Sarasota Web Design, 3d Animation, Video, Audio

High-end 3D Animation authoring software like 3DS Max produces striking images that cannot be produced via any other method.

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3D Animation has become a very popular presentation medium and has proven to produce superior marketing impact when compared to traditional 2D visual media.  An artist fluent with software like 3DS Max can produce compelling visualizations of products or ideas. 

3D animation is widely used in print and video based marketing. However, with Flash 9 supporting realtime 3D engines, Web3D will experience a revival in the years to come.

3D animation allows you to display a conceptual product that has yet to be produced. A product can be visualized in a manner not possible with conventional photography, such as a three dimensional product disection. Architecture plans are commonly visualized with 3D animation, often allowing real estate developers to generate pre-construction sales.

In the next decade, the term 3D will become  as common as TV. University studies show that when a person can view an object from multiple viewpoint perspectives, as 3d animation does, their ability to recall a mental image of that object increases by 70%. Companies currently using 3D rendered marketing images already know this, as improving the customer’s memory of a product can increase sales.

Razworks provides expertise in 3D modeling and animation. Razworks’ Michael Rassel was a lead 3D artist for Metacreation’s real-time geometry lab, and a lead 3D artist and project manager for Viewpoint in NYC, one of the world’s leading 3D modeling and Web3D companies.

3D animation can be delivered on the web in basically 3 mediums:

1. Rendered still images. 3DS Max software renders an image of a 3D object or scene, much in the same way a camera takes a photograph of an object or enviroment. The 3D images can then be displayed on websites or edited in Photoshop to create dramatic website images, backgrounds and interfaces.

 

2. Rendered video is just like the video file you get from a camcorder. Video rendered from 3DS Max has superior video quality similar to professional television studio video cameras. The 3D animation is pre-rendered as a video file that can be played on your website using Windows Media Player or Flash Video.

3.Real-time 3D is true to life immersive 3D enviroment, just like video games or military simulations. You interact with a virtual 3D world by navigating a viewpoint or camera within the 3D environment. A computer mouse, keyboard or gamepad is typically used to control the viewpoint and interact with 3D objects. Real time 3D software renders the video immediately, giving the impression of being in a real-wolrd environment. The military uses real-time 3D animation for pilot training of un-manned aircraft like the Predator drone. Razworks utilizes the X3D file format standardized by the Web3D Consortium to produce real-time architectural walk throughs that real estate developers and realtors use to visualize real estate properties.

 

4. Flash 3D: Flash 3D Animation is psuedo3d, as it is not true 3D, but a 2D vector rendering of a 3D scene. Yet, it can effectively simulate the look of a 3D scene, with comfortably low Flash file sizes. Using the Swift3D Max rendering plugin, we can render layered flash files directly from 3DS Max and produce very dramatic looking 3D Flash presentations.

Sound adds a whole new dimension to media. Subtle ambient sound can fill a sensory void with website visitors, significantly enhancing the appeal of a website, video, animation, presentation, etc.

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Playing sound effects with interactive buttons provides sensory feedback to the website visitor and adds realism to the website’s overall interactivity. Voice narration can improve the effectiveness of your website presentations by better informing and guiding your website users. Music can add life to your website presentation by establishing an emotional connection with your website user. Razworks owner, Michael Rassel is an accomplished guitarist, singer, composer and recording engineer and has been employed by recording studios, post video facilities and professional rock bands.

Music and Sound in Web Design

Music, soundtracks, sound effects, voice overs, etc., are an integral part of our lives. Complimenting sound and music can enhance a web site and improve the overall user experience. On the contrary, poor usage of sound can weaken the overall appeal of a website design.

And selecting the most appropriate sound for your web site can be difficult, as people tend to have broad variations in personal music taste. Select a sound that effectively portrays or represents your website’s image, while not distracting from the message you intend to communicate on your web pages.

Music does not neccessarily need to be used. Ambience, or background noise, can be used to set a mood amongst your web site users. In many cases, Ambient sound can often be more effective than music, has little resistance with a person’s personal music taste, and is less apt to distract the web site user from the intended message.

Photo editing or photo touch-up is performed on many of the photos you view everyday in print, video, TV and the Internet. Digital photo editing is performed with software like Adobe Photoshop and, in the hands of an experienced professional, digital photo touch-up can render very impressive results.

A picture says a thousand words, and a professional looking photo says a thousand words about your company. An unprofessional looking photo also says a thousand words about your company. Just a little photo editing by Razworks can dramatically improve the visual quality of a photo, and increase the photo’s appeal with your website visitors.

Razworks owner, Michael Rassel is a senior Photoshop artist, specializing in advanced photo editing. Besides photos, Razworks can also enhance other digital images, such as logos, drawings and scanned artwork.

You’ll be surprised by the increased impact your Razworks enhanced image will have on your website and print material.

Call Today: 941-685-8851

Animation captivates the attention of your website audience and helps you effectively communicate your ideas.

