User Fanart (1 Viewer)

[szsori]

Not sure what to make of these auto generated vignettes. From what I had been reading they were decrying the constant use of upper left oriented fan art then they go an create PHP code that will make nothing but upper left oriented fan art. And yes, they look less than thrilling.

Go back and read my posts again. We are providing the upper-left vignette specifically for people/systems that refuse to handle the non-vignette versions. I based the position of the vignette on artwork on Spuck's site, since there's no standardized position for them (that's the main problem with pre-vignette'd artwork, once again). People are still encouraged to use the original artwork, since it's much higher quality and will work for everyone. Heck... for those skins, just ask them to put an alpha-blended area around the menus so they stand out from the background, and then use the original versions of the fan art.

Inker
PS: We kind of loose flexibility with the move, hand-created and just drop-in fanart (as we have now) will continue to be supported as it just gives more flexibility. Perhaps that's all that will stay supported, they only thing to potentially gain is download from within MP instead of manual download (and assuming spuck's site can handle it, even that can be changed). I'm not really convinced by it all....

Right now it seems that only the original style (upper left oriented) will be supported but without the information box. I have not seen anything yet that would improve how fan art is handled in MP.

I'm curious how you would handle it if you were doing the same thing. You have at least a half dozen skins that support various positions of the upper left vignette. You also have far more potential systems that will be making use of the original versions of the images since they're smart/powerful enough to do the overlays themselves. You lose flexibility for creating pre-vignette versions of your fan art, but are gaining flexibility in that you don't have to make fan art specifically for certain skins anymore. Why should fan art creators have to ask someone which skin they're using before they create the artwork, and then other users not be able to use that artwork because they're using a different skin.

Seems like you're still not seeing the bigger picture, which is that MP fan art was broken before. Sure, it worked the way you were doing it, but if you try scaling up to handle more skins/users, it becomes even more of a mess.

To say they all need to utilize this vignette system is to tell Psycho Reptile that Monochrome and Indigo need to change to be the same as everyone else.

Wouldn't that be better than sticking with a system that is inherently flawed? Besides the automatic vignettes should approximately work for those skins. Has anyone asked Psycho Reptile about handling the vignettes himself? I can provide the overlay PNG's if he wants.

There's not really a lot of manual downloading going on on my site, about 6000 downloads this month, is that a lot?.. torrents aren't being downloaded by a lot of people either, maybe about 20-30?

This is good information to know. For comparison, my site is up to 2m banner requests so far this month. The same could be said about the banner art on my site compared to the fan art... most people already have the fan art they're using. Based on our stats, I think we're around 25k users of my site, so using a joint system makes sense. You not only allow your fan art to be used by around 4 times more people, you also get around 4 times the number of fan art creators.

I can understand why the XBMC crowd wants fan art. It looks good, simple. But I don't think TheTVDB is a good place for this. TheTVDB hosts info for all TV Shows. Do you really think you are going to find any HQ/UHQ promo images for TV Shows over 5 years old. Heck, go back two years and you are looking at some pretty slim pickings. The Gilligan's Island was put together from many small photographs (each color corrected and contrast corrected), run through Picassa's photo pile maker, then put into Photoshop to remove the background around the individual images and finally put into a fan art template that had a HQ image of a sandy beach as a background. Is there any other way an older TV series gets a HQ fan art?

You can composite older images into a full quality one. Polargeek did this with a number of his banners, since some are for shows from the 50's and 60's. Sure, not all series will be able to have fan art, but like I said... 4 times the artists. I think you'll see far more shows having fan art when they don't need to be designed for a specific system/skin and when they're automatically used by all 4 of the major HTPC systems.

The ideal hosting site allows for individuality and uniqueness between skins. I think we already have this. To drop the uniqueness of a skin just so we can auto DL a fan art just does not seem worth it.

Once again, the current system you're using LIMITS individuality and uniqueness since all menus must be aligned to the right with content down on the bottom. If the skinner handles the original, non-vignette fan art, they can place their menus and content wherever they want, making the new system far more flexible.

 

[G.B. Wolf]

I'll second szsori in all points. Adding a little work here, but allowing the use of the stuff to more poeple is a good solution in my eyes.

 

[jocke]

We kind of loose flexibility with the move, hand-created and just drop-in fanart (as we have now) will continue to be supported as it just gives more flexibility. Perhaps that's all that will stay supported, they only thing to potentially gain is download from within MP instead of manual download (and assuming spuck's site can handle it, even that can be changed). I'm not really convinced by it all....

Just what I wanted to hear. A central download of fan-arts within MP itself sounds "ok", but for the time being, I like having full control over fanart myself. With such a centralized system that's being set up @ thetvdb.com, skins and fanarts needs to have one standard - else it won't look good at all.

And the vignette-version seems to work fine with spinsafe: LINK TO AN IMAGE STUPID WEBSITE
Looks a lot better than having a stupid box anyway.

True, yet the ones made by Jocke (I think) look better in Monochrome.

Yes. I made them just for Monochrome. Making individual fanarts for each type of skin and/or light/dark skins, is still the best way to do it imho.

