Profile
LOCATION: CaliforniaETHNICITY: Vietnamese
OCCUPATION: Student (UCLA)
ALIASES: theedqueen, theed, theedie, loveberri
LIVEJOURNAL: http://theedqueen.livejournal.com/ (rarely use)
DEVIANTART: http://theedqueen.deviantart.com/ (nothing there)
VERSION: 8.0 - Wedding Bell Bliss
BROWSER: Firefox
RESOURCES: Gender/Masterjinn, DaFont, Soompi, Miss M, Lissa Explains It All, Tutorialtastic, Pootato
About
It all began back during my first year of college and Goong was in development. Someone posted scanlations of the manhwa at soompi which I downloaded. I instantly fell in love with the story line (who doesn't love the idea of a girl becoming a princess?). After that I was constantly checking for updates, and the instant production photos sprang up on the net I knew I had to do something with them. I had always wanted to learn how to photoshop back during the days when I was obsessed with PGSM (Live Action Sailormoon) and saw all the awesome graphics that sprang up on the net. Unfortunately I didn't get photoshop until much of the hey day was over, so I didn't really find any incentive to actually make graphics. Goong was the push I needed and I actually got a lot of help from one beautifulxmess on soompi. After that I somehow managed to create some semi-decent grpahics which my friend Apple liked. She then offered to give me a little bit of webspace of my own thanks to the generous Aiwa-nei who gave her and her sister Kaaj plenty of webspace to post whatever the heck they wanted. Then in February 2006 Still-Frames Presents Goong opened and I had my very first website (woohoo! *throws confetti).
As the site grew I ended up expanding into different Korean dramas since there was only so much Goong content that I could add. That's why the site is now called Goong - The Palace, because (as cheesy as it may sound) since I've added so much content from different Korean dramas, this site is more a palace for k-dramas than it is for just Goong alone. It also helps me explain why I use layout featuring dramas other than Goong =P
If you want to learn more about the site, just drop me an e-mail at theedqueen@hotmail.com or pm me at soompi forums, I'll be happy to answer any questions.
Previous Layouts
The Original: So this was the first ever layout used for the site. It actually wasn't created by me but by the lovely and talented Apple. Y'see I was a photoshop/website newb, so I knew diddly squat about creating web layouts so Apple generously helped me get started on it all. When I think about it she should've just made me make my own because I never changed the layout until something like 6 months latter because I thought it was going to be really hard to make a new layout (which it is, just not as hard as I thought it was going to be).
Night Life: So around August of that year I finally got off my butt and created a second layout and tried somehow to understand some html. I was actually pretty wowed by the photoshoot YEH did for Cosmopolitan and that's why I decided to actually change the layout. Credits for this layout goes to Soompi for the images of YEH, dafont for da fonts (haha I'm funny), insomniax for the sparkle brushes and bittersweet for the gradient (you can't really notice it though).
Palace Love: I actually wasn't quite happy with the previous layout I made because I thought they were too plain. So I decided to make some big chages, and as you can see the site was drastically different after this layout. I also put in a lot of effort into this layout because I was applying for a part-time job on campus as a publications assistant, so I pulled out all the works to show off my 'web' skillz plus my photoshop skills. Thank goodness it worked cuz I got the job :D. Credits: Masterjinn/Gender (they're the same person) for the flower/oriental textures and brushes, Soompi for the pics, dafont for the fonts.
School Days: The next layout didn't come until months later mostly due to the fact that school sucked the life out of me and I also was working on subtitles with WITHS2 for Fantasy Couple. So I didn't get around to making a new layout until my Spring break the next year. I also decided it was about time I moved away from the whole "Goong" thing and did something different. Who knows, I may go back to doing a Goong layout someday, heck I have plenty of pics to work with. Anyways I believe I was working on Choon-hyang reviews at the time and so I decided to throw them into the layout, mostly because I think Jae-hee is one hot tamale and wanted to share the hotness with my visitors. Credits: Arisubox for the background texture, Masterjinn/Gender for the texture used as background in the photos and for the floral brush, dafont for the fonts and the official website for Choon-hyang for the pics.
In the Mood for a Latte: I made this layout when I got back from doing summer school in Korea in 2007. I watched a couple of episodes of Coffee Prince live in Korea and I was hooked. I was pretty obsessed with it when I got home and marathoned all the eps with subs, heck I even downloaded the HQ h.264 rips. So of course that meant I had to put up a new layout featuring them. 'Course it was about time that I changed it anyways since it had been about 5 months since the last change. Doing this layout was actually more work than it looks like, mainly to do with the image I was working with. If you guys can spot where the imperfection is you get a cookie, shouldn't be that hard. It still bugs me to this day, but seeing as how my skills in the photomanipulation arena are crappy there's not much I can do about it. *le sigh*. Credits: Official MBC Coffee Prince site for the image, google for the coffe cup and coffee beans images, dafont for the fonts, insomniax for the background texture, and I forgot where I got the brushes from ^^;
Dreaming of Full House: Hehe, one of the many ways I show my obsession with Full House. I really miss seeing SHG and Bi acting in dramas :( I actually photoshopped this layout sometime around Thanksgiving '07, but didn't get around to actually posting it until December, mostly because I wanted to switch the site to php. The purple theme was totally random. I was going to originally leave it with the background that they took the picture with because I wanted to go for a lighter feel, but it just felt so blah that I suck in that pattern instead. Also, the picture I used had this huge "Full House" logo right where SHG's left arm is and I had a hard time trying to photoshop it out (I'm not so good in the photo manipulation department), so what I ended up having to do was find a lower quality picture that didn't have that logo and then graft it onto SHG. That's why that part of her arm is fuzzy/different color. And if you never noticed it before I pat myself on my back :D Credits: Either an offical site, soompi or d-addicts for the picture, google for the part I had to graft on, dafont for the fonts, masterjinn/gender for the floral stamp and the texture, arisubox for the background pattern, and insomniax for the sparklies *_*
Haute Couture: I was trying to go for something bold, which I think I accomplished, but in terms of execution I probably get a B- at best. The header was off and I totally suck at typesetting so there was no saving me. Also the content portion of the layout was just so so off, it was plain, it had no appeal. I couldn't figure out what to do with it, especially since I was so exhausted trying to code the darn page. I was trying to learn some new html/css because I wanted the page to be in the center of the viewer's browser and also to implement a roll-over menu (which was actually easier to code believe it or not). So why the headache? Apparently centering a layout is more of a science than I expected and the real trouble lay in browser differences with Firefox and IE (as for other browsers I have no clue since those are the two I have) and spent a lot of time trying to fix em (well not really fix, worked around). The only saving grace were the magnificent photos of Ha Ji-won, Song Hye-kyo, Yoon Eun-hye and Han Ye-seul I got to work with. I love it when stars do quality photoshoots, it's the best way to photoshop. Other than that I'm glad I finally got rid of this layout because I was really unhappy with it, the only reason why it stayed up so long was because I had no time to do a new one. Credits: Soompi for the photos, Dafont, pootato for menu coding, and tutorialtastic for centering. No photoshop resources were used other than the ones already available with photoshop.