Once upon a time there was a small site — favouritewebsiteawards.com/. Years 2000 – 2004 were the golden age of Flash sites. They were interactive, colorful and heavy. At that time I had a blog at valyard.ru with daily links to the coolest sites and games. I bet it had been one of FWA’s link sources for a while.

Since then FWA has grown into a well-known and respected award in the industry of  Flash sites, my resource has well been forgotten.

But recently (a couple of years ago) favouritewebsiteawards transformed into favouriteeverythingawards featuring really everything on the net and some offline stuff. How can you compare a heavy interactive informative site with great UI and lot’s of videos with a WebGL experiment, or a music video, or an offline installation? Let’s examine this year’s Sites of the Month:

• January, Lego Star Wars — Half game (which is supposed to be multi-player, but I was alone ther), half site with great graphics and animation.
• February, Die Hipster — Looks like a game where I don’t gave a clue what I am supposed to do, so I don’t like it q:
• March, Greenpeace – A New Warrior — This is a typical multi-media content site which is well-done, contains a lot of data and serves some real purpose.
• April, Wall of Fame —  Great multi-user experience. A site with user-generated content which actually has it (the content). I voted for it in Peoples Choice Award.
• May, Pleasure Hunt — Another half game, half site. Entertaining way to present a brand.
• June, 3 Dreams of Black — WebGL experiment/interactive music video. Great demonstration of the technology.
• July, The Museum of Me — This is actually just a music video, not even interactive. But the idea behind it is brilliant.
• August, Sexy Fingers — This site doesn’t load on my machine, but I checked on a colleague’s PC and it looks like complete crap. Seems to be a bunch of sex-related games which are totally not work-safe.
• September, The Planet Zero — This one is awesome! The third half game, half site but uses pre-molehill software 3d rendering engine. ROXIK is the greatest!
• October, Being Henry — Really well-done interactive video.
• November, The Honda Experiment — Some kind of HTML “The Incredible Machines” game made with pop-up windows.
• December, Androp Bell — That’s just an awesome game. Great idea and really well-done.

Updated my good old FWA Winner from 2007. God, I can’t believe I wrote that code o.O !!1

Can you imagine that there were times without blogs? Nowadays everyone and their grandma has a blog (or 5 blogs like me). During 2000-2004 I’d been trying to invent blogs and failed. Yep, if you didn’t know I had one of the best inspiration blogsnews sites on the web at valyard.ru and valyard.com…

My main problem was that I tried to post news issues every day with new cool sites. There just wasn’t that many flash sites around. During that period I didn’t have much time and heavy flash sites required a lot of money to download on a modem connection. What’s more I didn’t have much feedback. As like nobody cared. But later I found out that they did care…

Several times during that period I had to stop posting and close the site. If only I got the concept of modern blogs… If only there was RSS widespread at that time… But blogs and RSS became popular only when I gave up and stopped posting at all.

I remember I saw TheFWA growing. I bet my site was at least as popular as Rob’s, but where is TheFWA and where’s me right now…

And now googling my nickname you still can find posts on other old blogs about me.

One of the coolest Flash blogs disappeared because of lack of feedback a while back – and is back now: valyard|ru
Lets try to keep Valyard inspired, the work he does is so good for showing the united creativity of the Flash community – we can’t afford to loose him again :-) February 22, 2003 on jdb

I’m happy to hear that valyard is back with a new site. As you might remember he has a great talent for finding those special sites that make your jaw drop. Welcome home! February 17, 2003 on Quasimondo

So, the site that went down to much dismay of the Flash community is coming back. The site used to sport many interesting sites, cool design sites, useful ones and entertaining ones. Valyard was down for quite sometime and it is making a come back soon, it says 2 days in its countdown. February 15, 2003 on Brajeshwar

I wish I could go back to year 2000…

And what’s about you, do you remember the old valyard|ru back then?

I didn’t even know there was a review like that of the site I launched early 2008. Huge thanks to the guys at Jivemug blog though it seems dead.

All-in-all this is a beautiful site!  Aesthetically pleasing to the eyes, and an amazing use of ActionScripting that makes you want to scream give me more!  We give this site two thumbs up and suggest you visit it now if you haven’t already!  Hope you enjoyed the review!

Of course everyone saw the site. Some of you like it, others don’t. When my internal energy depletes (which doesn’t happen often), looking for inspiration I open valyard.ru. I know it’s strange to steal back energy from your own creation where you put your own creative energy before. But it seems that this half a year I’ve been working on it I put there so much that I am using it even now.

And here are some of feedback messages I got since the launch.

