I have an Owl Problem. Heh.

Monday, May 18th, 2009

And a general crafting obsession problem, but that’s a whole textbook.

I do blame Harry Potter for this, and possibly Winnie The Pooh… and the internet, where all good obsessions are born and encouraged.

Now that we’ve made my generally obsessive nature clear, nobody should be surprised that I made Owl Marbles last night. They’re those flat bottomed type I think most people put in vases unadulterated. Wouldn’t do for someone like me and I don’t really believe in keeping vases of flowers around anyway – they live longer on the plant.

Three different kinds of owls in the front row, all drawn by me. The back row has one lot of flowers and a butterfly (on the same one) that I drew and three other flowers I cut from a spare page or two in my memo pads.

Better picture minus the sideways distortion. The marbles act as a magnifier to the pictures glued underneath nearly doubling them in size. I kind of wish the marbles were a bit bigger, it’s awkward drawing designs smaller than a five cent piece.

The ToMU one on the bottom row is more purple than blue in real life, Purple and Green are the colours of Magisterius University where the story is set. Or I’m pretty sure they are. Erm. For those of you not up on the webfiction stories, it’s a High Fantasy University story of which I’ve read 380 Chapters plus various and sundry other bits and bobs.

And yes, that’s a dragon head above the lady beetle. I freehanded that in sharpie, of all things.

Now to go draw more owls. (And incase you didn’t notice, the first two pictures are on the design of an owl plushie I’m working on. Heh)

18.05.2009 Crafting, Design, General, Softies, Webserials No Comments

Plugins For Webserial Owners…

Friday, May 8th, 2009
plugins-for-webserial-owners

It’s been a while since we started planning this, in fact it was sometime after I wrote up and posted Design Tips For Webserial Writers in an effort to assist a group of my favourite people in an area I happen to know a bit about – finding good, solid designs that won’t turn readers away. As with that post this one is focused on Wordpress users (self hosted, not wordpress.com users, sorry!).

There is something of a difference, though. I didn’t do this by myself but with the help of someone who indeed knows a bit more about Webserials than I do. This is where Alex McG who writes the Webserial “Children of the First” comes in. After I realized Alex had commented on my Design Tips post (a whole month later, sorry!) As you can see if you go back and read the comments I mentioned that I was considering writing a post on plugin’s as well and Alex wanted to help – who was I to say no?

That being said, this has taken an inordinate amount of time to get out but I hope it was well worth the wait, I’ve never done collaborative blog posting let alone organizing list’s of things that we reconmend and it probably shows but here we go!

Also, as of this posting I believe we are both on Wordpress 2.7 so you should check to see if the plugins will work for you.

Alex has posted his HERE, please check it out.

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08.05.2009 Design, General, Webserials 1 Comment

A Little Linkage for a Fellow Webserial Writer

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
a-little-linkage-for-a-fellow-webserial-writer

So, I promised Alex I’d do this if I remembered – and I obviously do. So if you read/writer or generally have anything to do with webserials please go and help out :D


Alex Wants You!



19.11.2008 Pimping, Webserials 2 Comments

Design Tips For Webserial Writers

Monday, November 17th, 2008

As someone highly interested in writing in general and of late, Webserials in particular I like to comment on things, and as much as I love and support Tales of MU, by Alexandria Erin – I do wonder at the sites design. Of course, having read in excess of three hundred chapters (yes, you heard right – excess of three hundred) of AE’s work. I can honestly say I’m hooked, and even if she stays with her current site design – as long as theres something to read, I’m there.I’m also not begruding her because she has ads on her site, just so you know.

As some of you may be aware, I’ve got a little Webserial of my own, Moondust. It’s on Hiatus because I couldn’t seem to get into it or keep up – originally it was meant to be a combined effort of my friend Ashlee and myself. One of the first things I took into consideration was Site Design. Traditional Publishing has a standard of books and papers and that lovely smell that comes along with it. People love books, they curl up with them on a chair o in their beds late at night. They take them on buses, on trains and they’ve been around seemingly forever. They’re familiar and comfortable.

The internet, and therefore webserials – however have what? Technology, need for internet connections, devices that aren’t so cosy on a rainy day. To me it seems that people except to only like stories that come from tangible books.. and Webserial’s just aren’t like that, unless they have a printed edition as well.

But I’ve gone a bit off track here, I have so much to say about Webserials and I’m distracting myself. One reason people might find webserials unappealing is the look. Not all writers are artists in other respects, and far less are web designers. I use wordpress, an so do quite a few others who do webserials so I’ll use wordpress to continue this post – sorry guys who use other software.

Also I should probably mention I’m not referring to WordPress.com, but the one you can install on your own site.

So what do we want to look for in a website design for a webserial?

  1. Readability! It’s a webserial, which obvious means you need people to be able to read it. What this means seems to be lost on some, though.The main point is a good sizes and clear font, things like Arial, Veranda, Times New Roman, Georgia and the like.
  2. A pleasing but simple colour scheme – simple is optional, I suppose  – but you should want your readers enthralled by the words not just the layout.
  3. Plenty of space for your writing to shine. Please, please no tiny content columns! Too much scrolling for a relatively normally sized chapter will both annoy and scare certain people away.

Thee are certainly other things to consider, but these would be the main points. Of course, as I said before – not everyone has a clue about web design, and I know not everyone can afford to pay for someone to make them their own special theme.  Therefore, the logical option would be to find good and free themes – that could be customized easily enough.

I told you I’d get to my point eventually!

I’ve rounded up some good themes that I think are suitable for webserials and the like. I haven’t tried them all, but I got screenshots and have links and such. Below each Screenshot I’ll explain why I think it’s a good theme, and for what sort of story I think it would suit best. Remember to always check out if the theme creators give support/allow modifications and their licenses.

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17.11.2008 Design, General, Webserials 9 Comments

Moondust!

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

It began in a small town, as stories often do. It was a quiet place for the most part, a town on the Lachlan River in NSW, Australia. The town was friendly as little towns ever are to strangers, but even so when they saw certain people.. well, they believed their reasoning for not liking them on sight was justified by the odd things that seemed to follow them.

You see, the good folks of Blackridge had the unfortunate delusion that magic, for better or worse, was nothing but fiction. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter-Is-A-God type fiction. So when things that could not be explained away by reason and science occurred, they blissfully ignored it. Because if they ignored it, who was to say it was real? Certainly no one else in the Western World could still believe in those children’s tales, could they?

So yes, they did notice Raina Tibbits when she moved into the old Williamson house just outside of the main area of town, but if you ask them they’ll deny it. Because she’s too strange for them to acknowledge her existence without admitting that perhaps those old stories aren’t as fictitious as they previously thought. And this is where we meet the lady of the hour, Miss Raina Tibbits. Or Ms, if you prefer – she never minded either way. But she’d prefer you just called her Raina.

Start at the beginning or at the newest update!

Updated weekly.

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This is my new baby, I’d appreciate if you tried it and commented, even if you don’t like it. (If you comment on Moondust, please actually comment on that site, it’d be appreciated, also. Tell your friends!)

17.07.2008 + Moondust, Pimping, Webserials No Comments