ye olde name

Do excuse Ariane's tendency to speak in the third person. Anyhow, the name surrealle (pronounced "su - ree - el") is a portmanteu of the words "surreal" and "elle" (the latter means "girl" in French.) Ariane has lived through the good, the bad and the ugly of the webdesigning scene - and has come to the conclusion that "it's just surreal!"
Plain ol' "surreal" wouldn't cut it (yeah, I can almost hear your disapproval) so she decided to slap on the extra "le" from "elle" at the back of the word. And since Surrealle is also geared towards the "portfolio" sense, Ari thought it best to get the .com extension (thank heavens it was still there.) And et voila, Ari says.


expressite?

Unlike the (slightly ugly) days of Winter Skies (Ari's old anime graphic resource), Surrealle.com is Ariane's "expressite" (expression + site). So sue me for not using standard words like "showcase" or portfolio.

But anyhow...in Ari's terms, an expressite differs from a portfolio in the sense that some of the graphics on display may be used by others. However, it can't be labeled as a resource site as Ari doesn't think it complies with the "updated quite often" or "conformist" rules. Rather, Surrealle.com is a display of graphical expressions, of which some can be used if Ari deems them fit (i.e.: avatars which can be used on blogs/Livejournals/etc.) Of course, as with every free-to-use "resource" (those which I deem linkware =D), Ari hopes that people will give a link back - it's just a small thing to do in return.

slight history

So Ari's mentioned a bit about Winter Skies, her old graphical resource site (now dead). But there's no mention about it's background - it's the predecessor of Surrealle.com, after all.

Back in December 2005, winter-skies.net was officially created and placed on the net. As an anime graphic resource site, it provided (very few and somewhat crappy) layouts but mostly avatars. Ari managed to design happily, learn and grow - as well as make quite a few friends (some of them have left the designing world as well.) She enjoyed designing naively - at least, until she suffered a personal setback and a severe hate-campaign against her which drew away all her design interest.

Frustrated, Ari trashed the whole of Winter Skies (shut it) in August 2006 because she was sick with being "a selfless designer." Retreating to solely blogging at Yoakemae.net for a while, she didn't touch Photoshop much - only tweaking with some images for new avatars, and for Yoakemae.net's new layouts. (Like said, there was no drive to provide.)

Time passed and she realised that she had slipped so much design-wise, and the community has changed - so Ariane decided to take the plunge and start off small into the design world again. In short, Ariane missed designing. This time, she made it clear that the new site was not to be some "conformist" item on the net or a "people-pleaser"; but a reflection of who she is and what she likes doing (mostly avatars!) Ariane also wanted to get in touch with the new designers of the community; wanting to see them grow in some way. Being well aware of that, Surrealle.com was born on August 2007 (a year after the "resignation" from the community. Wow.)

And there you have it. This time, I'm determined to stay.


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