Prologue
“ At the turn of the new century, The United Kingdom is torn, but in recovery. The violent shifts in the Earths crust, centred around the Eurasian plate, have ceased. Despite the catastrophic devastation of mainland Europe, The city of London stands defiant. Big Ben chimes in reluctance, refusing to yield to the punishing effects of the tectonic disaster. Unpredictable weather systems and high levels of radiation make for a harsh environment, the latter serving as a reminder of ‘Nuclear correction’; the failed attempt of Superpowers to normalise the planet’s structural integrity.
Despite the mass emigration to safer continents, some choose to stay. Complete social and economic collapse of the capital is on the edge of a knife. Huge corporate firms intervene with force under the false pre-tense of keeping the peace, yet their aid serves as propaganda to mask their will to seek monopolies and territory. They wage small scale war with one another. With a powerless Government and a decline of public services, the new law is dictated by the corrupt, and enforced by private security and militia. However, for those willing to endure the violence and upheaval, the capital has become a hive of lucrative opportunity; A high demand for individuals with specific expertise has attracted a new breed of freelancer… “
And….we’re back.
I’m no writer (clearly), but this is part of the intro to the creative brief I gave to Dan Malone, the fantastic artist who I commissioned to do the artwork for this site. He has done a ton of work for the games industry, some of which were from my favorite game of my childhood – The Chaos Engine on the Amiga 600. The concept came from an idea of what a ‘freelancer’ might be in different times in history. We are hired do a job alone or as part of an existing team, bound by the words of a contract. The job is completed, we get paid, and we move on to the next. It just so happens that right now most of us sit in front of a screen rather than being guns for hire – for the best I think.
As with my previous portfolio site, I wanted the creation of this one to serve as a learning project. HTML5, CSS3, jQuery and a little bit of PHP in the form of WordPress were the subjects. It’s taken me a year in-between projects to complete, but it was totally worth it. I’m now no longer scared of in-depth front-end development – I even enjoy it a little. It also had to be fun to make and thus I related the design direction to some of the things I enjoy – Comic book Anti-heroes, Post-apocalyptic stories and films, Motorbikes and Gaming.
Over the next few months i’ll make some Walk-throughs / Tutorials about some of the more interesting or tricky bits that went into this. I tried to approach it without compromise. If I designed it, I had to develop it. That way I wouldn’t only learn a good deal about front end development but also how annoying some bits of design can be to develop.
References
Theres so much info out there now to learn anything to do with the web. Here are some of the resources I used to put this together, or credits to authors who’s code exists on my site in some way or another.