The Making of the Sapphire Nexus
How’s that for a lengthy title?! Weeks ago I said that I would consider writing up a post dedicated entirely to describing the lengthy process that was bringing the Sapphire Nexus online. This website has been in the making for quite a while, and the parts that took the longest probably aren’t what you expect. This was a process that stretched across several months and involved more art software than the average person probably knows exist, which is like… one or two I guess. While this is a deviation from normal content, I think that it’s worth discussing, so let’s dive in to the lengthy and interesting process that was creating this website completely from the ground up!
The Tool:
This was the first step in the process of making the website, finding a way to make it! That may sound absolutely stupid to say, but the first step of building a website was figuring out how in the world to do it. Initially, my grand vision for a website was coding it from scratch myself and setting up every tiny piece of it… until my coding friends who make websites for a living told me it’s a stupid idea. I was NOT expecting anyone to tell me that, and the explanation behind it was simple. Building a website from scratch is incredibly resource inefficient now that there are sites like Squarespace where you can build your own domain using custom tools, effectively stripping out the tedious process of coding from the ground up. I was not sold on this initially, but after browsing squarespace and thinking of how much time I had available, I caved. Building this website would have taken three times as long if I coded it myself, and it probably wouldn’t even work. Through a service that handles all the minutia for you, a massive amount of the headache was eliminated before I had a chance to even smack into it. That being said, it wasn’t without headaches…
Squarespace War:
Trying to learn squarespace was, in a way, like learning to code, because HOLY COW this was NOT as straightforward to use as I was expecting. My problem is that I came into this with a coding mind, and this site was designed to be used by someone with ZERO knowledge of coding. The problem is, it’s literally only for that demographic. Coming into this with grand ideas was a problem because squarespace simply didn’t want me to make any of those ideas. The tools and customization needed to do it just simply wasn’t there in the default package, and the UI itself could be quite janky at times. Learning how to get around the glitches, navigating the layouts, and all the other headaches ate up a lot of time, but, in the end, I was able to succeed to some degree, obviously.
Layout and Content:
With Squarespace wrangled, it was time for me to start figuring out exactly what I wanted on my website. Clearly this website was designed to help boost my chances of getting picked up by prospective agents, but I wanted it to do far more than that. I wanted it to support the content of my universes and give even more material to fans of the universe! As such, right out the gate, I knew I wanted it to support Short Stories… which turned out to be tougher than expected, because squarespace has NO support for PDFs, thus leading me to the images I had to settle for. Oof. Through these short stories, however, readers are able to get more insight into the universe and some of the tales that won’t be making it into novels. In particular, these first three cover some of the leadins to the Sapphire Verdict, the stakeholders that will ultimately control the narrative. My plan is for each book to have three leadin short stories, and possibly some other short stories will make their way here over time if they can’t find a home in a book.
In addition to short stories, I knew I need an about me and a blog, a way for me to communicate with people beyond my universe. After all, I can’t stay holed up in it forever no matter how badly I would like too. Initially, there was also going to be a timeline page, a way to keep track of the events and where things happen in the universe given the broken timeline nature of it. That, however, had to be scrapped due to feasibility. Remember when I said squarespace is tool limited? That’s one of the things that it didn’t support. There’s a chance that could still land at some point, but it’s going to require dedicated coding and a more costly slot, neither of which I can negotiate with at the moment.
Finally, there was one piece that came into being late into the game that I didn’t plan for, and that was the Universe page. While working on my early query letters, I realized there were concepts and ideas that I couldn’t explain with the limited space I had. Therefore, a universe page was warranted for me to provide fleshed out descriptions of ideas, concepts, and war machines from the Sapphire Verdict universe. This will absolutely expand over time, and I have the plans and means to add more very soon… provided I can find the time.
Anyway, onto… Oh, I forgot the gallery? Don’t worry. We’re getting to it.
Assets
The colorful lifeblood of any website, the assets took some time to make. There are only TWO assets on this site that I didn’t make myself, and that’s the Fennec Fox I use in place of my face, and Sapphiria’s portrait piece. All other assets were made by my hand over the course of roughly a month using both Adobe Illustrator and Blender. I originally wanted this site to be entirely 2d and made in illustrator using vector graphics, but that quickly became a problem. As I found out, I’m not good at vector graphics despite me thinking otherwise initially. I tried my hardest but kept running into walls. At one point, I felt like I was going to have to hire certain pieces done, but then I realized that I needed to fall back on what I know, and that’s 3d modeling.
I didn’t immediately think of 3d modeling because I don’t see websites use 3d assets hardly ever, but when I finally tested it out, I was stunned. It actually looked really good, even if I do say so myself. I committed to replacing most of my assets with 3d assets, only a few 2d assets surviving the purge, and I haven’t looked back sense. They look substantially better than what I initially had, and it allowed for the creation of some unique assets that ultimately found their way onto the gallery page. This is the missing Gallery section by the way! The Gallery section is filled with images that were created in blender, specifically the warships. These warships are visual renderings of the ships in the book, and are pretty much 1 to 1, even if my descriptions make them sound different in the book. I wanted a place for them to live so there could be no argument in the future about what they look like. What lives in the gallery is the only truth for their appearances, and they won’t be alone for long. After all, the UEC needs a place alongside them as well.
Future
That pretty much sums up what I did to build this website, and I could go into more depth with my art assets if I wanted, but that would take a LONG time, and my fingers already hurt from all the typing I’ve done today. What? You think I have days off from writing? Haha… Yeah, my fingers hurt from all of this…
Anywho, with this writeup out of the way, my posts should be a little more frequent and a little less large… until we discuss the Legend of Quetzalan… or the Sapphire Scavenger… Whichever comes first. Until then, in the near future, you can expect content across this site to grow at a steady pace. Up next, the Hand of Vengeance is on its way. It’s written, edited, and ready to go! At this point, you’re probably wondering ‘Well, why haven’t I seen it if it’s ready?’ The answer is simple! I’m not ready to post it yet! I’m letting it simmer with me a little longer, but it will be up before the end of this week for sure, and then everyone will finally get a taste of the merciless fury that is General Vargoth as he decimates the last of human civilization on Sekhmet! After that… well, the third short story will be a little longer out because I want to work more on the Sapphire Verdict AND I want that third short to be a little closer to the actual launch of the book, but, as a tease, it involves a certain Archon and the decision he’ll have to make that leads to everything that will ultimately unfold throughout this universe. Who knew retirement could cause a universal scale war?!
For now, that’s all I have! Until next time!