The site content consists largely of pages offering up items for sale, describing the items and providing the chance to buy them. The main page allows for the user to search for weapons via category (i.e. small arms, aircraft, etc.), and upon entering the category they will have a list of specific merchandise (i.e. going into the "small arms" category displays links to things such as "AK47 assault rifle", "Dragunov SVD sniper rifle", "SA-7 anti-air rocket" etc. Each one of those links will send the user to a page that displays an image of the selected item and a bit of technical information about the weapon presented in a humorous sales-pitch sort of way. And of course, the price. These Russians aren't cheap. There is an option to either buy the weapon or return to the weapon category page. If you choose to buy the weapon, you are taken to a page that confirms your purchase and thanks you for your business. You then can click a button to go back to the page of the weapon you were buying and either buy another or go back to the weapons in category list. If possible, I would like to implement a counter that added up all of your purchases and have the "bought" page ask for what quantity you want, and figure the price accordingly, then add up your running total. Of course the site would not be complete without a credits page, so there will be a page thanking all those who have already contributed a lot of images and other work. There is also a humorous "about" page describing the rise of the Red Black Market in response to the fall of the Soviet Union.
^Honest Igor, site founder - ^The Motherland! - ^Red Black Market URL
^Apparently, I am not the only one who has the idea of satirizing Russian propaganda! My site will be in a similar feel and style.
^An actual Soviet propaganda poster. The design of my site will be similar to this. It is humorous, removed, without being completely divorced from this type of content.
Content Images:
There will be plenty of high-quality images scanned in to be used as the pictures of the weapons on this site. Most of them come out of the book "Red Army Might", and others are official images from the era that the equipment is pictured, declassified after the 1991 fall of the USSR. Most of these have been either brought to my attention or given to me by Brendan Alimo (the professor of Storytelling for New Media here at UTD), because he served with the British intelligence during the Cold War and has high level contacts with declassified British military intelligence from that era.
Most of the text will be found on the weapon information pages, and it will be a few sentences describing the weapon's characteristics and uses, as well as humorous or historical bits of information (some weapons are associated with infamous incidents, and others have actually been sold by the Russian Mafia to other parties in documented accounts.) Most of the other text will be the names of the weapons, and these are the buttons which must be clicked on to take the user to other pages.
While many of the visual elements of the site are communicated through pictures, there will also be animated graphics. The Russian salesman on the front of the page, "Honest Igor," has two missiles firing out of his ears in regular intervals. The AK on the page fires bursts, meaning that the gun will be animated (simulating recoil), there will be a muzzle flash, and spent casings will be falling out and bouncing off the words "small arms". The SCUD launcher is also animated, firing off missiles at regular intervals, and flashing the text "EVERYTHING MUST GO!" along with the missile animation. There will also be a short animation played to transition the main pages into categories (I hope!) The animation played will be appropriate to the category selected. Clicking on "small arms", will cause a machine gun to fire from off screen, riddling the main page with bullet holes, which will smoke, and then the page will fall, dangle by one corner for a second, and then collapse, revealing the small arms inventory page. The "armor systems" page animation starts with a rumbling in the distance, quickly getting louder and shaking the page. Then, a Russian tank busts through the page and rolls right towards the viewer, turning its turret and pulling upwards so we get a close-up of the wheels grinding the treads forward as it passes. The tank fills the entire screen, and behind it is the armor systems inventory page. The "aircraft" page is a straightforward animation featuring an overhead view of Russian MiGs flying and firing rockets onto the page, doing very little damage as they pass. After a second wave of newer planes fails to achieve any better result, several large Tu-95 heavy bombers fly onto the scene and bomb the main page into oblivion, revealing the aircraft page. The "missile systems" page features a large missile flying in and wiping out the page, and when the smoke clears, the missile system inventory page appears. The "naval systems" page depicts a submarine torpedoing the main page into the briny depths from out of which arises the naval systems inventory page. The "covert warfare" page has an animation of a black silhouette figure in a trenchcoat and Fedora bearing a red hammer and sickle arising and firing into the screen James Bond movie intro style, causing the screen to drip red and the spy weapons page appear from underneath.