I didn’t really want Catherine-Chu.com to be a professional portfolio, but one that displayed works from my hobbies. That’s why I had a little fun with this one and used a video game theme, influenced by old school RPGs. I drew a custom header for each section.

This was a random idea I had to decorate my walls, but… then I decided to turn it into a webdesign! The colored squares are actually coded with HTML and CSS3 and are not images. When clicked on, it opened a small overlay. I used the Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries to code the overlays. The pink squares link to sections about the site. The orange squares link to sections that list my other websites.

I worked on this while I was playing Limbo. I loved the dark artwork and wanted to put that style into a layout. I wanted to mimic a couple areas from it. The top is inspired by the middle of the game, where you reach a “HOTEL” sign, except I put in my site’s name. The bottom is from near the beginning where you had to use a boat. I first drew everything from scratch in Illustrator. I then imported it into Photoshop for texture work and finishing touches.

Though it looks like the Ocarina of Time Link, it’s actually from Soul Calibur II, where he was a special character for the Gamecube version. This was my favorite layout for the site, though it’s the last one before it closed.

This uses the adult form of Link in Ocarina of Time. Unfortunately, I didn’t like this one very much. I think I could have used this image better and with better colors.

For the first version, I used a fan art I drew of Link in his Ocarina of Time child form. It’s a simple and very green frames layout.

This was when I revamped the site, moved it, and also renamed it to Himitsu. The red orb is something I teach in my tutorials!

I decided to put the larger graphic as the footer instead of header. It uses multiple screenshots from the Advent Children movie that I altered and blended together.

This was when Himitsu was still called Fly High Tutorials. It uses a few Outlaw Star images blended together. I drew in the other little designs to give it a bit of a techy look.

NokoNoko was originally a blog only for Nintendo games (it’s now anything video game related), and the name comes from what Koopa Troopas are called in Japan. So, I decided to feature the Koopa Troopa first with an image from Mario 64 and sprites from a Mario game.