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History of Animated Buzz
The many faces of AB (Part 1 of 2)
Feb. 21, 2003
Time sure does fly. Animated Buzz will be a year old this June, but this site's origins stretch far beyond that. In one form or another, it has been around since the summer of 2000 when it was called Mario36.com. So much has changed since then. This week, I bring to you, the evolution of Animated Buzz. Saddle up.
Mario Furmanczyk and I are old elementary-school pals, but after moving on to high school, we lost touch. I happened to bump into him again about two years ago when we were attending the same college and we caught up on old times. That's when he told me about his Web site, Mario36. At that time, as the name suggests, the site was an exhibition of Mario's artwork, but little else. The lad started to get ambitious. He had big plans to turn his Web site into an interactive environment—"a popular meeting ground for aspiring artists and people interested in animation to share artwork, ideas and just have a fun time collaborating with one another," he said.
Thus, a new look was born in January 2002, and it was stacked with features such as the Drawing of the Week, the Character of the Week and Flash games ...
I was helping Mario run the forums since the fall of 2001. In April of the following year, I suggested an idea to Mario to do a weekly news editorial and he was foolish enough to agree to it (cue evil laughter). It didn't have a name at the time—Mario called it The Movies Buzz, but I didn't like it, so that was shortened to The Buzz. Mario then suggested calling it The Animated Buzz and that would be the title today if he didn't steal the name back for his Web site. The animal. When I knew he was going to call his Web site Animated Buzz, my column was somehow dubbed The Weekly Buzz. The name stuck, despite the "weekly" falsely advertisement the regularity of the editorials.
But yeah, brainstorming names for my column is what led to Mario36 hitting the grave. AnimatedBuzz.com was born, and along with it came the death of Zour (the star of Gobble) as the site's mascot ...
Lookin' good, huh? The site now had more of a "cartoon" vibe and the bee became the new mascot (buzzzz). I was happy that my editorials were now featured prominently on the site rather than being pitiful little links in the "news" section.
While I really liked the look of the site at this point, apparently, Mario did not. A month after the long-awaited unveiling of Animated Buzz, he changed the design ...
This layout is more in line with what the site looks like today. It was actually better because the navigation was easier. Also, my Buzz-Wire was featured prominently on the main page rather than being a link. Do you see a pattern forming? Every new layout gave me more space on the front page. I was all for that! (The Buzz-Wire is an idea I had to complement my editorials.)
Well, guess what? Mario changed the look of the site again about a month later (Sept. 4, 2002). It's basically what the site looks like today. And guess what else? I benefited from it again. Yep! Mario was good enough to design this page right here for The Buzz—and it was about darn time. (Click here to see an example of how butt ugly my columns looked before.)
Actually, the design of this Web site is always changing, especially as Animated Buzz increases its content. Mario is constantly looking for ways to streamline everything and make the features here more user-friendly.
This time, I explained the reasons behind the many different designs. Next week, I'll talk with Mario about the latest changes to Animated Buzz, what's been added since the last time we spoke, and what's in store for the future.
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