After many years, the East Kingdom site is getting an overhaul. We’ve been working on art, cleanup, infrastructure, scripting, cleanup, and a few other things. And cleanup.
Anyway, the new site was envisioned as a clearly medieval visual experience on top of modern internet technology. I was brought on board as Deputy Webminister in Charge of Making Stuff Look Good (because of my work on the KWAR site) and tasked with making the pictures that would achieve our goal. I’ve attached the header, which the first part of the puzzle to fall into place. The other things I’m showing here are a selection of the little scatter art we’re putting on various pages, which were patterned after period manuscript margin drawings. These were pretty fun to do, and for a little while they were the source of a game, “Which Tad is That?” A more complete list of what I drew for the site looks like:
- Home page header image
- Interior page header
- Page footers (with the exception of the tyger, although I recolored that to match the rest of the style)
- Announcement box header banners
- Royal arms shields
- Royal history title graphic (re-purposed from the We’re Friendly art)
- Nearly 20 bits of scatter art
- Periodified region maps (see next post)
- Subscribe and Email buttons
- Royal Progress icons (king, queen, prince, princess, interkingdom)
- Announcement icons
- East Kingdom award medallions
- East Kingdom officer badges
- Wax seals for officer letters and royal letters
All of the illustrations we’re using on the site (with the exception of a few parts I didn’t create, like the portrait frame on the homepage, borrowed from a period roll of arms) was drawn in blue pencil and ink first, then scanned and processed for web use. In a few cases, I used my now-well-practiced digital painting methods to add color. For the badges and the wax seals, there was a large amount of Illustrator and Photoshop work.