hello everyone! this blogpost was made for /me/ to gather all the draft pieces of the layout STUDIO CITY of TRXSH Atelier, just to see where vera and i started.
vera thought that itd be a great idea to share it so that people can be inspired by the process and progress of the layout, so here we are!!

first things first:
lexra is a combination of my my name and vera's (creative, i know. we're basically geniuses.) 
in case you dont know (which would be weird, tbh), vera is a super talented coder (hello?? bolded and standing out??) who owns the famous TRXSH Atelier, home of many gorgeous layouts. 
im not even kidding. her layouts are all simple yet sophisticated, and are really aesthetically pleasing. she's like, my favourite coder tbh ;___; (IM NOT BEING BIASED SHUT UP UDK WHAT URE TALKING ABOUT)
(pps, also: if you don't know, i'm a newbie graphic designer, owner of KING OF A LAB and a proud designer from CLUB X!!!!)

we added each other as friends one day and started talking, and our conversations were loud and weird and hyper-active on all levels lmao i LOVE HER. vera then brought up the idea of a collaboration. i, obviously omg, said yes, and we started the long journey of designing the layout.

we started by trying to come up with themes, characters and the overall feel for the layout but tbh we didnt spend that much time to decide that we'll feature the avengers on the layout HAHAHA we're tRASH WE FANGIRLED WHILE DECIDING THIS LMAO
ok so vera then suggested that i design a rough draft of what i had in mind, and tbh its a mess HAHAHA. this is studio city in its earliest stages, like, we just decided we were going to do avengers and then this draft came along lmaoz.

lo and behold, the first stage of production:

(open in new tab for the original size, as with all images in this post!)

this was essentially what i had in mind. i figured that i would design the header, and where the /orange/ part goes, there'll be some-sort of a 'slideshow' featuring the avengers, with each slide designed personally. it's a rough and very messy draft, as you can see, but my first impulse when i designed this was to load the layout with complexity!! the more the better ofc!!!!!!!!!!!

so, along with that, i sent vera these two:



the animations took longer than expected, ok.
of course, vera was very supportive even though i probably gave her a huge headache HAHHAA. she gave me a lot suggestions and encouraged my flow of creativity because it was kinda lacking...

ANYWAY
after some more discussion, vera told me that the scrollable header thing would be very difficult to do, and i kind of realised just how poorly-organized the whole layout is. i mean, it is a draft, but i still couldnt stand the looks of it, omg. vera was loaaading me up with ideas, and both of us browsed through layout collections by many different coders here on aff. after getting inspired, i came up with another draft, admittedly more organised and well-put. hehe.



this totally doesnt have anything to do with avengERS but like. it was a draft, okay. HAHA! i had to figure out what goes where and how itll look before i start adding the characters in. i was really happy with how things are starting to get together, and like, look, im still kind of proud of this.
i also sent vera the psd to this so that she can make changes and improvements to the layout and aren't we cute together.

after some time she sent me this gorgeousness that still makes me feel inferior:


this is supposed to replace the avenger's portion up there, because vera wanted to show more than one 'avenger' at once. honestly how does she even??? its so gorgeous!! ;__;

we then decided on a hq/database themed layout, with neon blues against blacks, but my brain is made of dust or something and came up with this, as if anything else could contain more bright colours:


i wasnt able to add in the other members of the team because im not good enough yet HAHAHA.
then i realised that i totally went wrong because literally vera juST TOLD ME THAT WE SHOULD DO A DATABASE-THEMED LAYOUT, wow i am so dumb.
(but she was still so nice about it, i love her.)

i tried again; but i couldn't make the hq theme work no matter how hard i tried. so i made reference to draft number two out there and added in the avengers, taking into mind when vera told me that she loves working with black/white-with-a-splash-of-colour 


we then started freaikng out because it seemed like we finally had things rolling (and because trxsh reached 100 subbies then!!!! we both went CRAZY I WAS SCREAMING.)

vera then got super inspired and happy; she was such a bundle of joy and sprung sooo many good ideas that got our creativity rolling. 
we eventually planned to more or less scrape the previous draft and start on a more graphic-based layout, where i design the so-called 'background'? (layout/coding lingo is obviously a pain to me OTL)
we both were giddy with excitement, and lexra as you know it slowly came into this world, okay.

here's what we got after both of us designed and edited it:


this obviously isnt the final product, but it's more or less completed. i added more images and ~lines wow~, and then vera did more touch ups before she coded everything :"") 
OK TBH GUYS, I  F R E A K E D  OUT WHEN I SAW THE CODED LAYOUT. NO KIDDING. I WAS SCREAMING AJKHRDSUBUIRTE
but anyway :""), with more additions and sacrifices to the layout, and a lot of cheerful encouragement from each other, lexra was born and released on TRXSH :")
what a fun journey!!! i honestly had so much fun doing this!! 

honeslty working on this layout with vera was really mind-blowing. vera is so creative, and she basically has a galaxy full of encouraging words, talent and awesome ideas inside her. i am and will always be honoured to have done this collaboration with her, and am proud of what came out of it!! thank you vera, for being such a joy overall.
you really!!!! are amazing!!! T_____T <33



related links are all below! pls shower vera and her threads with love <33

alexaflynn,
5th february 2017