing in a fun and interesting way. I did not want a website to merely host works in progress, but to work as a vehicle to introduce users to the characters that dominate my free time. As much of my writing is character driven, it seems only right to feature them.
The oldest pieces of work presented on this site can be viewed on Ren's Page, dating to 2009 when I began to get serious about writing. The most recent belongs to Eirys and was part of the story I was writing for NaNoWriMo 2011. Unfortunately, the only stories that are complete belong to Daya, Kyan, and Syria. These are in their first, manuscript draft with limited revisions ranging from 35k-95k words in length.Each piece of art was created by me using a Wacom Bamboo Capture tablet and ArtRage Studio. As my understanding of human anatomy is somewhat lacking, I painted over images that have been credited in the inspiration section of each character. The original images were removed and the remaining work has been carefully rendered using a digital combination of oil paints, colored pencil and some ink. This type of rendering took longer than anticipated, prompting me to take screenshots of my work at various stages of progression. An example of how long it took me to complete the figure of Ren can be found in my Flickr Album.
Special thanks to Chris Coyier for posting this awesome CSS trick that I modified to arrange content for my character pages.