Pariah Publishing contacted me last Friday needing some new character sketches. So for the most part i’ve finished them up. Commander Chase is in the lower right corner. Ha.

First, I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to check out our new site and give us feedback. We greatly appreciated it.  This site is something we have tinkered with on and off for over a year but as a lot of you know, finding the time to work on your own image can be the hardest part of this business. Based on your feedback we have already made a few adjustments to simplify the front page.

Most of the feedback we have gotten is about the navigation of the site. Most love it, a few hate it and others love it but only once they use it for a minute or two. Truth is, the fact that the navigation is an issue at all is a concern. What we have done is give users multiple ways to navigate around the site but only as a ‘bonus’ to what we consider the main navigation, on-screen arrows. In addition to the on-screen arrows you can use your mouses scroll-wheel, up-down-left-right arrow keys, page up & page down keys, number pad, 1-0 number keys, etc etc. When I put it that way, it makes the navigation of the site seem REALLY complicated when in fact all of this is just a little bonus feature. To try and explain all of this, we put together a few slides of ‘tips’ and put them at the top of the home page. But this navigation over load quickly became the most talked about portion of the site and we realized it needed to be moved elsewhere. We put it behind the map on the about page.

So why don’t we just use scroll bars like everyone else? Going into this redesign we wanted to find a way to give due attention to each project while making the site feel cohesive as a whole. Our solution is to have projects slide into place one by one as the marquee project, complete with a description, image gallery and complementary background. We felt the best way to do this was to lose the scroll bars and instead treat navigation as a click through, not a scroll through. Think of it as speed bumps. It is our hope that visitors will slow-down and spend a little time with each project rather than a quick scroll down the splash images and move on.

What do you think? Leave us a comment. We would love to hear your comments on what you like and, more importantly, don’t like about the new site.

In honor of our new website launch I decided to throw some pigment on Gilbert here and light up his good side.  After a year in the making — well, boiled down perhaps only a few weeks — but with a lengthy intermission of summertime happenings, baseball games, holiday Amtraking and of course new work and general stargazing — the new website is now up and glowing. Neither Gilbert nor I know where the cable comes from but we sure can feel the energy. It may also very well be the 10 pieces of pie recently consumed — a quick aside: thanks to the 3rd floor –  in any case we aren’t going to be pulling the cord anytime soon.  Also – if anyone knows where to find some over-sized unique buttons please contact the studio — we’re talking 5 inch diameters here. Shirt buttons, with holes for thread and whatnot.  Much appreciated.

Welcome friends to the new studioofthemonth blog. We’ve been working really hard to get this new site up and running, and we are thrilled about the result. A big part of our new site is this blog which will become an outlet for us to tell everyone about the projects we are working on and hopefully to help you get to know us a little better.