Dragonsaber - Web Design and Computer Art

About Dragonsaber

Dragonsaber.com is the Online portfolio of Web Designer/Computer Artist, Kerwin Siy. The site was developed as a central location for all of Kerwin's Websites and new media artwork. Pieces showcased in this site were created between 1994 and present time.

The Evolution: A Brief History

Back in 1995, Kerwin Siy created his first online portfolio after graduating from the Savannah College of Art & Design. It's purpose was to serve as an alternate means (the Dragon-23 CD-ROM was the primary means) to present his computer art skills at job interviews. The site was called Dragon-23 Online and displayed many of the works featured on the CD-ROM version. It couldn't have the 3-D walkthrough because of bandwidth limitations of the Web, but technologies like JavaScript, DHTML and Shockwave were used to keep things interesting.

Dragon-23 Online became Dragon's Dojo in 1998, which was more of a personal Website than a portfolio. It still contained Kerwin's portfolio, but expanded to other interests like writing, Web development tips and links.

In 2005, Dragon's Dojo reverted back to being an Online portfolio and exists now as Dragonsaber. Kerwin decided to name the domain after Shadow Dragon's two-handed sword because of its abstract qualities. Dragon's Dojo was a nice name because it gave the impression that it was a "place to visit," but search engines could have mistakened it for a martial arts school. Dragonsaber could be anything... Dragonsaber Design, Dragonsaber Technologies, Dragonsaber: The Movie, etc.

The Forging: Dragonsaber Blue

Dragonsaber www.dragonsaber.com Tasks: Web Design; Web Development (CSS, XHTML, JavaScript, ColdFusion, SQL, Google CSE API); RSS/XML Feed; Database Design; Backend Content Management System Dates: September 2005 - Present

Dragonsaber Blue is the design of this website and is the amalgamation of all of Kerwin Siy's experiences in the different branches of Computer Art: electronic painting/illustration, 3-D modeling, animation, Web design & multimedia.

The computer screen is physically flat, but what's displayed is a virtual space limited only by one's imagination. With this approach in mind, Dragonsaber was built as if it was a real, tangible object. The homepage is mainly made up of the Dragon's Cave painting. The section buttons are glass strips laid over the painting. Framing the painting is a gothic shaped blue stone. Silver plates with lettering and logo components are placed ontop of the stone. Desire to interact with a Website increases when elements feel tangible.

Shapes, textures and color palette for Dragonsaber.com were all based on Kerwin's fantasy illustration style, all of which can be found on the homepage illustration. The rounded and pointed elements in the Website's frame follow patterns that can be found in Shadow Dragon's cape. This treatment is influenced by renditions of Batman made popular by artists like Jim Lee and Todd McFarland. The texture that's mapped onto the gothic shapes is a modified photograph of cracked pavement. It has the look of heavy stone, but also resembles a closeup of dragon skin. Many of Kerwin's fantasy works consisted of cool colors, so blue was chosen for the Website. Blue is also a soothing color that doesn't clash with other featured artwork.

A dark looking homepage might suggest that the interior pages will have a light text on a dark background. On the contrary, the content pages have a very readable black text on near-white background. The body has the look of a standard information site. This also allows users to easily focus on the featured artwork without being distracted. To be consistent, the header and footer are identical to the homepage. The light body still matches the dark blue interface mainly because of the monochromatic blue palette. The light colors in the body also match up with the silver elements in the header.

The Forging: Dragonsaber Red

Dragonsaber News dragonsaber.blogspot.com Tasks: Web Design; Web Development (CSS, XHTML, JavaScript, Blogger Template API); RSS/XML Feed; Widgets Dates: October 2007 - Present

Dragonsaber Red is the name of the design created for Dragonsaber's news feed on Blogger. The basic shape is based on Dragonsaber Blue, but was adjusted to fit the DIV containers of Blogger's Thisaway Rose template. The basic area had to be mostly rectangular. There are no elements breaking out of the rectangle like in Dragonsaber Blue. The spikes are sort of "faked" because there's a solid background behind them.

The textures and colors were changed so that users would get a sense that they're going off to a different site, but since the elements are similar it just seems like a shape-shift between clicks. The blue stone was replaced with a sleek black texture inspired by Apple's iPod-themed designs. The logo and main section links are still silver. The combination of red and black was inspired by the Sith Lords from Star Wars, with their black armor and red lightsabers. The multiple spikes in the navigation resemble Zabrak (Darth Maul's race) physiology.

Other elements such as bullet points, header graphics and background colors retained the shape of the original Thisaway Rose theme, but were recolored to match the black & red color of the custom Dragonsaber navigation. The Grazr widget was also built to match the sleek black style.

Technical Notes

Though this site works on all modern browsers, it's recommended that you use Mozilla Suite, Mozilla Firefox or Netscape 8 for the best experience.

Most of Dragonsaber works without any special plugins, but portions of the site require Macromedia Flash Player, Apple Quicktime and Adobe Reader.

Please click on the buttons below to download the programs mentioned above.