Just for fun: Shrine Creation Time

[dubiousdisc]

What shrine has taken you the longest to make? How long? Are you still working on it?
Ehehehe I'm still not done with my [and Denise's] Agarest shrine XD
It's been in the works since...2014 I think. The reason why it's not ready yet is because we started working on it as we were playing the game, but we need to replay it, and it's the game with the longest main storyline I've ever encountered so we need to be ready to play it a little bit every day. We also wanted to let some time sit between the first and the second playthrough because the gameplay itself can be pretty tedious, even if we're interested in the plot and the characters, so we didn't want to overdose on it. Destinie, to expand butt in your question to Larissa, this is totally a case of half-finished site laying around, which sometimes we've worked a lot on, and right now it hasn't been touched for a long while XD I think it will be online eventually, but I'm not fretting over it. It will come when I'll want to play the game again, I'm sure.

What shrine has taken you the least time to make?
Rakkaholic I think. It was made for the OPOM and, in spite of it being about 8000 words, it took me only a couple of days to write and put together. I don't know what happened. I thought I didn't know what to write but...I guess it turns out I did?

On average, how long does it take you to get a shrine up and running?
Usually, I take at least a few weeks to set up the general sketch of a site. I also like to let things sit and simmer for a while, so some more time goes as the site sits there untouched.

[Robin]

What shrine has taken you the longest to make? How long? Are you still working on it?

That would have to be my Dove shrine--it took me seven years from drafting the first piece of content to publishing what is now online. The sudden death of my hard drive (and subsequent loss of work ;_;) in 2011 had a lot to do with it, plus I was working on a ton of other projects, AND I wasn't sure if I even wanted to attempt a big shrine like that again because my attention span had shortened to almost nil. LOL

I am still working on it, too! I need to assemble a picture gallery that I've been promising for almost a year, but I still haven't gotten a scanner that doesn't make me rage and flip a proverbial table yet. At this rate I might just lay the comics out in full sun and take pics with my iPhone--that's what I did for the pics that are already up LOLOLOL

What shrine has taken you the least time to make? And why?

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Probably my Helen Burns shrine. I wasn't even planning to make a shrine about anything from Jane Eyre at first, even though it's one of my favorite books. And if I did ever make a shrine about it, I reasoned I would probably make a Jane x Mr. Rochester shrine because d'awwwww and ~angst~ and OTP and all.

But then, I started reading through the book again in January of 2015, and as I hit the chapter(s) with Jane's friend Helen in them, I was suddenly hit with the "shrine bug." According to my site file dates, I started work on it January 9th, and finished it on January 12th. (Holy crap, THREE DAYS...my brain was on FIYAHHHHHHHH! LOL!!)

I think it took me less time to make this shrine because Helen is a minor character, and doesn't appear in the book very long, thus I didn't have to do a TON of flipping back and forth in the book for research. At the time, I was just getting back into shrining and needed something that felt easier to accomplish, and that certainly fit the bill!

On average, how long does it take you to get a shrine up and running?

I can create one from absolute scratch in a month if I push SUPER HARD, but I usually end up with a subpar product because I'm rushing. (I can tell which ones are subpar by the Amassment reaction, too--especially from Todd and Lethe. Even if I've put forth what I feel is my best month's effort, even if I'm pretty proud of it, if those two ignore it, I pretty much know I've made a "dud" and need to do more work on it. See: Bing Bong, Sound of Music, and Evinrude.) This is why I don't join the 1 Page 1 Month challenges, because I know I'm going to make something that I'll just have to go back and fix later...LOL

I actually prefer to plan things out for about 3 months ahead of time--lay some groundwork, make images, tinker with the layout & fonts, add and reorganize content, etc.--and then sprint to the finish once the self-set deadline nears. This is exactly the process y'all are seeing with my Eighth Doctor shrine--drafting, re-drafting, layout tweaking, agonizing over small layout choices, more layout tinkering (and usually screwing stuff up), word vomiting, cleaning up word vomit over the course of several weeks, and lastly, adding in-article pictures (because I hate putting in images when I'm not done with the content yet!). LMAO

TL;DR "Average"-quality shrines take me at least a month. GOOD shrines take me at least 3 and sometimes 4 months for best quality.

[Destinie]

@Robin I'm glad you managed to get that shrine up (and congrats on winning SOTM! I think your work was worth it!) :D I'm glad you stuck with it because I do love reading through it. It's also so nice to see a shrine for a character in a series I've never even heard of it and I enjoyed reading about how you like her so much. I digress...

I think the smartphone camera is a great invention because now instead of waiting to scan things (since our current scanner is not compatible with my new-ish laptop) I just use my phone and tweak it in photoshop. Success! So that's definitely a viable option so you don't have to keep dealing with that finicky contraption! :P

Also, I don't think your Evirude site is a "dud", I particularly like it!