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what the hell?
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What a good use of creative juice, It’s really just too bad you never thought of  the other 80% of web surfers who can’t see it.
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congrats on the FWA. loving the whole vibe of the site.
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im a student from america, im jelous of your skill
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what the hell is going on with thefwa judges !?
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Create flash website, really well done design and all. Keep up the good work.
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powerful slick website.
haven’t seen such a nice website for ages now.  keep it up!
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Overall the graphics included the logo  and first of all the typography are really really unaesthetic . Graphics:  past time flash intro style / Typo: finally unreadable. So, hopefully your coding skills are much better…
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unusable, and unreadable.
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Very great !!
Congratulations !
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I can’t get the fwa judges desicion and personally don’t like it very much but  lots o effort goes around here and site has a good amatour feeling
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Is this a pathetic joke?
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i’m sorry but i don’t like your site.  the ergonomy is no good at all, the text is unreadable, and i really don’t understan   d why you got an FWA SOTD…
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I’m sure you can program quite well, but I feel as though you’ve turned away a lot of people by making them wait for the site to load. There is also way too much going on, I can barely focus on typing. No contrast, either.
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It’s really unusable. I realize this is a place for”you” and what you like, but you’re going to scare away potential clients by connecting it with your biz.
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I like the design but the readability is poor. I went through the portfolio and I see that U do more than just web sites. Overal 9/10 :)
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this is fucking good!
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This is the most amazing website made with flash I ever seen. Love the colours, the music… the whole theme is great! I hope to be able to do something like that someday!
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This is a very diferent site. Great design, colors, interactions, sounds and fun. Good job indeed.
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G R E A T ! !
RESPECT!
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Programming skills and audio abilities are very nice. Design application / readability / navigation is pretty lame though and not very practical.
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This website is extraordinary terrible. Can’t even read a thing and the colors make my eyes bleed. Keep on coding but please don’t put your hands on graphics anymore. Definitely not worth any  award.
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AWESOME! Teach me your ways!? :P
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THIS IS THE WORST SITE I HAVE EVER SEEN!!!!
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There is such a thing as too much going on!! This is really terrible. Flash isnt considered high art or anything but no need to drag it thru the gutters! This style hasnt been remotely popular for ten years too btw.
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Nice work, looks  great, Im  full of  admire.
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that this site got an FWA has to be a joke.
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This site is SO Ace Frehley…
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Great pprogramming / sound  / and bravery.  Not so great design / practicality / usefulness. But none the  less, you are more skilled than I :)
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Holy Crap dude, my monitor is about to explode! Amazing detail
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Nice website, good job :)
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waaaaaaaaay too much faff for pretty standard content. can’t see why it’s got fwa… sorry
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Dear Valentin, Your are an amazing Flash design programmer. I run a creative firm in Dubai, UAE. I look upon you as an inspiration to create.
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A nice work, I really feel an inspiration on planet of the drums(older version) from weworkforthem. Never the less a good work
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amazing skills bro, I must say I hate the colors or maybe just the purplepink
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Colors, design, animation… everything is brillant! :)
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Thank you for the inspiration. I have just decided on a web host, and am now keen to look at building a flash based website. Give me pointers !
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Mad props for the tech side of the site….. but the design is the worst thing i’ve seen  in a while….. for real…. what up with all the brushes dude?
anyway….. except for that comment… this shit rocks!!!
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very artistic. too busy though.
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i dont enjoy the layout and colors but i must say you have superb  scripting skills..keep it up!!
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So COOL!!
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Ya your a coder not a designer good code. Your still stuck in 1999 design. Try going to a design class to step up your game.
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omg, what a creative abstractivity, great work lad
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I thought this style died forever after its bloom in 1999-2001… Nothing new, but I’m glad to see it again after this huge wave of minimalism…
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hey man ur site is very very nice yaaar…..
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took me one hour to get in but after visiting i think its one of the most amazing performance of the year
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tienes buena programacion, donde aprendiste
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DAMNNNNNNN!!!!!!!  its its damn!!! I need a tutor like you! is it possible?
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Alien Science!!! love the ripple effect
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I really like the effects – the ripple effect is cool! – but your color scheme is awful. The white text on the light blue back ground is difficult to read at best.  I’m not even going to go into the navigation – RIDICULOUS!!!
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man……this doesn’t look very new.  Also I’m not a fan of the colors you have chosen.  I’ve seen all of your background art on istockphoto.com
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Muy interesante todo lo que realizas, tienes mucho talento!
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Wow mate you’ve got it going on, never seen anything like your site before, very good well done .
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its a russian solution to a russian problem i guess…
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Wow- is this real or what…!
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mmm feels like 90′s flash revenge!!
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amazing! it feels like i’m in a futuristic world.
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Great!  the   color   the  style   the  man you!
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Great Site, I am a Graphic Student and just being introduced to Flash this is very inspriring!
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GARBAGE.  THIS SITE IS PURE GARBAGE
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hey… your concept just like my website !!!! but mine still rich sound and kick-ass graphic than yours !!! go to hell !!!my
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Jesus Christ, your website is the best (and bad for read) that i’ve ever seen!  Anyway, your site really kick ass! Congratulations!
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Making diiferent is something different for the normal people.  I like your site buddy! Cool
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Love the design and feel of the site, very unique and I LIKE that it is not easy to use.  Very innovative in every sense of the word.
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This site is awesome, gave me something interesting to study in my media class.
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holy crap man. this is the gayest shit i’ve ever seen. this is so 1998 and to add to the insult you outputted it for a minimum of 1280×960
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Just started studying multimedia designs myself, and you are by far the biggest flash motivation and inspiration sorce i’ve got so far!
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damn dude, awsome.