Hi, my name is Wallace Rodrigues and I’m a dreamy guy. I've been a bit of everything, even a yogic monk for 9 years. Ever changing, nevertheless, always dreamy. In my dreams I see colors, shapes, patterns, sounds - and how they intertwine into a whole. When I awake, I translate that whole into my own expression, and let it all flow out as it comes. I've done lots of drawings, paintings, writing and even music that way. I love to communicate, to reach out to others through art. Webdesign became a natural choice for me as I could do all of it at the same time - and touch people I would never have hoped to otherwise.

My professional life in a nutshell...

I have been working with webdesign since 1998, though I only started to make ripples in the pool in 2003, when I left my monastic life behind and got married. Those first years were very important for me to grasp the importance of "Alt + Ctrl + Delete" and to find my way through programs like Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash, among others. Much of what I know today I learned then, the hard trial-and-error way.

1999 was the time I made my first Flash animation (you know, the ball that goes from left to right). But I should say I picked it up fast, and in one year I was quite into ActionScript, making much better sites in Flash than in HTML. My first years on webdesign were mostly spent at studying on my own, as I had many obligations running a children’s home close to Bucharest, Romania. 2001-2002 was a great learning period as I developed my first site based on an open-source CMS, which became my personal lab. It even got many thousands of hits, but went down after one year because the "middle-man" domain provider realized there was a lot of traffic and kept the domain. Too bad.

Leaving my robes and commitments to social work behind in 2003, I could focus entirely on webdesign. There was, of course, a transition period that went a little bleak professionally as I had to find my ground in the Norwegian society. Fortunately I still managed to crawl through it and establish myself as a freelancer. My first big step towards a stable webdesign career was at Cateno AS, a fast growing Norwegian webdesign studio. There I did many projects, finishing most.

That was interrupted by a long trip to south of Spain. There I was doing something entirely different, but released the present version of InnerFlash.net, which still is used to be my personal portfolio.

Shortly after coming back, I returned to my routine as a freelancer, until I got a job as a Flash Designer & Webmaster at Illusion AS. There I did loads of Flash banners that appeared in over 350 highly visited Norwegian sites. I dived deeply into several CMS systems as well, both open-source and commercial, and did a lot of development. In the last two years I have become particularly good at working directly at the code, tweaking bits of XHTML and CSS and bending them to my will.

The last two years also marked a bigger focus on standard-compliant webdesign, and even though I retreated slightly from Flash sites development, I still managed to make one of the most complex Flash site I’ve ever made in the same period. Its priority was to be easy updatable. Nearly all content is external, even the ActionScript.

What's up lately

In the last months I have undertaken my most ambitious personal project, something I had meant to do for years. It’s a community dedicated to Brazilian digital artists, where they could – above all – promote themselves as designers through a network of people sharing the same interests. The site has been published recently (07.07.07) and has already got a lot of positive feedback.

ArtistaDigital.net is based on Joomla, and is a result of a lot of customization. For me, it’s like a live lab where I pour my best in ways of XHTML compliance, CSS layouting, knowledge through articles & tutorials and graphic design. But it's a time consuming project, so I’ve taken the care to get other people involved as well.

I have also made a new theme for Illusion.no, which was published on the 28th of August.

My skills

I think my biggest strength is to create / change layouts that are visually compelling. My webdesign skills are greatly extended by my graphic design skills – something most people take for granted in a webdesigner these days anyway – but it isn’t easy to keep a balance between graphic skills and coding skills, considering the fact that one is always studying. I do my best to keep an acceptable gap between these two aspects of webdesign.

I have used many tools to accomplish what I need, trying to keep my choices as open-source as possible. However I could never leave commercial applications aside as they are the current standard in the world of professional designers. I have worked intensely with products from Adobe and Macromedia, now formerly Adobe too. Below is a little description on my skills on each one.

Flash

Flash used to be my specialty. I’m still very comfortable with it, but I haven’t studied it for a while now, so there could be things I will have to figure out eventually. For the most part, I know it hasn’t changed that much. Though ActionScript has gone to the next level, it’s 3rd version hasn’t been widely adopted, and it’s 2nd version is still supported. I still use it on a nearly daily basis.

Photoshop

I’m very confident with Photoshop, and take most advantage of keyboard shortcuts, recorded actions and custom brushes for creating / editing whatever has to be done, fast. Its sibling, ImageReady, comes in handy when optimizing images for the web too. There’s hardly a day that goes by without me opening it at least once. It can get quite scary...

Dreamweaver

I’ve used it from version 3 and I wouldn’t be where I am today without it. However lately I use it mostly to identify code by their color and do global searches for code on several folders at the same time. That’s especially useful when one needs to locate that little nasty language variable in a CMS with hundreds of pages to change XHTML tags around it. I could as well use an advanced text editor that supports that, but I just got used to it...