@Dubs Ah, the half-finished site. Got it! I remember talking to you about your Agarest shrine YEARS ago. I'm still waiting! Patiently!! :p

[Lethe]

I can create one from absolute scratch in a month if I push SUPER HARD, but I usually end up with a subpar product because I'm rushing. (I can tell which ones are subpar by the Amassment reaction, too--especially from Todd and Lethe. Even if I've put forth what I feel is my best month's effort, even if I'm pretty proud of it, if those two ignore it, I pretty much know I've made a "dud" and need to do more work on it. See: Bing Bong, Sound of Music, and Evinrude.) This is why I don't join the 1 Page 1 Month challenges, because I know I'm going to make something that I'll just have to go back and fix later...LOL

Oh no! This was... honestly never my intention? If I've made you feel that way, I'm really sorry, and I want you to know that I'm always looking forward to any of your projects, big or small. I know you often talk about your weaknesses, but honestly, the content of your sites has always been a big inspiration to me, and has directly influenced some things I've made and am making.

I've looked up the examples you gave, and noticed that I had commented on all three of them. Perhaps you felt that my reaction wasn't as strong compared to some other shrines of yours I've given feedback on (Lux Perpetua and Counterbalance come to mind)? Please don't take the seemingly "weak" reaction as your shrines being "duds", that makes me very sad. :( If I don't comment on something, it might be that I don't have the time, or am not familiar enough with the subject to feel comfortable commenting on it, and in some cases, I really don't have much to say - or to add, when others have commented before.

If I comment, and my reply is short, that doesn't mean someone's site sucks. :( I enjoyed the shrines you linked, especially the ones that were tributes to very minor characters, and I love how personal you've made those. I think from both perspectives (the creator's and the visitor's), if it's a shrine to a minor subject, there's sometimes... "only so much" that can be said (which is not to say that it's impossible to take a minor subject and write a lot about it), but that doesn't mean the effort wasn't there, or that the shrine is worth less. On all of your sites, I always feel how much the subject has personally touched you, and that's always lovely to read about - but not necessarily something that I'd comment on in as many words? I hope you understand what I mean.

Please don't base your pride in something you've created on certain people's reaction to your creation, especially if there could be so many different reasons for the lack of reaction or the length of a comment. :( On the other hand, I think that one page shrines (and especially the challenges) are a really nice way to get working on something you've always wanted to make, or something you didn't even want to know you wanted to make! It doesn't have to stop at the end of the month: You can still go back and refine it, or even expand it. While that may seem tedious, I think it's worth it if you end up with shrines you wouldn't have thought of making otherwise.

For me, there have been a lot of shrines that I have been working on that I haven't finished. I'd say for the longest it's probably my Saint Tail shrine that is STILL in the works. I think I started writing it back in 2013/2014? I open up the document once in a while. I think the reason it's taking me so long is because I have this grand vision for it. I have post-it notes in my old manga volumes of what I want to scan and reference and had been doing a lot of research on it. Maybe I got burnt out? I would love to get it up someday. :)

YOU KNOW WHO'S WAITING FOR THIS. <O><O> YOU HAVE A RESERVED SPOT ON MY DREAM SAGA SHRINE'S AFFILIATE LIST.

What shrine has taken you the longest to make? How long? Are you still working on it?
Valkyrie took me 2-3 months, and is the one shrine so far that I initially released unfinished due to the challenge deadline. Thanks to that experience, I think it's great to release a shrine unfinished after you've hit a personal goal (for example, the entire introduction section), and get feedback on it to stay motivated. If you work on something that takes a long time, and can't get feedback and acknowledgement for it for the duration, it can take a hit on your motivation.

My Reira shrine was started in 2012, but I haven't touched it since, and when I do, I will probably completely revamp what I've already written up, coded an designed. I don't like experiencing (video games, for example) or working on something with different perspectives and memories of it, and the me in 2012 is different from the me now. That's just as far as I am concerned though - I think it's amazing that some people have been working on and off on a project for years!

What shrine has taken you the least time to make? And why?
Jamais Plus took less than a week because it was straight-forward; the source material is short, it's a one page shrine, and it's mostly commentary and analysis rather than introduction or summaries. I take a lot longer for content on shrines when I have to write up introduction pieces for people who need a refresher on the subject or who aren't familiar with the subject at all, since I don't enjoy writing those parts...

On average, how long does it take you to get a shrine up and running?
I got back into shrining during summer break, so almost all shrines were finished within two weeks then. Since university started again, I stopped paying much attention to how long it takes to make a shrine, since I understand now that I have to space writing sessions out, and just work whenever I am in the right condition for it. (Of course, some discipline is needed too.) I think a few months is to be expected for a medium or large project now!

