spell no. 005
a wizard's study you click around in, with the projects as a spellbook, a console that casts spells, a living pixel portrait, and a little wizard who lives behind the windows
askwhat would a personal site look like if it was built around curiosity instead of a résumé
i wrote out a brief before touching any code, the routes, a content model, rules for what the site's even allowed to claim about itself, and one math sketch that had to actually work before i let myself animate anything else. it went through three full redesigns after that, a paper-and-ink one, a wizarding newspaper, and then this: a magical computer
the portrait on the wall is my actual face. i ran a face-landmark model over my headshot to find the eyes, brows, and mouth, dithered the photo down to four colours, and redrew those features as pixel art so they can blink, wink, and glance around, with seventeen little scenes it cycles through. the tiny wizard walking behind the windows is hand-drawn, one frame at a time, and every window's title bar is a platform it can jump onto.
the rule from the brief still holds: the site isn't allowed to claim anything the resume, github, or linkedin can't back up, and the console only casts spells i wrote by hand
a study where the bookshelf is the projects, the owl is what i'm up to, the scroll on the desk is the resume, and the crystal ball takes spells: lumos, nox, accio, expecto patronum. the projects read as a spellbook you turn page by page, the now page arrives as sealed letters, and pressing p turns the whole thing into a small platformer. sections without real content just stay hidden until i actually have something to put there
what else should live in the study, and which spell is worth teaching the crystal ball next