 

[Clean]

Right now it seems that only the original style (upper left oriented) will be supported but without the information box. I have not seen anything yet that would improve how fan art is handled in MP.

I'm curious how you would handle it if you were doing the same thing. You have at least a half dozen skins that support various positions of the upper left vignette. You also have far more potential systems that will be making use of the original versions of the images since they're smart/powerful enough to do the overlays themselves. You lose flexibility for creating pre-vignette versions of your fan art, but are gaining flexibility in that you don't have to make fan art specifically for certain skins anymore. Why should fan art creators have to ask someone which skin they're using before they create the artwork, and then other users not be able to use that artwork because they're using a different skin.

Seems like you're still not seeing the bigger picture, which is that MP fan art was broken before. Sure, it worked the way you were doing it, but if you try scaling up to handle more skins/users, it becomes even more of a mess.

The broken part of the fan art was the overlay box, which had/has been discussed for several months now. That has pretty much been it. As for how I would handle it, that would depend on my motivation. If it is to strictly provide for an automated way to DL fan art between different HTPC systems then I need to have a method for those that UL to distinguish where their art is displayed and then for those skins that use the art to distinguish the type of art they will display correctly. Going beyond this (saying where the art should be displayed on the skin) is trying to control content of both the art and the skin.

To say they all need to utilize this vignette system is to tell Psycho Reptile that Monochrome and Indigo need to change to be the same as everyone else.

Wouldn't that be better than sticking with a system that is inherently flawed? Besides the automatic vignettes should approximately work for those skins. Has anyone asked Psycho Reptile about handling the vignettes himself? I can provide the overlay PNG's if he wants.

Quantity vs quality. I'm gonna go with quality every time. And if someone has spent any money on an HTPC system I would think they would agree. Fan Art can be easily made for any skin/HTPC system. The current XBMC skins could have fan art in a day specifically for them if their creators would post a template or a full size screen grab of how they display their art as well as a request.

And having one art work with all skins is not a goal to have. Remember, "one size fits all" just means it doesn't fit any size perfectly. The Monochrome skin can use every fan art out there, it just looks like crap if the art was designed as a upper left art, has the overlay box or was designed as a full screen art. Again, it can use them, they just look very crap like. Whereas the art designed with Monochrome in mind look quite good. The same can be said for the art designed with Spinsafe/Foofaraw/BlueTwo/(all the other upper left skins) in mind. They simply look good, and yes dahling, it is much better to look good than to feel good (so says Fernando, so say we all).

The ideal hosting site allows for individuality and uniqueness between skins. I think we already have this. To drop the uniqueness of a skin just so we can auto DL a fan art just does not seem worth it.

Once again, the current system you're using LIMITS individuality and uniqueness since all menus must be aligned to the right with content down on the bottom. If the skinner handles the original, non-vignette fan art, they can place their menus and content wherever they want, making the new system far more flexible.

I am fairly certain that the reason we seem to always be at odds is one simple reason. It seems you believe that the fan art determines how something is skinned ("since all menus must be aligned to the right with content down on the bottom") and I believe that how something is skinned determines how the fan art will be created. The current system does not limit anything. It simply does not. Saying an art has to be displayed in a certain way is limiting. Being able to freely create an art for any skin that needs one is not limiting. And no, it is no more difficult to create a fan art for three different skins as it is for one skin. It just comes down to having the templates for the skins during creation. Have a little faith in the community and the people that use a particular fan art.

 

[G.B. Wolf]

And having one art work with all skins is not a goal to have. Remember, "one size fits all" just means it doesn't fit any size perfectly. The Monochrome skin can use every fan art out there, it just looks like crap if the art was designed as a upper left art, has the overlay box or was designed as a full screen art. Again, it can use them, they just look very crap like. Whereas the art designed with Monochrome in mind look quite good. The same can be said for the art designed with Spinsafe/Foofaraw/BlueTwo/(all the other upper left skins) in mind. They simply look good, and yes dahling, it is much better to look good than to feel good (so says Fernando, so say we all).

So... why thinking only black-and-white? It would be easy to find a solution to get the "old" system work with the "new" together. Imho now one will drop the current implemention and the additional possibility to have an automatic, central, whatever download for "basic" fan art is a nice idea in my eyes.

An easy solution would be that the TVSeries plugin just fetches the fan art it's getting from TheTVDB, renames it according to the current schema and throws the files into the Fan Art directory. With that solution no one has to use one of the download possibilites, but everyone can use one of them or even both. It wouldn't be the best solution from a "bigger" view, but something in that way should be realizable.

Best regards
Wolf

 

[szsori]

Here is the simple truth:
If MP skinners take the time to implement vignettes in their skins, the entire system will work perfectly. Fan art creators will only have to upload one copy of their art; Inker (and all other developers) will have an easier job coding it; and end users will have life very simple since they don't have to focus on getting art specifically made for their skin. Automatic vignettes handled at the skin level will perfectly match those skins. At this point MP users (well, some of you) are the only ones that feel like having 30 versions of each fan art is a good thing.

