JsARCLIGHT

I've always felt that the second we saw a Simpsons movie it would spell the doom of the series. Most movies made from TV properties do. I used to be a Simpsons fan ten years ago but now I skip them and wait for Family Guy to come on. Will I see this movie? At some point, yes... but most likely not in the theaters. I'm just not all that interested right now... ten years ago I would have been waiting in line now but the old addage of "too little too late" seems fitting to me.

Nothing personal but this thread is a dupe. Sol beat you by a few hours here: SRW Videos Thread

I locked your idiotic thread because you where the only one posting in it... everyone else who posted posted to tell you to quit it. A thread like this one works when someone does not post 4 pages of images all from the same site in less than two hours... that is called thread image spamming. As far as I can tell no one is spamming this thread with constant posts from a single source post after post after post after post after post after post. If you have an issue with a thread, talk to the management. DO NOT create another thread trying to make your point. That is against MW R&R if you didn't notice.

Ooooooookaaaaaaaayyyyy. Why not just post a link to the site? You hit just about every picture on it already. Sorry but this is so a lock.

387890[/snapback] If that synopsis is correct then from the commercials I have seen those are some rather late 20's early 30's looking "teenagers". I Personally love movies in which hollywood casts 30 somethings as teenagers as it is so convincing... especially the character played by Adam Goldberg that is the most seen in the commercials. Isn't Adam Goldberg pushing 40?

I don't understand enough about how the board mechanics work to know what we can and can't remove from use. Can someone with experience on this board chime in? Can we actually remove the "Hot Topic" function or is it somehow coded into the board? I have no practical experience in the technical side of things. I can make a kite logo any color we want, I just need to know how many we need and what colors we need them in as well as any other generic housekeeping icons that may be needed to match theme. Edit: when I initially looked around the board, it seemed the board had fourteen different icons in place for the following things: New Topic, New Topic with no new posts, New Topic that the user has posted in, New Topic with no new posts that the user has posted in, Hot Topic, Hot Topic with no new posts, Hot Topic that the user has posted in, Hot Topic with no new posts that the user has posted in, Poll Topic, Poll Topic with no new posts, Poll Topic that the user has posted in, Poll Topic with no new posts that the user has posted in, Locked Topic and Moved Topic. All that is also leaving out the "Go To Last New Post" button (number 15, AKA the Minmay Wraith), the "Section with New Topics" icon and the "Section with No New Topics" icon on the first page of the message board. Seventeen icons in all that would need to be made to replace our current system with an updated package that matches it icon for icon. Now I could assume that the person doing the replacing could just use the same four icon set for all three main topic icons (new, hot and poll) which brings us down to nine icons needed grand total... if we change out everything.

I experimented breifly with drop shadows both behind the whole icon, behind the white parts, coming from the rim, all sorts of stuff... the shadows never turned out well because there is not enough space in these tiny tiny GIF files to enable the subtle falloff that a good shadow needs. The same problems are affecting my highlights... that white peen on the left top actually has a wonderful drawing gradient falloff in a nice star flake pattern along with a nice frenell effect crossing the droplet down into the lower right corner. ... but you'll never see any of it because it doesn't translate into the tiny GIF at all to my dismay. The "hot spot" that is the highlight can't really be darkened without the GIF convertor I'm using skewing it all dark and making it look like a smudge or a bruise on the logo rather than a highlight. Not to be a douche bag and sound all "tortured artist" for a second but it is almost burning my brain how all the detail vanishes when these things downconvert... but at the same time if that detail was not there when you downconvert them they just look so flat and lifeless. I guess I'm trying too hard to make these things "pop".

