IPB / IP.Content Clan Forum Design - repost

We are a gaming clan/community born on SOCOM II: US Navy SEALs (for PS2) and have been together ever since for a total of 10 years. We've seen and played a lot together in our decade of gaming, and we have always prided ourselves on our commitment to playing for fun and for the sake of making friends, not limiting our boundaries by instituting KDR limits and such. We were organized originally by former US Marines and have always had a military structure/ look to our websites and artwork. We have always favored a dark design but always desiring a very professional, mature look. What we are looking for in this project is a designer/artist that will be able to help us create our identity for the next decade based on some very specific criteria. I would like to use this project posting as a method of seeing qualified individuals and their portfolios to find artists who can bring this into reality. We are waiting for IPB 4.0 to be released before going ahead with this project however. Our main priority is to get a design and have it mocked up in HTML, it does NOT need to be coded to work on our forum software if you do not know how, there are conversion services available we can utilize to convert it from your HTML mockup to our forum, so you just need to provide the design. Our absolute favorite design that we want to emulate as much as possible in our design comes from a now defunct clans website & forums: [login to view URL] We are seeking a dark/professional design with a detailed metallic 3D interface in both the header and the footer of the website, with subtle HTML5 or Flash animations to give it a wow factor without taking away from the content & repeat browsing experiences. We made up a rough template to be worked with based on our favorite design, obviously we would want a unique look and this site would give us our own distinguishing/unique identity to set us apart so the design would have his freedom to make it his own as well. [login to view URL] We our aiming for a clean, professional layout with a fixed size. It would be mostly dark greys and black with gradients and highlights of red/gold/silver and maybe some light greys as that is what our crest/logo contains. ([login to view URL] // [login to view URL] ) Text content background areas would be lighter for easy reading though with dark text.. The subtle animations and mouse over effects in our header and maybe our footer as well are again, highly desired. Beeps when you hover over menu items, vents in the footer the exhaust steam or flames, etc. Subtle stuff that would give the site a really cool edge while not distracting from the content or increasing load times. The background would be varied, we enjoy a dark gradient in the header separated by a bg bar accent and then a subtle tiled background in the content area and then another solid gradient in the footer. We've highlighted this in the reference photo provided. We have never seen a designer create something like this on IPB, but more than a few similiar layouts have been created for vB. We are currently shopping around for someone who is capable of providing all of our needs as we've so far only come across people who can meet some, not all, of our requirements. More reference: We also enjoy the professional, high-tech/militaristic look of this rendition as well: [login to view URL] This is probably our favorite as far as 3D metal interfaces go, this site also had animation. The flames and smoke were animated, but subtle and not distracting from the overall site. [login to view URL] A live demo version of our favorite header that we want to serve as our main inspiration can be found here: [login to view URL]