So, my system and API will stay in place in case Inker wants to implement. I've jumped through hoops trying to keep everyone happy and it's obviously not working, so I'm done trying to cater to the 10% of users that are using MP. I really hope you guys catch on eventually because as MP gets more and more skins, you'll see that your current method will get messier and messier. The purpose of my site has always been to just help make things easier on HTPC developers, but I guess I can't help them if they don't want to be helped.

By the way, my site already has over 200 quality fan arts. It's not like people are resizing 200px images and trying to upload them. I'll take quality plus quantity over just quality any day.

 

[jocke]

If MP skinners take the time to implement vignettes in their skins, the entire system will work perfectly.

Please try to avoid placing series logos and text on fan art.

What about those who like having the series logos?
If several HTPC-systems already place the series-logo on their own, how would the logo "fit" all fanarts regarding colours, dark/light, etc? Would it f.ex. be too much work to put up an series-logo api with transparent .png/.gif-files that could be placed on a given place above the fanart by the plugins?

So, my system and API will stay in place in case Inker wants to implement. I've jumped through hoops trying to keep everyone happy and it's obviously not working, so I'm done trying to cater to the 10% of users that are using MP. I really hope you guys catch on eventually because as MP gets more and more skins, you'll see that your current method will get messier and messier. The purpose of my site has always been to just help make things easier on HTPC developers, but I guess I can't help them if they don't want to be helped.

I do appreciate the work you guys over at TheTVDB does - there wouldn't be much My TVSeries without it

By the way, my site already has over 200 quality fan arts.

I found very few of them to fit several skins, as most of them have people/central parts of the image spread over the whole image, making information etc block it. See below.

 

[szsori]

If several HTPC-systems already place the series-logo on their own, how would the logo "fit" all fanarts regarding colours, dark/light, etc? Would it f.ex. be too much work to put up an series-logo api with transparent .png/.gif-files that could be placed on a given place above the fanart by the plugins?

I've already said elsewhere that I'd like to host series logos. My concern is finding/making them in high enough quality to make it worthwhile to put on the site. It's not too difficult to find high quality PNG's for current shows, but with shows 2-3 years old it's tough.

I found very few of them to fit several skins, as most of them have people/central parts of the image spread over the whole image, making information etc block it. See below.

All of your examples would be fixed if the vignettes are handled by the skins, since the vignette would be in the exact positions for that skin. The vignettes could be even more advanced since they can include any type of overlay... not just gradients. This allows gradient edges, hard edges, and fancy edges (see my forum thread for the Vinci example). Having vignettes embedded into the images themselves is what causes the poor quality you're seeing... not the quality of the fan art itself.

 

[Inker]

Just keep it calm please, I'm detecting a bit of hostility building up

Remember we're all here because we are passionate about our TV-Series and I'm sure everyone only wants it to look as good as possible.

As I already said, personally I'd prefer thetvdb.com to allow uploading diff. cat. of fanart for different layout styles (fullscreen, bottom-left, etc) but it's up to scott and remember that he is the one that has to deal with the hosting and programming and all that.

If that's not going to happen users can just continue to dev. fanart as taylored towards a skin as they like, the old way is not going to dissapear. If we ask spuck nicely I'm sure he'll consider continuing to host the site for a while.

Thetvdb.com fanart will also work however, just don't look for it within the next few days ;-) Who knows, maybe all our skinners can come up with a way to make the fullscreen fanart fit their skin which currently looks crapy with it perfectly (I will not bother with the auto-vignetes, i really don't see the point in those).

 

[Clean]

If several HTPC-systems already place the series-logo on their own, how would the logo "fit" all fanarts regarding colours, dark/light, etc? Would it f.ex. be too much work to put up an series-logo api with transparent .png/.gif-files that could be placed on a given place above the fanart by the plugins?

I've already said elsewhere that I'd like to host series logos. My concern is finding/making them in high enough quality to make it worthwhile to put on the site. It's not too difficult to find high quality PNG's for current shows, but with shows 2-3 years old it's tough.

Don't worry about those. Most old TV shows have DVDs out. The logos can be stripped from them pretty easily.

I found very few of them to fit several skins, as most of them have people/central parts of the image spread over the whole image, making information etc block it. See below.

All of your examples would be fixed if the vignettes are handled by the skins, since the vignette would be in the exact positions for that skin. The vignettes could be even more advanced since they can include any type of overlay... not just gradients. This allows gradient edges, hard edges, and fancy edges (see my forum thread for the Vinci example). Having vignettes embedded into the images themselves is what causes the poor quality you're seeing... not the quality of the fan art itself.

Out of curiosity, a skin that displays menu and series information along the right side would do what with the full screen art, assuming it handles these vignettes itself. I guess I am having trouble seeing how a full screen wallpaper can be made to look good displayed on the left 2/3 of the screen. Or put another way, how would it be made to not look like a full screen image just re-sized. I guess if I could see some examples of what happens to the image I could understand a little better.

Thanks.