Through The Ruin Grey

Promote new and existing shrines. We'd love to know what you've been making!
Forum rules
The usual guidelines in Constructive Criticism apply, and you have the option to flag your topic as "Sweet".
User avatar
Emma
Time Traveler
Posts: 845
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2012 3:39 am
Contact:

Through The Ruin Grey

Post by Emma »

Thanks to that recent FFIX release on Steam, I was able to take a bunch of screenshots while I playing. And I thought "hmm, I should make a new layout for my Beatrix site."

And from that I eventually ended up revamping the entire thing. It changed from a one page to a multipage site, basically all the content was rewritten or updated, I wrote a bunch of new content, and I added a media section. I didn't...intend to do this, but once I started I couldn't stop. It's the first big project I've finished in a long time. Feels good, man.

The layout is a bit different to what I usually do, and I also really struggled with this palette. If anything is wonky or difficult to read, please please let me know!

I hope you enjoy! :music:
a spoony bard
Chibi
Posts: 592
Joined: Wed Jul 04, 2012 7:17 am
Location: Themyscira
Contact:

Re: Through The Ruin Grey

Post by Chibi »

I absolutely love the layout! :heart: I love the way you used pink (I find it a really hard colour to use right in a layout) and the way the image is fixed! It's easy on the eyes and makes it pleasant to read the content. I also love the navigation on top.

This was also a lovely read and refresher since I haven't played FFIX in years! Congrats on revamping this site! :star:
Larissa
Time Traveler
Posts: 598
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:37 pm
Contact:

Re: Through The Ruin Grey

Post by Larissa »

Emma this is amazing, from start to finish. I love how you've showcased Beatrix's story throughout this site, slowly introducing the important facts about her and weaving your own tale through it. The fact that she appears so infrequently made it difficult for me to get a good understanding of her personality and motivations when I played FF9, and the fact that you've laid everything out like this really makes it much easier to understand where she's coming from at every point of the game.

I love that you highlighted each boss battle with her, and especially that you brought up the trivia about her being previously bested (which I hadn't heard before! Oh Square, you and your one-line backstories). I love how the focus is squarely on Beatrix and the adventures of Zidane and company are kind of just background to provide context, haha.

The "Love" page in particular stands out to me -- that sequence is easily one of the most memorable in the game, but you bring up some very good points about why, funny as it is, it's not something that's good for either Beatrix or Steiner right now. I also very much love the "Shattering" page as it's a key moment for Beatrix and was one of the moments that made me really take notice of her, when I played the game the first time.

All in all this site is so so lovely! I really liked what you had up before -- it was one of the first sites I read when I first finished the game and helped me appreciate FF9 a lot more -- so now that appreciation is multiplied, haha.

I'm totally flattered you considered Level 20 an inspiration, by the way! Thank you so much -- I'm so happy to have inspired such a lovely revamp. :heart: :heart: :heart:

OH AND I love the layout, the pink tones work so well. I'm on my iPad and everything looks OK from here, but will check again on my laptop in a bit :heart:

Edit: I can't see the font for the headers (h1s) on my computer, actually! I think you may not have included it. Other than that everything looks great!
tonight fate is the
Mikari
Posts: 3159
Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2012 6:30 pm
Location: Coruscant
Contact:

Re: Through The Ruin Grey

Post by Mikari »

Beatrix! She's one of the most awesome characters in FF! The layout is beautiful and the site is very well written!
User avatar
Emma
Time Traveler
Posts: 845
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2012 3:39 am
Contact:

Re: Through The Ruin Grey

Post by Emma »

@Chibi - thank you! Ugh, yes, pink. When I started this was not supposed to be pink yet somehow...it's definitely a tricky colour. (AS IS RED)

@Larissa - the stuff about her fight with Steiner is only in the Ultimania, which is a shame, and it seems to be basically the only thing in there about her, aside from her age. FFIX is kind of weird with character development in general.

