Social Media & Web Design: The Nycos Project

Introduction

In the Spring of 2019 I was approached by a man named Jonathan G. Albin who wanted to hire me for a three month project that included creating a website, advertisments, and social media content for his role-playing show “Nycos: Shards of the Prism”. This website was one of the biggest projects I ever embarked, but a project that I was proud to accomplish. Everything shown on this project was created by myself unless stated otherwise.

Part I

The Photoshoot

The first thing I did was prepare for a photoshoot of him and his cast members. The camera I used for this shoot was a Sony a6300 with three Yongnuo IV speedlights. I took Jonathan and his cast members to a small gym and initiated the project. For this photoshoot I had 3 goals in mind,

1) A good headshot of everybody

2) A good creative shot of everybody

3) A good group photo of everybody.

For the first part of the photoshoot, I tried to keep it as simple as I could for a college student on a budget. I put the cast members in front of a white sheet and took their  photos one by one using two of the speedlights as the main source of light. Below are some of the results.

*Illustrations were created separately by Abigail Grigg https://www.abigailgrigg.com/

When I completed the headshots, I moved over to the creative shots. These would be trickier since I would have to pay extra attention to the lighting. Instead of a white background, I placed the cast members in front of a blue background and used all three of our speedlights to creat a serious ambience. Once I took the shots of everybody, I returned home and spent the next couple of weeks editing and adding effects to each of the portraits to give it a more fantasy feel. All of the editing was used within Adobe Photoshop. Below are some of the results.

And finally, before we ended the session, I took one last group photo to finish up the day.

Part II

The Advertisments

Although I was trying something I had never attempted, I had the most fun on this portion of the project than any other. Jonathan was a fan of films and media of the 1980’s such as The Dark Crystal, Indiana Jones, Goonies etc. Doing some research I realized that much of his role-playing show was aimed for this sort of genre, therefore I decided to try to create an ad that was similar to the style of film posters of that era.

I took several of my already completed photos from the photoshoot and selected the images that I believed reflected the mood of the show. Below are some of the pre-production renderings and final images of the ads.

Raw Images

Drafting Stages

Final Product

Least to say, Jonathan was extremely impressed with my work. We used this design for the majority of his advertising campaign. Below is an example of using the design to advertise his Patreon.

Part III

Building The Website

I built the Nycos website using the Divi Builder on the WordPress platform. It was the second website I created after my very own. After completeing my images and recieving art pieces from another freelancer Jonathan had hired, I set to work on building his website.

I was focused on creating 3 important pages,

1) The Home Page

2) The Cast Page

3) The Information Page

For the home page I wanted to create something special. Using the images I had taken from the photoshoot, I created a banner that would be the first thing to greet people when they entered the sight,

Creating the rest of the website took a total of seven weeks. The ABOUT page features frequently asked questions pertaining to what exactly is the show is about. The CAST page features two separate articles, with one article going into detail about  who the actors in the show are and the second going into detail about who the characters in the story are. The INFORMATION page features three separate articles that go deep into the lore and story created by Jonathan. The entirety of the website was handed off to Jonathan upon completion, but can still be accessed via this link. https://www.nycosadventures.com/

Conclusion

This was the hardest project I have ever taken on. At the same time, it was the most rewarding. Never before have I had the opportunity to use all my design skills in one project, most of all web design. After 3 long months of working with Jonathan and creating his pieces, he has never been happier to have recieved such a wonderful product to advertise his show.

The greatest lesson I learned from this experience was that I had the ability to do difficult things. Altough I have many things left to learn, I am confident that I have the skills and resources to learn, adapt, and push through any obstacle I am given. I have the keys to unlock all the potential that sleeps inside of me. I don’t know what the future holds for me, but if I could continue doing projects such as this one and improve my results, I would be the happiest man on earth.