Why IndoFolio?

I wanted to use a domain name that makes it clear that I am from India and Indo is the most popular prefix used to indicate India. My second requirement was to include “folio” which makes it obvious that this is my portfolio.

Concept behind the design

My name “Gopal” is another manifestation of Krishna who was one of the incarnations/avatars of Lord Vishnu according to Hindu mythology. This inspired me to include other avatars of Lord Vishnu as well. Nothing religious! This was just an attempt to come up with a unique design concept.

Just to let you know, I am a great fan of Russian Art! and was very concerned about achieving an Indo-Russian effect. Though it took me some time playing with Fireworks and Photoshop, I’m happy with the final output.

Softwares Used

The initial draft of IndoFolio was created using Fireworks and was purely vector. Then I took it to photoshop, to burn and dodge a few areas which helped me achieve the “painting” effect. I believe Photoshop gives more control when it comes to burning and dodging.

In the following images, you can compare the Fireworks and Photoshop version of the avatars. I’ve given a one line description about each avatar, for those who are curious

Image Optimization

Optimizing the images was a challenge as I had to maintain the image quality. Transparency being a major thing to consider, I had to convert most of the images to 24bit PNGs. I used some online image optimizers like PNGCrush to reduce the file size.

HTML/CSS Development

This was really challenging as my goal was to create a single page website using these avatars. I planned to use JQuery to make the site more lively, different and user friendly. Using JQuery intensely for a single page website is no sin

After doing some research, I decided go ahead with horizontal parallax. For more details about Parallax check out my previous blog post (I created this post while working on IndoFolio).

So that’s it! I would be glad to hear your comments (good or bad) on IndoFolio.