I am finally going to start designing my own little fan site for SR and was wondering if any of you could point me to other SR sites that you like the look of. Some of my favorites are...

The Wireless Hub

Shadowrun and Firearms

Wired Reflexes

Technoschamane

Maybe, I didn't list your site or one that you think is ultra chill...more than likely I haven't found them so go ahead throw up a link for me and others to go check them out at!!!!

Not mine. I suck at graphic design.

http://www.gods-inc.de/macavity/IsleOfShad...pons/index.html

my favorite resource for sr3 weapons.

If it uses frames it's an automatic failure as a website in my eyes. It's not 1995 anymore and CSS is your friend.

Why, yes, I am a web designer. Why do you ask?

That is a very cool site! Never seen it before thanks for pointing it out.

Well, I tend to be more forgiving and they put together some slick graphics.

Which site is yours?

That one in his sig line

I make things to easy don't I?

The color scheme is easy to read and the font is large enough, navigation isn't obscure, it does the trick so I give it a thumbs up!

Hm, I'd say that all these pictures and game stats taken directly from the books aren't exactly kosher...
Otherwise, pretty much what I'd expect from an SR guns site: Some real world guns, lots of stuff taken from Cyberpunk 2020 and Mutant Chronicles, some Shirow stuff (Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed) - and in fact some quite nice self-made toys.

I am not really looking to critique the content of the site, seeking inspiration as to color schemes and what other people think looks slick.

Since I am taking up bandwidth might as well bounce a few ideas off of people...

I am partial to having the navigation bar at the top of the screen but float as you scroll down so it is always in view if you want to navigate somewhere else. Any thoughts?

Not really interested in having a forum on the site, would much rather direct people to Dumpshock.

I have some PDF's, fiction, art, maps, npcs, various odds and ends that I would like to share.

My inspiration has to be two sites, Raygun's 'Shadowrun and Firearms' and Blackjack's site. These sites are just fun to go and meander through for me.

If you're looking for inspiration for cool website designs, I'd suggest coolhomepages.com. They have tons of great stuff and lots of it could inspire a cyberpunk/Shadowrun look and feel for a website.

Sometimes it's good to step away from what everyone else is doing and simply see what strikes your fancy on an emotional level. Design-wise, that is.

Wow, that is quite the site! Thanks I appreciate it!

Wesley,

Any suggestions for a poor slot bereft of Dreamweaver?

If you're comfortable working with code you can always build a website using WordPad or TypePad. Do your coding in those and save the files as HTML. I don't have Dreamweaver on my home laptop and that's how I work on personal projects.

There are free HTML tutorials all through the web if you have time and patience to learn. If you find a website you like you can always reverse engineer it by looking at the source code in your browser and figuring out how they made it just by playing around with a copy of it.

If you don't mine coding, check out cappuccino:

http://objective-j.org/learn/

Thanks, I have started playing with HTML and CSS. Picked up two books that seem pretty straight forward, just a matter of wading through them. Fortunately, I do have CS3 for putting together some graphics.

I really am not a fan of any of the sites you listed in your first post, most are dated in design and just too small, fixed width and too small to work well on modern LCD monitors. At this point there is a ton of resources out there to teach you many of the tools to make a great looking website. I run a paintball news site that runs on a CMS (content management system) which takes care of the heavy lifting of the site. But the look and feel of the site has been all my CSS and graphics work. I also took the effort to carry the theme of the site into the forum software and also on to my Smugmug gallery to unify the site. I am not 100% happy with where I have the site right now but its all minor tweaks that I have just been lazy about fixing up.

HTML is really easy
learning CSS will help you a lot with making the site look the same across different browsers
and make your site really look cool. There are a lot of tricks and I continue to pick up new things.
Strong graphic skills will also be needed as recycled pictures from books and other sites as you can see from the comment about get picked up quick. Unique content is still key on the Interweb.

www.pbuprising.com is the paintball site.

-Jake

Speaking of paintball websites, here's a paintball site we built at my previous employer: pgpaintball.net. It was built using ColdFusion which is dead, dead, dead as far as coding applications go. But the look is kinda Shadowrun-y.

I have CS3 along with Cararra 7, Daz Studio, lots of 3D models, Canon Rebel digital camera, a Sony HD Camcorder, and Power Director 7 Ultra...so I am very excited about original graphic content. The technology that is available today is positively stunning as far as the ability for somebody like myself (zero drawing skills) to create graphics that really pop. I have made two runs into NYC (and braved some neighborhoods with maximum sphincter pucker factor) to get some digital shots to composite in with the 3D models.

Your paintball site is da bomb! The TPX shootout video was very cool, I was wondering how they shoot. The guy who took the two hits in the gogs was priceless. Your scenario section is really good.



It looks good. Gives you the info needed, clean look, not cluttered. The fields look like they would be fun to play on. Got a very big crowd that goes there?

