Web 3

Web3 was, as the name implies, is my third website. Although I don't have any record of it, I remember the first site I built. It was so pathetic it got me laughed out of an interview. I was still in school at the time so I wasn't set back but it definitely was my make or break moment. I decided that I needed to double down on my efforts and cement my foundation with web development so that I didn't have a repeat. I have no record of my second site and don't even remember it, probably for good reason.

My third website, from the beginning, was to be as complex as I could imagine. I often found that the best way to learn was to challenge yourself to do something bigger than you could and along meeting the challenges you'd be forced to learn what you didn't know to fill in the gaps. I was trying to setup a website to promote t-shirts for a company that was a precursor to Antidesigns. It would display art my friends and I were making at the time and originally I wanted it to run an online store, although I didn't have any idea how much more I would need to know but my ambition was large. I wanted to use animation in the site and I even spent time apart designing it to look mechanical. I built the site using Dreamweaver, which looking back makes me cringe, but it gave me the ability to animate the body images and navigation arms pretty quickly. I designed the site first in Photoshop in Northeastern's library computer lab and it brings back a lot of memories sitting in the individual cube with so many other anonymous students writing papers and cramming for tests. I had no idea that was the beginning for me. I also had been dabbling with flash at the time and wanted to create an intro to the site. It was a console screen but instead of terminal font it was replaced by a graffiti font I had found. I used the animation to make it seem like you were hacking into the site and when it finished you would be presented with a slide-out animation of this mechanical screen with three navigation arms.

All things considered, before I started the project I barely knew any HTML and by the end I had produced a design-integrated animation with flash. I would say I was successful in not only surpassing my earlier embarrassments but of breaking into web development and really learning that ambition is the way to success. Web3 is something that I am still proud of, however crude, since it would really show that I was dedicated to the field of development beyond just getting a job and really enjoyed the art in it.