Since I've finally started coming up with layouts that I think people will want to see, I've started this here layout archive. I'm not exactly a genius with these things, if you get my drift. Still, if you're wondering where the idea came from for a particular layout, then you're in the right place. Virtual Stoke * Happy Donut Land VIRTUAL STOKE (MAIN PAGE) I'm pretty sure I have a screencap of the layout before this one, but I can't find it, so we'll skip it for now. Layout #1--Stokie Potter August 15-October 23, 2000         If you hadn't guessed yet, I'm a big Harry Potter fan. There's just something about these books that's so right, like a good movie that just comes together perfectly ("Life is Beautiful," "Castle of Cagliostro," etc.) Rowling has great pacing, and is so creative. Butter beer. Quidditch. The Sorting Hat. Who else could have come up with this stuff? The only author who reminds me of Rowling is Roald Dahl. I used to gobble up his books by the dozen. I ought to read them again sometime.         Anyway, as luck would have it, the new book came out ON MY BIRTHDAY. I couldn't believe it, but it did! I picked up my copy at Waldenbooks that morning at 9 A.M. (scored some of those kick-ass Quidditch patches, too), drove home, and spent the next seven hours straight reading it. Hunger clawed at me, baby spiders attacked me (if it had been "Chamber of Secrets," it would've been funnier), but I sat there and I finished it. And it was SOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOD. God, why do I have to wait a year for the next one? It's not fair, dammit!         So, with such auspicious timing, I figured that my next layout for my next big update (I usually update every two or three months, I think) ought to be a Harry Potter one. It was intended to come out on my birthday to celebrate mon anniversaire and the book's debut, but as usual, I missed my deadline. And my second deadline. And every deadline after that. But I did finish it before I went back to school, at any rate.         At any rate, this layout marked a lot of firsts for me. First layout with a colored background since the page's early days (with its screaming yellow background and red text...agh, I'm having flashbacks!). First not to have the page's full name on it (just "Virtual Stoke"). First to use a photograph to create part of the picture (that was in turn used to good effect on the finished version of my pic). First to look good on a variety of browsers, since I had 1) made it with a 640 x 480 resolution in mind, 2) had discovered the tag to use to eliminate the spacing between table cells in Netscape, and 3) finally realized that when a page looks terrible in AOL, it probably looks much better in Netscape or Internet Explorer. and finally, First layout that I thought looked REALLY GOOD. I'm probably irrationally proud of that one, but it's the most artistic layout I've done to date, and I love it. It's spurring me on to be more creative, and experiment a little more. Layout #2--The Doughnut the Rolls Toward the Future... October 23, 2000-February 10, 2001         If you haven't realized it yet, I don't update my index page very often; usually only when I have some collosally big update, or a new page to announce (which is technically a big update itself). This time around, to celebrate the opening of my Trigun Adoptables page, Happy Donut Land, I decided to dress myself up as Vash the Stampede (it's so much easier in colored pencils than in cosplay^^). God, I love Trigun. Love Trigun SOOOOO much. I die a little every day waiting for the next volume to come out. Yuh. Anywho, it took a long time to get the picture right (another reason I don't update often), but the finished product, particularly the "real colors" one (not the one you see on the index page) is gorgeous.         As for the layout itself, I've got mixed feelings about it. Honestly, I don't like it quite as much as the last one. Principally, it's because of the dull background behind the poster itself. Oh well. I'm still getting into the whole design thing. Liked the picture, really liked the overall wanted-poster effect, and thanks to this layout, I learned how to extend the images in my table cells a bit. Plus, just for the Hell of it, I put the lyrics to "The Wind that Blows Toward the Future" (which I love NOT IN SPITE OF the guy who sings it) in the ALT tags, so if you moved your mouse really slowly across the image, you could read it. I plan to use that in the future. Layout #3--Happy Snow Boy February 10, 2001-December 30, 2001 My favorite tagline ("The boy loves snow, but it's purely platonic") coupled with pretty good computer coloring (for me) and a transvestite snowman makes this probably my very favorite layout to date. As I explained when I put it up, this was a sort of protest, because everywhere I looked, people were putting up their spring layouts--and it was still winter! And winter's my absolute favorite season! I'm sure it caused waves in the design community. --;; Anywho, I'm probably prouder of this one than I am of "Stokie Potter," if only because of the computer coloring, the sweetness of the pics themselves, and the way everything just came together. HAPPY DONUT LAND Layout #1--Happy Donut Debut Heh heh...I gotta get a screencap of that one yet...Patience, please... Layout #2--Vash the Santapede Sometime in December--February 10, 2001         HDL turned out to be surprisingly popular, so I knew I had to do a special Christmas layout (plus, I didn't do a Christmas layout for my mainpage, so this served in its place). My original idea for the main (frames) page was to have Vash in Santa duds standing on somebody's rooftop, illuminated by the moon, with Wolfwood with reindeer antlers having a smoke near the bottom edge, but it was too hard for me to draw (or at least, too hard to draw right and have up in time for Christmas^^). In all honesty, I like this version a little better. It's all sweet an' stuff. Plus, Kuronekosama turned out so cool! For the splash, I used one of the Santa Vash's I made and put him in front of a little pine tree (with the ALT tag reading, "Good boys and girls get donuts from Santa Vash. Bad boys and girls learn the pain of living from Santa Legato" and a title that said, "Expecting a visit from a big jolly guy in a red coat...?"). The green stripes on the main pages looked really spiffy. I'm trying to use stuff like that more often. This is a really rambling sorta stream of consciousness summary, isn't it? The noframes page had a banner that used part of the main page's pic. Overall, this layout was really cute, and worked very well, except for the fact that the content frame was WAY too small. Honestly, it was as large as I could make it without seriously shrinking the picture (and there was no way I was gonna do that after all the trouble I went to making it). But hey, everybody's entitled to one "content frame's too small" layout, right? Main