I LOVE LEVEL 20. :heart: And thank you for this lovely comment in general. :content:

Cheers for the heads up about the headers! I'll look into it tomorrow. :)

@Mikari - YES SHE'S SO GREAT I LOVE HER. And thank you! <3
a spoony bard
Robin
Events Staffer
Posts: 3072
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2014 3:15 pm
Location: North Carolina, USA
Contact:

Re: Through The Ruin Grey

Post by Robin »

Gorgeous. The top and bottom bars "box in" the content so neatly, and the light pink/violet/gray/white color scheme lends the site a beautiful "vintage-faded" aesthetic. Also, congrats on expanding the site out so well!! The content is nicely divided and each page has lots of content without being overwhelming.

Aside from the missing font on the headers (which my computer is rendering in Comic Sans for some ungodly reason--LOLOL silly Windows), the color of the navigation text at the bottom of each content section ("back to [page name]", "onward to [page name]") is a liiiittle light for me to read against the white background. Probably just darken that font color by a few shades and it'll be good ^_^

Other than those little bitty things, though, everything looks GREAT. Again, congrats on the revamp!! Well done! :D
~ a dream is a wish your heart makes ~
withinmyworld.org
User avatar
Emma
Time Traveler
Posts: 845
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2012 3:39 am
Contact:

Re: Through The Ruin Grey

Post by Emma »

Robin wrote: Aside from the missing font on the headers (which my computer is rendering in Comic Sans for some ungodly reason--LOLOL silly Windows)
OH
MY
GOD
*immediately fixes*

Haha, seriously though, thanks for telling me about that and the other font being too light. I've hopefully fixed both now. :) I actually had most of the text in that lighter colour and I was enjoying the ~aesthetic but I was concerned about it being far too light. so I'm glad I switched up the main font colour.

Thanks Robin. <3
a spoony bard
User avatar
Tara
Freelance Staffer
Posts: 205
Joined: Wed Feb 20, 2013 9:28 pm
Location: Ontario, Canada
Contact:

Re: Through The Ruin Grey

Post by Tara »

Ohhh goodness, I love the revamp!! I always really liked your Beatrix shrine, and you've done an amazing job at revamping it. The layout is real nice--it's very easy on the eyes and is just very aesthetically pleasing. The headers are very pretty! It suits Beatrix quite well, I think. It's nice to see such an in-depth shrine to a somewhat minor character. Especially Beatrix, she's one of my favourites!!

As a side note, I really like how you did the links, it's very nice! I haven't been able to do that with a subdomain myself and I'd be interested in seeing how you did that, if possible. :0
I used to practice smiling when i'm feeling sad, y'know.
Robin
Events Staffer
Posts: 3072
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2014 3:15 pm
Location: North Carolina, USA
Contact:

Re: Through The Ruin Grey

Post by Robin »

Emma wrote:
Robin wrote: Aside from the missing font on the headers (which my computer is rendering in Comic Sans for some ungodly reason--LOLOL silly Windows)
OH
MY
GOD
*immediately fixes*

Haha, seriously though, thanks for telling me about that and the other font being too light. I've hopefully fixed both now. :) I actually had most of the text in that lighter colour and I was enjoying the ~aesthetic but I was concerned about it being far too light. so I'm glad I switched up the main font colour.

Thanks Robin. <3
You're welcome! Everything shows up really well now ^O^

(Also, LOL at your reaction to Comic Sans! xD I was like "that font choice CANNOT be intentional. My browser be hatin'." ROFLLLL)
~ a dream is a wish your heart makes ~
withinmyworld.org
User avatar
Emma
Time Traveler
Posts: 845
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2012 3:39 am
Contact:

Re: Through The Ruin Grey

Post by Emma »

Glad it looks better for you, Robin! :)

And thanks Chibi! <3 I love seeing all this love for Beatrix, haha. She's great.

When you say links, do you mean the URLs like /introduction/ instead of introduction.php? I do that with URL rewriting. You set up rules in your .htaccess files. I've been meaning to do it for years and have just been playing with it for this site and my construction zone site. Here and here are tutorials you might find helpful. The only issue I've had with it is that it broke my anchor links, so I need to fix that whenever I want to take the time to research solutions. tbh, it's pretty straightforward on a small site like this. It doesn't need lots of conditions. Hopefully that's a bit helpful to you. :)
a spoony bard
Post Reply