OK here is the new generation of icons. I'm only doing red the first time through but take these saturated color examples as an indicator of how saturated the blues and greens will be. I'm also using a different style of "shininess" on them. HOT TOPIC HOT TOPIC (No New Posts) HOT TOPIC (That the user has posted in) HOT TOPIC (No New Posts, User has posted in) I've also worked up the same four HOT TOPIC icons with the skull flight graphics. I personally think the skulls degrade too much at this low resolution and just become far too muddled to be usable, but this process is a democracy so here they are: HOT TOPIC HOT TOPIC (No New Posts) HOT TOPIC (That the user has posted in) HOT TOPIC (No New Posts, user has posted in) I've tried EXO's idea of using the beware of blast carrot arrows for a moved topic icon but they just turn out so small and illegible that I have to keep making them bigger and at that point they just become a huge red arrow anyway... so that idea is kind of out at the moment. Let me know about this new set and I can adjust from there.

I'm probably overanalyzing the whole thing as usual. I would just like to see the new icons be very intuitive as well as being just a bunch of nifty colored things. Having to find and then remember a key is kind of a pain. Then again people get used to stuff... once you are forced to live with something you come to love it. I bet if we left that minmay in place for a few years people would start complaining about us getting rid of it after a while.

I can't remember when I originally came here... around 2000 I know for sure. I lurked for a bit before officially joining in on the old boards. Good freaking hell I've been hanging around this place for 6 some years? wow. All the names I remember long gone...

Would those two icons be descriptive enough to convey locked and moved without the need of a key though? I guess that is the stumbling block of this whole endeavor... will the icons represent what they need to represent adequately without the need for a key? Edit: and also will they be intuitive enough that a newbie can pick up on what they mean quickly without us seeing a ton of "what do the red arrow threads mean" posts. I think that is the prime concern Roy has is people not knowing what the locked and moved icons are supposed to represent... all the other icons are sort of just eye candy but the pure function icons like locked and moved thread almost need to be very utilitarian. But that is only one opinion. When I get home tonight after dinner I'll start posting my new alternate icons and I'll make up some other icons as well to reflect the other suggestions.

Power went out at my house yesterday and stayed off until this morning (bad storms here). I lost the file I was working in but I managed to recover most of it. It will be later tonight before I get a change to work on these some more, time and circomstance and working against me it seems. Really quick here I think we should get a tally of what people actually want to see in these icons. It seems the more responses I read everyone seems to be wanting something different and getting a cohesive pacakge that everyone likes may not be possible. It might just be in our best interests for all the people who want to to make a few icon sets to make up some samples or complete sets and then we'll start a poll and have folks vote on which sets they like the most... otherwise it seems we will be making minute tweaks to these things forever trying to satisfy everyone. I think we also need to establish a ruleset for these designs as well. Roy already said that he wants locked and moved thread icons to be very basic and understandable without a key or legend so using things like the skulls or the minmay might be confusing... no matter how cute or fitting we think they might be. At the same time we need a listing of all the different icons that we will actually need to make. I've only been guessing at which ones we will need, I'm not sure if there are even more I'm missing or not.

That has got to be one of the funnies things I have seen this month.

I did some experiments with grey a few days ago and most of them turned out muddy. Once again the main problem was with the 256 color base of GIF files. With million color files you have all these wonderful middle grounds of grey that can add a lot of depth and reduce the "pastelness" of the palate... but with GIF conversion it just picks up on the base color and caps it. With white the pastel colors came out clean in conversion but with grey they looked like muted, somber tones. I guess the flux is do we want the site to be happy and pastel (read gay) or muted and somber (read depressing). Striking a balance is hard, hardest part in design... espeically with such a bright scheme going on now. I have to run back out again but I'll be back home tonight with time to kill (wife is on duty at the VA so it's me and the cat and a color picker). I'm going to run some more experiments... I have a few other trick bag gimicks to pull out and I'll see i switching from a "glassy ball" to a "waterdrop" sort of approach might work better at lower resolutions. Don't write off the Goose until you see the box going into the hole.

Wow, those prices are practically MSRP. That is kind of shocking.