Fireworks

There used to be a time when I used Fireworks instead of Photoshop. Its interface with those colorful icons and its integration with Flash were features I preferred over the boring interface of Photoshop 5. I have never stopped using Fireworks and have always favored it above ImageReady as my web image optimizer. Now that it integrates with Photoshop, there was no reason to keep ImageReady around. I’m glad Adobe agrees with me on that.

Illustrator

I haven’t used it as much as I wanted / ought to, but I can get around. Illustrator is the application I’m mostly interested in getting a good grasp on nowadays, so I’m studying it. I just love vector art!

Other Design aplications

I have played a little with several aplications, according to my needs. InDesign, GoLive and Fontfolio were always around the corner, and should be mentioned. I also found my way through some 3D programs like Poser and Vue. To make it short, I’m quite confident that I can get the work done, if it falls within graphic or web design. I haven’t done as much with video or sound editing as I have with other kind of applications, but did enough to be familiar with interfaces like those of Premiere for video editing and Cubase / Soundforge for sound editing. These I used both for creating content for Flash movies or simply for leisure.

...what about coding?

Well, coding... There’s a lot about that in webdesign, oh yes! Fortunately I’ve done my homework and can do the necessary stuff, like writing code without the help of a WYSIWYG editor, though I do prefer using Dreamweaver in code view for the sake of the easy identifiable colored tags and a few other features like keyboard shortcuts and global source code search. I can dig into nearly any kind of code and find my way around. There are tidbits in which I haven't gotten myself into, like coldfusion, for instance. I simply never needed to mess up with it... :P

No, can’t write all that PHP by myself, but definitely can make changes to it. I have developed several sites based on PHP and MySQL, all being popular CMSs like Joomla, Wordpress, CRELoaded, and some others, including the old PostNuke back in 2001. I’m also familiar with forum engines like phpbb, vBulletin and SMF. Right now I’m playing mostly with Wordpress and plan to publish something with it sometime soon (maybe a blog for Dreamyguy.com??).

No, can’t write Javascript by myself either, but surely can read and make modifications whenever the code is intuitive enough. However I was never badly crippled by not being fluent in it, as one can find an infinite number of developers that really know what they are doing and are willing to share their bits of code. To mention one example, you can find MooTools, which is a sexy set of codes kept up-to-date with the latest XHTML standards and cross-browser compatibility. That is but one example of many quality sites that offer open-source codes one may use for free. Nevertheless, I'm going to put some more effort in learning some javascript so I can catch-up on AJAX, which seems to be "the thing" to know these days.

I think most of us can agree that MySQL is the way to go when it concerns database-driven sites and Linux servers combined. Again, I'm not fluent in MySQL but have done everything I ever needed using phpMyAdmin, a powerful MySQL database administration tool. Besides all the usual installation & maintenance tasks I do on a regular basis, I’ve done things like migrating databases with thousands of users, adjusting the fields from the the original user database to the new user database. I mean, more than just a few thousands, to be more accurate...

Actionscript is very similar to Javascript in the sense that it uses a similar object-oriented language. Though I can’t write Javascript, I do get around ActionScript quite well. There are many sites dedicated to open-source ActionScript codes as well, so it’s hard not to get something done. I use ActionsScript 2.0 and, as mentioned before, still did not come across a pressing need to use ActionScript 3.0 - but time will tell...

My tools

My machine is capable of handling whatever one gives to it, except vanilla ice-cream. Name it and it will be done, fast. I have a Wacom A4 tablet which makes the workflow seriously smoother. A 22’’ monitor combined with another 19’’ gives me all the room one can dream of to develop and debug websites, not to mention graphic design. I have a stove too, to cook food. Food is good. You should eat more.

My space

Sorry, no MySpace.

The End

Hmmm... This page will never really end but yes, you have reached its bottom. Thanks for coming all the way! Click here if you want to go back to the top.

Latest work

My latest work in descending order.
More details about each projec to be published soon.

• ArtistaDigital.net A community for Brazilian digital artists.
• Bodypiercing.no Logo design.
• Illusion.no CMS migration and configuration of its 3rd version. Applied a new theme on the 28th June.
• Audrey.no Clothing for trendy female scooter drivers.
• Beltespenner.no Setting-up, logo design & theming of an online shop specialized in buckles. The original shop is now offline. :D
• Bodymod.no Logo design and header for an informative site about piercing.
• Gamesonly.no Building-up of the game database.
• Useyourillusion.no Site refresh for a gallery of users of Illusion.no’s products.
• Pusterommet.no a SPA and wellness center in the heart of Oslo.

Portfolio

My old portfolio at InnerFlash.net is down. I intend to put it all up here at Dreamyguy.com eventualy, but time is not on my side lately. Until then I'll leave this page here as a simple presentation.