Portraits collection for UMC

Neuromancer · Post by **Neuromancer** » May 17th, 2011, 3:20 pm

In Story Images - An image collection for UMC campaigns topic there was idea to create portraits collection, so lets start this. Everyone is invited to lend his hand to this project.

First thing to do is to decide upon style guidelines.

Do we want to include for example this kind of images?

Or will we only add portraits fitting into current wesnoth guidelines?
Should we utilize from images from wesnoth project only or will we also include (for example) some GPL manga portraits?
And so on..

After deciding upon that we can proceed to finding sources like this or this and picking images from them.

em3 · Post by **em3** » May 17th, 2011, 3:24 pm

There's also the question if you want to keep portraits and story images in one collection or separate them.

Post by **Crendgrim** » May 17th, 2011, 4:19 pm

I think we should stick to portraits which fit somehow the guidelines and look well in a message screen. So, for example, the image you provided doesn't look well there so I don't think it should be included.
However, it's a big question which images to include and which not.
I'm definitely against putting story and portrait images in one add-on due to its size. If we combine both, the add-on will become too large, I think.
Actually, there are so many portraits that I thought of splitting this add-on into multiple ones. So, we could have a "UMC Portrait Collection - Guidelines", "UMC Portrait Collection - Manga" etc.
The big question is: How much effort do we want to put into this? Most portraits are made for a special unit/character, so they won't fit anything else. For example, many portraits from this thread aren't really re-usable.
Regarding story screens, this problem doesn't exist. Most story screens are usable in totally different stories, so it's easier to say that an image fits or doesn't fit in the add-on (e.g. doesn't fit if the characters are already displayed on it).
The worst part of this add-on is the organization phase.

Crend

Neuromancer · Post by **Neuromancer** » May 18th, 2011, 4:43 pm

Crendgrim wrote: Actually, there are so many portraits that I thought of splitting this add-on into multiple ones. So, we could have a "UMC Portrait Collection - Guidelines", "UMC Portrait Collection - Manga" etc.

Lets start with UMC Portrait Collection - Guidelines. When it will be done, we can move to the next one.

Crendgrim wrote:I think we should stick to portraits which fit somehow the guidelines and look well in a message screen.

Ok, let this be our criteria: transparent or single-color background and somehow fitting the guidelines*.

Crendgrim wrote: The big question is: How much effort do we want to put into this? Most portraits are made for a special unit/character, so they won't fit anything else. For example, many portraits from this thread aren't really re-usable.

I think the most portraits are fitting to broad spectrum of characters, Bad Moon Rising topic with some unusable portraits being rather exception then rule.

*I know, "somehow fitting the guidelines" isnt very exact, but I think it is of no use to define some exact rules when it comes to art. Just include the image if it feels right.

What about portraits like this? Its very nice IMO, but it is not very suitable in message. Include or not?

What about portraits used in mainline campaigns? Include them or let the user crawl through campaign folders?

I tried to upload first bunch of portraits to the server, but wesnoth keeps crashing when I attempt to do that. Can someone upload this?

Post by **Crendgrim** » May 18th, 2011, 4:57 pm

If you try to upload a big add-on on Wesnoth 1.9.5 or 1.9.6 (don't know about 1.8.6) the screen will freeze (so you won't see a progress bar), but the add-on is uploaded nevertheless. I encountered that yesterday, too.
So, this may be your problem, although I don't know of course

Regarding the portrait you posted, imagine it being transparent. And then imagine it being in the message screen. Wait - where are the shoulders gone? Invisible?
It's kind of weird-looking, so I won't include it (at least not in the main pack). It's up to you, though.

Crend

melinath · Post by **melinath** » May 18th, 2011, 10:30 pm

You could have separate folders for "match guidelines completely", "need transparent (or black) version", and "very nice but need some additional work" and then try to solicit people to do the update work.

To clarify, by "very nice but need some additional work" I mean portraits that conform more or less to the guidelines but - say - are a bust instead of a full body. Conceivably, someone could flesh out the portrait to include the missing pieces.

Alternatively, you could have a single folder for those that match completely and are reusable, then have an art workshop thread where the rest are tracked.

boru · Post by **boru** » May 19th, 2011, 12:43 am

Neuromancer wrote:What about portraits used in mainline campaigns? Include them or let the user crawl through campaign folders?

Let em crawl!

Seriously, if you want your collection to be at all useful, don't fill it up with stuff that is already on the user's hard drive.

I think it would be great to have the portraits organized, perhaps in the same way the mainline portraits are organized (i.e., all mages alphabetically together in the folder, all loyalists together). Either copy that organization scheme or come up with a better one.

Ideally you'll want to credit the name of each artist in your main.cfg file.

Boldek · Post by **Boldek** » May 19th, 2011, 11:06 pm

toss in anything user made.

