Welcome to this month’s update where I talk about webiste improvements and Shireen Baratheon’s new theme! For the past couple of weeks I have been embroiled in a fight against the software gods to come up with a nicer way of displaying content on the website. The results?
The Good
So for the longest time my idea of the website had always been an interactive book where the reader the reader can flip through pages and click on the music they want to hear, with animations, sound effects and overall a sense of discovery. This month I finally decided that I needed to get cracking on it and see how to possibly implement it on the website.
I rely on Excel and PowerPoint to keep all my work organized, so the obvious idea was to work on a PowerPoint presentation to embed on the website. I work for days on end to create the textures and sounds from scratch; figure out the best layout to present the information; polish the animations; and last but not least create a master template that is streamline and easy to create hundreds of new files.
Here is a quick render of some slides with placeholder text and images.
The Bad
Where to start? PowerPoint embedding is far from what I had hoped. The sound and animations where missing. The navigation was terrible and not as flexible as I wanted. The control over what to display and how almost non-existant …. After days of going back and forth I ended giving up the idea of embedding the slides on the website. The closest they will be for now to make it onto the website will be in video form… and I’m not even sure about that since the whole point of the experience is to be able to move back and forth the slides and click wherever you want to interact with the pages.
So this is a very disappointing entry for me to write. I spent a lot of time and effort working on something that will not make it to the website (at least for the time being). At least I can make use of the nice textures and upload the new versions of the Family Lineages, as the previous ones where, to put it mildly, not particularly easy on the eyes.
The Ugly
And with that smooth segue here is the theme for Shireen Baratheon, known for being not only ugly, but also living a gloomy and sad existence.
I wish there had been new material for this upload (believe me, I really do) but sometimes things don’t work out the way we want. Hopefully next month will see a great deal more of new music. See you then!
Music of Ice and Fire 