WordPress Emoticons/Smilies

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I designed some emoticons/smilies in order to use it personally this summer because I hate the default WordPress ones! I had also promised that I’ll put it up for some of you guys who hates the current WordPress smilies as well. :)

Download Here

As for installing the emoticons/smilies in WordPress, here are the instructions:

  • Navigate to wp-includes/images/smilies using your favorite FTP client or SSH, whichever
  • Download your current smilies file as a backup
  • Copy and paste the smilies in the downloaded files to your current smilies file
  • Activate the plugins provided in the download files

What do you guys think? It definitely looks better than the default ones isn’t it? I am the designer here so no doubt it looks better. :P I’m kidding, people. The smilies in the previous post do look better because they are huge and you can see the details even more. Unfortunately, smilies should be small and it should flow well with your text. ;)

This post shall be flooded with all off the smilies that I design so that you can see it in action :D . If you are still seeing the default WordPress smilies, just hit refresh. I know, it is rather weird :| and it makes me rather mad :x . Okay, I am not angry. I just need an excuse to use the angry emoticon!

I only design 8 main ones for this set. I only use the 8 main smilies in my blog so I don’t see the need of designing all of them :? . But please tell me if you want other smilies design that you frequently use. I may design it and release it for another batch. I have a lot of goals to accomplish this summer so I try and find the time to do new batches of smilies with the same design or I’ll come up with new ones. Time is always the limiting factor for everybody :( .

The smilies are in PNG files instead of GIFs! Why? Because I hate the jagged edges produced by GIF images. Yes, you can save it by selecting the matte option to fit your background. However, I have more than one background here. Dark blue and white background. I can’t really make two matte background now can I? Therefore, in order to replace the current WordPress smilies array, I decided to whip out my very first WordPress plugins that can allow me do that without changing the WP core function directly. I have included the plugins in the smilies folder. Activate it and it shall show the smilies just fine. Yes people, let me besmirch your plugins page with my name!~

Let me know if you run into any problems. Enjoy using it guys! Enjoy winking as well! ;)

Front-End Design for a Rails Application

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I mentioned quite often to you guys that I am currently taking a course that mainly deals with the Ruby on Rails framework. For our final project, we need to create a party manager application that allows the users to add their parties and invite their guests. It is a pretty cool project and I start to understand Ruby on Rails better by adding more optional features into my project. Remember guys, we learn better by experimenting and also by being independent when it comes to learning. I don’t like to depend on others that much when it comes to coding. I’ll ask when I am stuck but I prefer to learn it on my own by experimenting more.

No rants this week! You bunnies must’ve been missing my rants. The thing is, I am pretty much busy this whole week and next week. I am scared shitless since I have all my projects due next week. I have an important final exam next week as well. I need to ace all of them because I am pretty much obsess when it comes to perfection. After that, it is all…honeymoon. All my projects and exams will be over by the 30th of April and I can actually party my sweet ass off. Speaking of partying, talking about my projects are not the sole purpose of this post. I am actually writing this to show you guys a recent design of mine. Without further ado, here we go:

Click to full view and tell me what you think! I hope you guys like it. The bottom grey part is actually the footer but I haven’t add anything yet. Will do once I finish this writing project of mine! I am planning to add a frequently ask questions as the footer. Give me suggestions for the footer if you like.

2 graphic posts in a row! pretty cool eh? I have been neglecting my graphic posts lately and I am here to make up for it. I hope my illustration actually looks like a cat with a party hat. Even if it doesn’t look like a cat, I don’t mind it looking like any other random animal that you think it looks like. Haha! I was rushing when I was designing this because the project is due next week. *sigh* Can’t actually pay attention to the details of the cat.

We are not exactly required to make our application look pretty. However, since I am both a developer and designer, I hate it when my applications look like crap. I’ll be ranting more this summer so don’t forget to stay tune and flood my comment box with your thoughts. I love reading your thoughts! :D

Emoticons Design

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Its been a while since I last post something graphic related. Therefore, allow me to abandon all my rants and concentrate on graphics for a few minutes. I’ve been longing for a nice emoticons set since the default ones in WordPress are pretty boring and generic. I can download other emoticons designed by other designers but most of them are either too boring or too cute for my taste. After a bit of inspiration, I decided to play around with Illustrator and design it myself. Here is what I had come up with:

I am happy with the way it turns out to be but I have to say that this is not my original idea. I have to give credit to the original designer who came up with this beautiful idea. I am inspired by Kyee. You can view the original idea here on his Dribbble account. I really like his idea because it is simple and clean. It gives his emoticons a lot of personality and it looks interesting. Therefore, I decided to create my own take based on his concepts. I still think that his take is so much better than mine. However, I am happy with my own rendition of his idea. I don’t think so there are any difference between my design and his except for the my ‘angry’ and smiling (orange) emoticons. I had also added a few extra ones; the winking, the ‘stick-out-my-tongue-at-you’ smilies and the white one. It is hard to make my emoticons look different since there is not much to play around with when it comes designing a small piece like emoticons. I guess I can make mine unique by playing around with the facial expressions just like how I did with my ‘angry’ emoticon.

This is not the full set of emoticons and it is not the final design. I am going to play around with the facial expressions and I am planning to expand the set since I want to replace all my WordPress default emoticons. Just expect some wild designs in the full set later on since I will be checking out the WordPress smiley page in order to expand the set. Lots of emoticons to design and I can just go wild with the facial expressions!

I am planning to keep the noise texture on each of the emoticons. I am not sure why but I am loving the noise texture that I had created. I am obsessed with noise texture. What do you think about my new emoticons? Should I keep the noise texture or let it go? Give out some of your ideas if you must. Of course, I am going to resize these and make it smaller and if you guys are lucky, I might release it for downloads. ;) <— The reason why I need a new set of emoticons.