Without a plan

I have heard from numerous mentors, "Without a plan, you plan to fail."

That has never before rung more true than my recent reintroduction to Web Design. I was so excited, almost intoxicated by my accomplishment with my new website that I failed to step back and look at the bigger picture.

I had created a smooth animation, but as I add more to it the file size is becoming unmanageable. So now I've decided that I should compartmentalize each section; I will make each "page" of the site a separate movie clip (SWF) and then import them as they are called for. And that's where my new obstacle lies.

I created a busy main timeline. Almost every element I animated exists on that timeline and the layers exceed 50. Luckily they are properly named, but still... 50 layers! So now I have to move some things around and adjust the pacing. I pretty much have to reverse engineer the layout and rebuild the site with better planning. It will probably take me a few days.

So maybe I didn't plan to fail, but it does seem that I planned to waste some time. Oh well. At least this wasn't done on a paying job, where time is literally money.

On a good note I have the preloader working great! The code is easy to understand and I will be able to use it in some cool looking ways a little later. Also the contact form is all but ready to go, the only thing I'm waiting on to do the final tweaks there is an actual web server with PHP. That can wait.

The real question is what do I do now? Do I go upstairs and continue working? Or do I unplug for the night and get on some Assassin's Creed Revelations? I still haven't finished that game... Decisions, decisions.