Neuromancer · Post by **Neuromancer** » May 20th, 2011, 12:54 pm

Crendgrim wrote:If you try to upload a big add-on on Wesnoth 1.9.5 or 1.9.6 (don't know about 1.8.6) the screen will freeze (so you won't see a progress bar), but the add-on is uploaded nevertheless. I encountered that yesterday, too.
So, this may be your problem, although I don't know of course

Yeah, that is what I encountered.

melinath wrote:You could have separate folders for "match guidelines completely", "need transparent (or black) version", and "very nice but need some additional work" and then try to solicit people to do the update work.

To clarify, by "very nice but need some additional work" I mean portraits that conform more or less to the guidelines but - say - are a bust instead of a full body. Conceivably, someone could flesh out the portrait to include the missing pieces.

Alternatively, you could have a single folder for those that match completely and are reusable, then have an art workshop thread where the rest are tracked.

I dont really think someone would complete some image only for being included in some library. Let campaign developers manage these things.

boru wrote: I think it would be great to have the portraits organized, perhaps in the same way the mainline portraits are organized (i.e., all mages alphabetically together in the folder, all loyalists together). Either copy that organization scheme or come up with a better one.

It is of no use to organise by factions. Better by races, or, even better, by tags on website.

Anyway, everyone head to http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=33902 and share your opinions!

Neuromancer · Post by **Neuromancer** » May 27th, 2011, 9:42 pm

I will no longer work on this addon. I guess as long as there is demand for portraits collection, there will be always someone who will push the work a bit forward. To do:
Mainline images contained in the .rar needs to be cut off
Addon needs to be uploaded on 1.8 and 1.9 servers
And of course, new images needs to be added in

TheSigil · Post by **TheSigil** » June 24th, 2011, 1:32 am

Post by **Iris** » June 24th, 2011, 4:54 am

Sorry for chiming in, but I don’t think including campaign-specific portraits that are still in use is a good idea.

At least I don’t feel very comfortable whenever I discover that people are using IftU-specific art in unrelated add-ons for unrelated characters, regardless of what the GPL technically allows.

em3 · Post by **em3** » June 24th, 2011, 12:38 pm

Also, I'm not sure if Valkier's Rook is free to be used.

Not sure, though.

TheSigil · Post by **TheSigil** » June 24th, 2011, 2:12 pm

Shadowmaster, you raise a good point, but may I offer a couple of reasons why we might want to keep portraits from existing campaigns on the list?

1. Nearly every near-mainline quality portrait is either for a specialty unit in a custom faction (and not really useful for "normal" UMCs) or was originally created as a character in a UMC. If we exclude stuff originally made for a UMC we toss out most of our list.

2. All "unmaintained/dead" UMCs with portraits of quality were once active UMCs - active enough that people took the trouble to make portraits. Today's active UMC can quickly become tomorrows abandoned UMC (due to time constraints or changing priorities or heaven forbid, sudden heart attack - I've lost a couple of acquaintances in the last couple of months to this). To exclude portraits from this list because they are part of an active UMC today is to invite someone else to have to re-crawl the forums digging them up if the UMC goes inactive tomorrow. Similarly, trying to keep notes on the list of why is dead and what is not -really adding and removing links as campaigns "die" or get picked back up after a period of inactivity is a task that is constant, thankless, and not really necessary (because of point 3).

3. The list provides links to threads, which allows context for the images. If you take a moment to glance at the thread title you will quickly be able to determine which UMC the image was originally built for (and whether it is still active can be checked with a quick jump to the addons server). If someone is looking for a custom portrait, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask them to do this work, rather than try to constantly keep up the list. Because of this, I think having a list of links (with context) is superior to having an add-on with portraits contained in it (which will by its very nature come without context).

4. Giving people a list of custom portraits that is fairly easily accessible makes it LESS likely that they will re-use a portrait from an existing UMC. My guess is "people are lazy" and most people don't know where to find legal portraits, so they will just grab something they can find easily - which means good portraits from existing campaign add-ons they have (i.e., active UMCs). If we make it almost as easy to find unused portraits as it is to find used ones, they are more likely to look for an unused portrait. Look at how many people rely on frankensteining mainline units for their custom UMC portraits... good portrait art is HARD to find and to do. I think providing a list of stuff people can use is one way we can lower the barrier to entry for people to "tell their story" in a compelling fashion.

Bob_The_Mighty · Post by **Bob_The_Mighty** » June 25th, 2011, 5:30 pm

I think a portrait collection is a great idea, in fact I have a small collection already.

shadowmaster wrote: At least I don’t feel very comfortable whenever I discover that people are using IftU-specific art in unrelated add-ons for unrelated characters, regardless of what the GPL technically allows.

This is a point worth discussing. I can understand feeling proprietorial over images of characters from one's own campaign, but having used other people's portraits myself I know the temptation to 'borrow'. It is not something you can stop, so a portrait collection would only make it easier.

What about some sort of compromise: portraits of main characters are off-bounds (each campaign probably has 3-5 of such characters), while lesser characters are fair game? Of course, this is only a suggestion towards a kind of informal code of conduct.

I would vote for including portraits from mainline campaigns. There are lots of them now and it does get annoying clicking through them all for a suitable picture. This is probably the reason I made my own collection in the first place. Also, not everyone gets all the campaigns when they download the game.

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