Flash animation is a standard web technology, allowing 98% of website users to view rich, animated web content immediately, without timely software downloads. 3D animation has revolutionized movies and video games, and is now gaining momentum on the web. University research has discovered that 3D animation enhances a person’s ability to accurately reconstruct mental images, which allows them to better remember your product or services. Razworks owner, Michael Rassel, has been producing Flash and 3D Animation for ten years, and was a lead 3D artist for Viewpoint NYC, a global leader in Web 3D and Rich Media web design.

Razworks produces a broad range of web sites and Internet media. Projects typically range in price from $500 to $10,000, depending upon the scale of the project and the technologies used.

Razworks websites can be developed in the following web programming frameworks:

• From $499 - A WordPress template content management website.
  • WordPress is the most popular personal web publishing software on the planet. WordPress is as simple to use as writing an email, and can be scaled using plugin software to accomodate almost any website need.
• From $1999 – A Custom HTML website is your standard static website.
  • Built from scratch, using HTML and CSS scripting, this website generally loads faster than a database driven website while supporting limited application functionality.
• From $2999 – A PHP / MySQL website is a dynamic database driven website.
  • WordPress, Magento, Drupal and Joomla are applications built using PHP / MySQL, but if you don’t need website content management software, then the added code bloat of these web applications can be overkill. A lean PHP / MySQL website built from scratch can keep your website streamlined while allowing for the inclusion of custom web applications.
• From $3499 – An Enterprise Quality Ecommerce shopping cart website
  • Magento Commerce is the latest advancement in ecommerce shopping cart software, and Razworks Web Design specializes in ecommerce websites using Magento Commerce. Google has partnered with Magento to allow direct connection between a Magento powered ecommerce website and Google’s powerful search marketing tools and applications.

Call Razworks Today!

941-685-8851

Website Content Management

The number one question I recieve from web design clients is:

“How do I update my website? Do I have to pay $125 per hour everytime I need to change some text or add a photo?

The The Razworks content management websites comes with a WordPress content editor that allows you to author, edit and publish content to your website from any Internet connected computer.

The WordPress content managment software empowers clients to edit and create web pages themsevles, from any web browser. You can edit existing web pages, add new web pages, and even manage your eCommerce shopping cart products, pricing, inventories, ect.

You won’t need to contact Razworks to make basic changes or additions to web page content. You can do it yourself and save a lot of money.

The Blog and content management software also empowers clients to optimize their web site for the search engines. Blogs have re-written the rules for search engine optimization. Merely writing about your products and/or services in daily blogs can sometimes significantly increase your website search engine ranking. Small business owners can write their own search engine optimized copy as time and budget allows, and gradually increase website search engine rankings without paying thousands of dollars to SEO experts.

Custom Web Design Graphics

Razworks founder, Michael Rassel, is a senior Photoshop artist with over a decade of professional experience spanning Minneapolis, New York City, and Sarasota, FL. Razworks web design graphics are noticably above average in quality.

“Nine out of ten web design clients approve the very first web design concept that I submit to them”, observes Michael Rassel, founder of Razworks.

Razworks will produce custom graphics tailored to your company’s image. We typically research each company and it’s industry genre to create a very appealling web design.

Up to three design concepts are included in each website project price, as no more than three concepts are usually neccessary. Razworks is committed to providing customer satisfaction and we are very flexible in our attempts to satisfy a client’s requests. Typically there is a charge for more than three web design concepts based upon our competitive hourly rate.

How Can It Be So Inexpensive?

Razworks contracts web design locally to Sarasota, FL and Minneapolis, MN. Web site design and development companies operating in these wonderful cities typically charge similar rates. Your average, business quality website with custom web design graphics, five web pages, a contact email form, and other basic website functionality typically costs a small business around $2000. Sarasota sees some discount web development with prices as low as $1500, whereas Minneapolis web design fees tend to be closer to $2500.

Many small businesses can’t afford their area’s average web development prices. To stay within budget, small business owners will either go without a website or settle for a cheap website that is often ineffective.

But now Razworks can put an enterprise quality website within the budget of most businesses. The Razworks Do-It-Yourself website is only $499. It is built upon a PHP / MySQL coded WordPress content magnagement software platform with a focus on Web 2.0 compliance and search engine compatibility.

Research courtesy of ProBlogger.net, represents the usage statistics of blogging software on the Internet. WordPress is by far the most popular Blog Software used on the Internet. There is good reason for that. It is Web 2.0 compatible. An experienced web developer can customize it to display virtually any web site layout or design graphics. It has a sophisticated web page editor that is as easy to operate as writing an email.

Razworks chose WordPress for web design and blog development because of it’s WC3 XHTML standards compliance. Search engines like Google and Yahoo are the driving force behind modern website marketing. Everyone who has a website wants to be on the first page of a search engine, but it is not always an easy task.