I'm not sure what sizes this message board can handle without causing problems. I'm no message board guru... Part of the problem is the GIF format. When I convert my larger million color originals down to indexed 256 color GIFs they lose a ton of the subtlety in their looks, they lose all those inbetween hues that give them depth and separate the glossy highlights from the background colors. I guess this is why I don't design for the web... print is just so much easier. I can try a different style of raised button design other than the "glassy ball"... it's just that the glassy ball look is "in" right now on the web from what I see. I just have an issue with the one-dimensional icons we have now... to me they look so plain and their colors are far too harsh for the environment of this message board. It looks like mexican stoplight candy on the left margin to me. I think that is why my color palate keeps skewing pastel, my mind is trying to match the feel of the board. Let me try a few more different styles today when I have free time and see what I can come up with. Also if there is a larger icon size I can use or an alternate file type could someone please post the size and the file type?

Crap... the skulls are not turning out well... too much detail for too small of a package. I'll just leave off here for now and see what everyone thinks. I just wish the space for icons was larger.

That is the problem with "glassy button" style icons... they just don't work at such low resolutions. On the flip side the flat icons just look so flat and unappealing.

GO TO LAST NEW POST (Replaces the infamous "Minmay Wraith") MOVED TOPIC LOCKED TOPIC

POLL TOPIC POLL TOPIC (That the user has posted in) POLL TOPIC With NO NEW POSTS POLL TOPIC With NO NEW POSTS (That the user has posted in)

HOT TOPIC HOT TOPIC (That the user has posted in) HOT TOPIC With NO NEW POSTS HOT TOPIC With NO NEW POSTS (That the user has posted in)

OK, Here is my first new setup. This time they are all sized right and in brighter colors. First batch are the UN Spacy Kites: NEW TOPIC NEW TOPIC (That the user has posted in) NEW TOPIC With NO NEW POSTS NEW TOPIC With NO NEW POSTS (That the user has posted in)

OK let's take a quick tally here. Roy has a point about locked and moved threads, I purposely left those grey and plain with simple arrow and lock graphics in my original workup because those two sort of need to be understood without a key. I personally like the skull squad logo but it's a tad busy for my tastes at that small of a resolution. Also using different colored icons for "you have posted in this thread" might also cause some confusion. My original attempt was minimalist, keeping with the current pastel flavor of the board and trying to keep everything in harmony but a lot of people seem to want harder colors... personally I find those colors distracting when the board is so monochrome except for those bright icons. But that is just one man's take on the situation. Edit: On second thought making a poll will have far too many options... I'll do another quick workup of my original icons as kites and another set as skulls with non-pastel colors and post them here for folks to look at. Locked and Moved topic icons will remain grey pictographs per Roy's request.

Too small, you'd never make out what it was. Edit: in a nutshell this is my biggest nemesis with these icons, their size. I come from the world of package design... I'm used to working HUGE and working small is not my strong suit. We can't get really goofy-ass detailed with these little guys. Simple shapes, simple forms with color is the best route we can take. Also at some point we may need to just keep certain icons pictoral representaions such as a simple arrow for moved topics. Anything too far outside the box will confuse people... like the current selection seems to be doing. What I might be able to do is make another VF Head arrow for the moved topic arrow rather than a simple stick arrow.

OK, I'm back in business here. I've read through the responses so far and it seems the consensus is: - no pastels or at least cut down on the pastel hues - change main color scheme to "more macrossy" blue for new, red for hot, green for poll - make the grey skull the locked thread icon I guess I'll keep the grey arrow as the moved thread icon unless someone can think of something more "macrossy" for a moved thread icon. Here is a thought... does the board still have pinned thread icons? I didn't see any last night and thus didn't make any icons for that. When I get home from work tonight I'll see if I have time to make some revisions and GIF-afy all these icons into tiny versions and post them on here. Oh and a note about GIFs: Make sure your icon has an alpha layer and convert it to indexed color. GIF images only support indexed color and require an active alpha for their "transparency". Also watch the bottom and right edges and don't crowd them too much as GIFs tend to alpha cram on those corners which causes the image to look cut off sometimes.