[Robin]

@Destinie: I'm really glad I got most of Dove's site done too :D I was afraid I would neverrrrrr get around to it if I kept waiting on a scanner of doom ~~~~ And yaaaaaas smartphone pictures >>> scanner images, at least for me ^_^;

(Glad to hear my Evinrude site is not a dud! I was worried it didn't have enough content)

@Lethe: *HUGS* No worries on your end of things! And I am super flattered that my sites have proved inspirational to you--the inspiration is definitely mutual!!

I definitely did not mean to imply that I got depressed about my sites because you and/or Todd didn't comment enough on them. It was more that I realized there was actually something amiss with both sites because of the reaction I got. I already felt like something was missing from the Bing Bong and Sound of Music sites, but I couldn't quite pinpoint what was wrong with my work until then.

I believe I had a harder time presenting introductions to my source material on these two sites because I didn't want my shrines to spoil the "magic" for anybody watching the movies for the first time. But for my Dove shrine, I KNEW nobody here was likely to read the Hawk and Dove series any time soon, so I felt freer to summarize and display the details in a more cogent way. The superiority of the introduction on my Dove site compared to the others is borne out in how many people took a chance on delving into "Lux Perpetua" despite not knowing much about the character--I just did a much better job explaining everything. My Bing Bong site and Sound of Music site, by contrast, both expect the reader to have a LOT more working knowledge of the films before you can really enjoy the content of the site. Thus, if you don't know the subject matter, neither site does much to engage you.

The length and content of yours and Todd's commentary reflect that failing on my part to engage people who are not familiar with the source material, which in both cases is a large section of the Amassment audience here. Since both of y'all usually can discourse at length about something you got really engaged in, the fact that neither of you had longer, more content-related commentary was a litmus test that told me the major problem--people weren't reading and getting into these sites because I hadn't made the subject matter approachable! That has actually been pretty inspirational to me in revising my approach :D

(This is one of those things that I think I would have caught if I had let myself have more time to write the content for each site and let it all kinda marinate together in the site folder for a while. Wait, why does this sound like I'm talking about food? LOL)

[Lethe]

@Robin: Oh I see. I think I get what you mean then. I definitely agree with your own assessment on the introduction of the Dove shrine, and I can also agree that the Sound of Music shrine doesn't do "as good of a job" at introducing and transitioning the unfamiliar visitor, with its bulk consisting more of further information and extras. :O

I know you had difficulty with this shrine in particular though, because you feel so much about the subject and wanted to do it justice. Honestly, I'd argue that if the shrine in its current state were good to you and you didn't want to do more to introduce the visitor, that'd be alright too - it's not like all your shrines are like that. I have one shrine that requires people to know about the subject too, in order to grasp the rest, but it's okay for me in that particular instance. But yeah, it's great that the response made you grasp what the missing thing that you had been wondering about was! =x

[Robin]

@Lethe: Yeah, the Sound of Music shrine was harder for me because 1) I was on a clock to get it done by the time the challenge ended and 2) I was struggling having ANY motivation for ANYTHING at the time, let alone a massive site like what I originally planned. Bleh. I got plans to fix it up though!

/dragging myself slowly but surely back on topic

This does all go back to the "Shrine Creation Time" topic, because each site requires its own focus and may require more or less time to complete, depending on if the shrine is a full introduction to the subject or a companion to another full introductory shrine...

[Destinie]

I'm sorry to hear you struggled with it, Robin! But I can relate on both accounts and wondering what is the balance of introducing a topic that people are unfamiliar with? When does it become TL;DR? or Did I cover enough information? And I think what Lethe said is also important: How much do you want to put in for you? (I've seen some sites just link to a wikipedia article for more information so there's really no one RIGHT way it needs to be done.)

Off topic: You mentioned "companion" shrine and I think that is interesting. It reminds me of what Tara has been doing with her Persona shrines and she has the one small site that is all information on the series. I thought that was a really neat idea.

On topic: I also think that another factor in how long it takes to get a shrine done is your own personal interest and how you're feeling [motivation]. Like Crystal seemed to allude to earlier, the more interested/inspired you are, the faster a shrine might be made. It's hard to make yourself motivated, I think.

[Robin]

@Destinie: YAAAAS all of this!

Also, I had Tara's sites in mind when I was writing about "companion sites!" I think that's such a cool idea--I did that back in the mid-2000s with my general Yu-Gi-Oh! shrine and its two "satellite" shrines (an OTP shrine and a character-focused shrine). It helped me not cram so much general info onto the two smaller sites :D