Web blogs have become a common source for ranking web sites on search results web pages. But before a search engine can read your website and web blog, it validates the web page code to determine if the web page is XHTML and Web 2.0 compliant as defined by the W3C World Wide Web Consortium. A valid web page gets a green light for search engines. Minor errors raise a yellow flag for search engines, which could penalize your search engine ranking. Some may still scan your website while others will not. Critical errors or too many errors may prevent a search engine from scanning your website at all. That would result in poor or no search engine ranking.

WordPress has very good Web 2.0 compatibility built in. “I developed a website for a local hurricane products company in Sarasota, FL” recalls Michael “Raz” Rassel, founder of Razworks. I configured the website and blog with WordPress with the popular WP-Shopping Cart plugin software. I published search engine optimized copywriting in the web pages, blogs and shopping cart product desriptions and left it at that. Within two months of publishing  the website it ranked #4 on Google for the search phrase “Sarasota Hurricane Products”, exclaims Raz. “WordPress provides an effective means for clients to publish their own search engine optimized content, thereby significantly reducing web site development costs”.

If you ask any IT professional or web developer for advice about protecting yourself online, the first words from their lips will be, “Update your web browser”.

In my opinion, every person who uses the Internet should upgrade Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) to Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). In addition, everyone should install the latest version of Firefox. The Mozilla Firefox browser is the most secure web browser available, it is web 2.0 compliant, it is more stable than IE, and there are tons of addons available for it. And Google endorses Firefox, so it has been positioned as a major weapon in the corporate heavyweight championship between Microsoft and Google.

Here is a look at the usage ratio of web browsers in July 2007:

2007	IE 7	IE 6	IE 5	Firefox	Mozilla	Safari	Opera
July	20.1%	36.9%	1.5%	34.5%	1.4%	1.5%	1.9%

Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is obsolete and will eventually be replaced completely by IE 7. Why upgrade? IE 6 is vulnerable to various security threats, it does not support web 2.0 standards, it doesn’t fully support CSS, it has no native alpha transparency, no RSS reader, and the list goes on.  IE 6 is currently the most used web browser, but by years end that will no longer be the case.

The security threat alone is enough to convince most users to upgrade. IE7 was officially released on October 18, 2006. A 20% adoption of IE7 has occured in less than a year, and that rate will grow exponentially as users continue to upgrade.

However, during the last 2 years Firefox has claimed a significant victory over Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer had a 75% adoption rate in January 2005, whereas Firefox had only 15%. Firefox is expected to near an impressive 40% adoption rate by the end of 2007 , becoming a serious contender for the title of #1 web browser, currently held by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which has 59% adoption.

Firefox is my primary web browser and Opera is my secondary web browser (Opera is the fastest web browser). I use Internet Explorer for web design testing and Windows Updates.

However, my new design machine has an Intel Q6600 quad core processor and the 64 bit version of Windows XP Pro. The 64 bit version of Internet Explorer 7 seems more stable than the 64 bit version of Firefox, especially since I have yet to successfully install Firefox 64 bit on this new machine. After 3 failed attempts, I have shelved it for another day.

Log into the WordPress content management system.

To write a blog post, click “Write” from the main menu.

Type a title for the blog in the ‘Title’ field, then type the content in the ‘Post’ field. Press ‘Publish’ to display the post on your website. A message will appear to confirm your post.

Click ‘View Post’ to review the post as it is displayed on your web site.

To edit or delete a post, click on “Manage” on the main menu.

Clicking on ‘View’ will open the post as it is displayed on the web site. Clicking on ‘Edit’ will open the post in the “Write Post” interface, where you can make changes. Clicking on ‘Delete’ will permanently delete the post.

To write a page click on “Manage”, then click on ‘Page’.

The ‘Write Page’ editor opens up. Type a title for the page in the ‘Title’ field, then type the content in the ‘Post’ field. Press ‘Publish’ to post the page to your web site.

A confirmation message displays confirming that your page has been saved.

You can click ‘View Page’ to view that page as it is displayed on your web site.

To edit or delete a page, click on “Manage”, then click ‘Page’.

Clicking on ‘View’ will open the page as it is displayed on the web site. Clicking on ‘Edit’ will open the page in the “Write Page” interface, where you can make changes. Clicking on ‘Delete’ will permanently delete the page.

Click the “Login” link on your home page, or use the link provided by your webmaster.

Upon clicking the login link, a page will open that displays the WordPress login dialogue. Enter your username and password in the fields provided and press the ‘login’ button.

The content management system “Dashboard” opens.

From here you can perform various content management procedures for your website and blog.

Razworks web sites come with an integrated content management system that empowers clients to add and edit their own web pages and blog posts. You only have to call Razworks when you need advanced additions or edits. Adding new web pages or editing existing web pages or blog posts is as easy as authoring an email.

Razworks uses WordPress, which is the #1 Internet blog software. WordPress also has a built-in content management system that is very simple to use.

Razworks has compiled a library of tutorials to help clients utilize the content management system. If you don’t see the tutorial you need, please contact Razworks to request it.

 Writing and Editing Web Pages and Blog Posts