shuffy-rph

[shuffy-rph]

Nitpicking pt. 1: If it's going to sound foreign...

I've decided to make my first target of this https://profiles.rphaven.com/Azure%20Dragon . Now for the most part, I do like the layout design and I could see this in a professionally made website. But here's where things break down for me:

The character appears based on the Japanese version of the Azure Dragon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Dragon), but they threw in Chinese at the bottom.

The left side where it lists the Four Symbols doesn't need the Hiragana. It looks decorative at best, but it doesn't really add to anything. Anyone who could actually read Japanese would go "why did this person write the name twice?"

In addition, the names of the other Four Symbols seem randomly there. Granted it looks like they wanted to have a list to link to other profiles, but only one other got filled out.

There's a random shout out, for lack of a better term, to Kiyomizu-dera (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiyomizu-dera). The Azure Dragon's only connection to the temple (from what my 5 minutes of Google University education is getting me) is it comes by to drink from the nearby waterfall. The temple's patron deity is Kannon (or in Chinese: Guanyin)

The traits splattered around randomly feel like just that, randomly splattered

Looking at the so-called "Baseball stats" on top, it starts to break down for me after "Serpent." I dunno, it just seems like without much other context it doesn't make sense. Well except for "Single", but on another point about that...

If you're going to put a partner status on a profile, you better be open to well, that kind of RP. However, I know the person behind this profile only really RPs with someone else. And does it even add to the overall character? No, not really. Unless I wanted a character to fall head over heels for them (which I don't), I don't really care about partner status.

So the tl;dr is the profile was made with random Japanese (and some Chinese for good measure) slapped on in an attempt to be decorative. I've also noticed I used "random" a lot, because at first glance, that's what it looks like. It's also really distracting to people who've spent maybe a year or two of formal study in Japanese.

[shuffy-rph]

Nitpicking at profiles

Having been on RPH for... longer than I'd like to admit... I've encountered a lot of profiles. Most times I just take a brief glance at them, decide within a minute whether or not I'll decide to interact with that character in some way. It's an approach I've likened to someone who's looking at resumes to fill in a job position. And much like resumes, there's a few things that get to me that more often than not make me go "eeeh" Of course, you may ask "who are you to judge profiles? Are you some kind of RP god that's delivered NYT best sellers?" No, of course not. There's no magic formula anyway for people to come to you for RP. But I still believe there are some things that may turn people off more often than not. So here's some things I look at when looking at a profile

Odd inconsistencies. Do the character's username, picture, flavor text, etc. line up coherently?

Is the person trying to belittle me for expecting something about their profile?

The "WIP" disclaimer. You don't have to tell people if the character is a work in progress. I can glean that from how much content got filled out.

The "Always IC" disclaimer. This is especially dumb if a fantasy character understands what "Twitter" is. And having modded a room, this was usually an excuse for someone to act like an asshole.

And some things that are kind of a pet peeve, but I don't tend to hold it against them

People saying they can't code. It's obvious if that's the case, but it also feels like they're using it as a "don't judge me too harshly."

Theme song links. I don't know why this is a thing. I mean, if that person wants to include one because they feel it adds to the character, more power to them.

I can't really hold it against people too much, but the WYSIWYG editor in RPH squishes images by width only, not by height, so they get distorted. Maybe it's more like "if the person isn't bothered by the squish to the point they'll try and find a way to fix it...

[shuffy-rph]

The Flagship Profile (for now)

The big question I had to answer is... what topic do I discuss first? Why not the profile I've designated (at least until I get inspired to do something else) my "Flagship Profile"? That is, this is the profile where I pour way too much energy into making something interesting out of it. Maybe I want to test out animations. Maybe it's interactive in some way. So here it is, the profile I created for the Arknights character, Dorothy Franks. Most of this was inspired by an animated video on Yostar's official YouTube channel providing some exposition about a faction in the game world. After watching this video, I enjoyed the animation and design that well, wanted to see if I could mimic it with CSS animations. It's not 100% to the tee, and some things were too complex for me to even try. Though this wasn't my first rodeo in animating with CSS like this. Earlier I made a profile for the Dimension W character Mira Yurizaki. There was a scene in the anime (episode 2 I believe) where Mira "boots up" and provides an animation of that process. While I can't find a clip for it, that was the first animation I created. And it looked pretty darned convincing. There are certain caveats with what I'd call my Flagship Profiles: they're not really intended to be practical when it comes to delivering the actual meat and potatoes of a profile. They're more of a challenge to me, to see how much I can work my HTML + CSS magic. Any other day, I'd slap together something with a few snippets I've created, adjust a few things here and there, and call it a day.

If anything, what I hope this profile and other Flagship Profiles I create is to inspire others to push themselves. They may not need a 20-30 second introduction that has nothing to do with their character (or maybe their world), but maybe some parts of it could be used to add some flavor to a part of their own profile.

Later posts will go into some details about the profile in a sort of break down of what's going on.

[shuffy-rph]

Welcome to Shuffy's RPH Atelier

Let's get one thing out of the way: What the heck is RPH? Simply put, it's a chat website a (probably) primary focus on text based role playing. A stand out feature is that users can create HTML + CSS based profiles. The default style is straightforward and easy for most people to work with since there's a WYSIWYG editor. But for those who want to get more involved, you're allowed to put your own custom CSS and HTML. However this has led to some camps that even I landed in: people who use the default style, people who make their own custom HTML + CSS, and people who want the prettiness of custom HTML + CSS but just want it in a form where they can input the context and leave the designing to someone else.

Which brings me to here. As someone who's created enough profiles to make my own head spin, I started wanting to jot down what I've done, what my creative process is, and maybe provide some helpful bits.

However I'm probably something of a rebel in the web page designer world: I don't have any formal training; I'm a C/C++ developer by trade. I stick with plain CSS, and I don't use all the tricks to make the code more efficient. So I don't claim to be an expert in the field, but I still like to handcraft my profiles.

So what will this blog be about? It'll focus on a few things:

My creative process

Some examples, maybe explaining some of the gimmicks

Some words of guidance maybe

What I won't be providing are any templates, which I'll explain why in a later post.

Hopefully if you want to know more about hand crafting your profiles, this blog will provide at least some inspiration for what you want to do with yours.