My new portfolio site is finally ready for public viewing. The design of the site is an homage to one of my favorite artists, the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. Even if you’ve never heard the name, you’ve probably seen his most famous image somewhere: A man in a bowler hat, with the sea behind him… and a green apple floating mysteriously right in front of his face. Monsieur Magritte is responsible for numerous iconic images like this one, and in my design of this site (as with the background image for this blog) I’ve created various sorts of references to his style, some spoofs of his most famous paintings… with the addition of animation!

Another point of interest is that this site is the first project I’ve completed using my new Actionscript 3 framework: MORFsite. Although there’s still a fair bit more functionality yet to be added to it before it’s complete, MORFsite already covers these features…

• handles overall site architecture and navigation events
• manages media and data resources
• maintains the visual layout of the site

I still need to integrate SWFaddress and tie up some loose ends. When I do, my plan is to release MORFsite as an open source project.

Anyway, enough babble! Go visit my new portfolio site: http://studio.barliesque.com

[UPDATE] The site was just awarded a PickA Gold Award!  (21 January 2009)

All these years of designing and developing and I’ve never had a blog to call my own.  The shame of it!  Well, through the magic of WordPress I’ve finally rectified this. Thanks also go to TheBuckmaker for the Aeros theme, to which I’ve added my own Magritte-inspired background image and a few minor modifications.

I’ll be posting about my travails with Adobe Flash and ActionScript3 in particular, but who knows what else may find its way onto this blog?

Sometime soon, I plan to release a proper announcement of my AS3 framework, MORFsite.  At present, I’m using it to complete a new website for myself–finally an up-to-date portfolio!  I’ll post about MORFsite soon, which I plan to release as an OpenSource project.  But not until it’s had a chance to mature with a couple of real live projects.

Well… on with the blog!