Huge paintball freak here...as a matter of fact I am working on a woodsball book. The best thing about moving from Utah to the east coast is that I am able to attend big events regularly. Castle Conquest, D-Day, Tippmann Challenge!

My old boss bought the entire office paintball equipment for Christmas and we played as a team for awhile. But I quit the company and sold my gear (my gun constantly jammed). Except the mask, which I liked.

There were usually several teams on the courses playing at once. Most of them were the "sport" type of paintballers, with the hyperball fields, but I liked the storming of the castle scenario. We also have an indoor facility here in Indianapolis called Dark Armies which is a small underground city, complete with flipped over cars.

Which gun did you have?

I have gotten to the point in life (physically) that trying to keep up with the younger crowd on the hyperball fields just isn't feasible so I have switched to scenario/woodsball completely. Wisdom, treachery and camouflage all work to keep me competitive in that venue.

Will have to give Dark Armies a look see when I go to GenCon. One more reason to go early to the convention!

I went for style over substance and got a BT Delta (resembles an MP 5) with a sling. Wearing a black turtleneck and a tac vest and mask I looked like I was ready to storm a hostage situation. Unfortunately the stupid thing jammed more often than not. If I could do it all over again I'd go for a basic electronic firing model, such as Tippman, like the pros use.

Dark Armies is pretty cool. It's built in the basement of a warehouse and during play, the only light is from black lights. They pump heavy metal music through speakers so though you're in close quarters you really don't know where anyone else is.

I wouldn't recommend actually climbing into one of the flipped over cars (like I did) unless you want to resemble Venkman in the hotel scene from Ghostbusters. Slimey!

Now...by jammed you mean it wouldn't fire or it was chopping balls?

Jamming (and don't get mad to me for saying this) would indicate that it needed to fully stripped, cleaned, and lubed. Some lubes will gum up after they set for a while.

As far as guns go, I can recommend the Palmer Blazer (mechanical but very reliable), SP-8 if you don't mind a heavier gun, the Ion (which is the heart of the SP-8 without the mil-sim look). I used to be a Tippmann fan (I own more than one Pro-Carbine) but the two A-5's I have turned into money pits that never performed at a level I expected.

Paintball slime...gotta love it!

Back to the OP...if you had to recommend one tutorial on designing a website...which one would it be?

It was chopping balls... which was causing it to jam. And it did that from day one. I got it serviced and it still did the same thing. Frustrating.

I'm self taught in terms of coding so I'd recommend Teach Yourself Web Publishing With HTML in a Week. It's what I used to get the basics down.

You know, I think every so often a person just gets a lemon, from cars to paintball guns.

Thanks for the link!

Being the author of the wiredreflexes.com, I really appreciate the mention and the fact that you appreciate the layout. The link will bring you to the no-longer maintained part of my website which has been dormant for at least three years, if not more. I've since started a new section in support of my new campaign which recently started. The content is lacking, and I haven't had the time to fill it up, but I'm sure that'll happen as time goes by. Have a look here to see what I mean. I kind of took the design in a slightly different direction while still being able to use the content management system that I built a few years ago.

I like what you are doing with the new one DV8

-Jake

Your choice of colors, the WRX logo, the background fade, and the minimalist approach to the art, well it has always impressed me as being cool without trying to be cool. I don't know if that makes sense. But I gotta say, great site!

And I like the content too.

I like your new site as well. You just gave me an idea for what I want to do with my personal site.

Uh... once I get it built, that is.

Damn New Year's resolution...

Thanks! What's the idea you have for your own site?

A (post)cyberpunk-ish look. But without circuitry patterns, neon colors, Asian language characters, or white text on black.

A true design challenge!

I'm already sold! It's about time brings it.

Have you seen the early layouts for the Jennifer Government novel cover? Yeah, that's the look I'm going for.

Draft 1
Draft 2
Draft 3
Draft 4 (Final)

That's pretty sexy. Nice and minimalistic.

All of those covers look good, but I gravitate towards the first one.

I like both fonts and the background has more going on.

The final version...
I like the choice of the vivid green for the eye and the bar code was amped a bit. But adding a bar code to the skin of a 3D model (aka a tattoo) to obtain that result is really easy.

Version two...
Anytime I see text running down the side like that I have this urge to tilt my head to read it.

Version three...
Very...very...plain.

Overall...
The tie-in of the eye color to the color used for the font of her name was a good idea.

Now I want to read it!

Wesley,

Just wondering...what type of font is it that they are using for the author's name in the first cover? That really is a very cool font.

And isn't it used somewhere in one of the recent Shadowrun books? I could be crazy,maybe it just looks similar...

It does look vaguely familiar but I got no clue where I might have seen it before. Searching through fonts can be such a pain in the hoop.

If I had to guess, it's probably a custom typeface. The designer probably created it using FontMaker or a similar program.