In the State of Fanfic thread some weeks ago, there was a mention of a possibility of the fanfic forum having its own banner(s) and I contacted one of the mods about it. Initially, I wanted to design one or more myself; but eventually, the mods decided that everybody should get a chance.

There can be two different banners - one for the resources section (where we are now) and one for the story section (where we, duh, post out stories).

These are the requirements:

"The banners are 1200x250px in size at 150 dpi with the Adobe RGB 1998 colour profile. It is a good midway point between small and large monitor resolutions. It's advised to allow room at the edge of the composition to expand the canvas in length to add more content if there is a need to do so in the future. The file is saved out as a jpeg. "

So, let's get talking about this.


What and whom would you like to see on the banner(s)?
Any colours you would prefer?
Any specific pics?
A plain blend or something more artsy (e.g. a banner involving just black and white drawings)?

P.S. These banners go into the announcement space, NOT the very top of the page. Examples here and here.

 

This sounds really interesting. Would these banners be changed on a semi-regular basis?

As far as what I'd like to see, if someone drew/photoshopped some clearly AU variations of familiar characters that would say "fanfic" to me. Or a montage of the eras moving from the earliest Dawn of the Jedi -era stuff to the Legacy comics -- maybe with bonus new stuff from Rebels or whatever. Really, you could do anything. Especially if they could be changed relatively often. Themes, maybe? Jedi month, pilot month, alien month, droid month, villain month, etc.

 

My knowledge of Photoshop is limited to producing lousy Galaxy Watch covers, so I can't really help for now, but love this idea.

OC month!

Both, and I'm sure TrakNar and ThreadSketch can come up with something beautiful in the second category *hint, hint*

 

I was trying to think of a way to do OC month as well -- maybe as a prize for participation, since we were so strapped for ideas this year before the awards.

 

I would not have a problem putting drawings together, if they existed. Montages based on thees sound great as well and that goes well with the idea of being more inclusive.

AU variations? DARK LEIA, PLEASE. Raissa Baiard

And I just realised that I want to read a Nomi S. fic.

 

Well...

I do have plenty of Bristol board and lots of ink pens.

I do like drawing logotype.

Throw ideas my way.

 

I am guessing that drawing some characters from winning stories would be the logical first step?

Ayesha Escari, the winning saga OC, for example? May Chyntuck correct me if I am wrong, but she is essentially an olive-skinned girl with jet black hair, a Kiffar yellow face tattoo looking like the one Quinlan Vos has, likes some revealing clothes on formal occasions and has the pear body type and Cinderella-like mannerisms and body language. And she's with Thrawn. She would look cool with some tools of an artist, as she makes sculptures (some of which are pretty disturbing).

*looking for a proper description of the Beyond winning OC*

Whatever ends up being drawn, I am willing to modify it into a banner.

 

I was going to suggest -- but I know it's a lot more work for Trak -- that a bunch of us from the OC revolution thread send her either a description of our characters or an image of sorts that we create with an online avatar generator, and Trak can draw an ensemble? I'm getting prizes for my awards anyway, so there's no reason Ayesha should be up there on her own, and it would be a lot more fun to have all our OCs meet each other. What do you think?

 

I am for it as long as Trak is. And I did not think that Ayesha should be there by herself at all, I just recommended her as a starting point and a known fan favourite.

EDIT: OK, mavjade ...but how about characters featured in our stories, as opposed to random ones?

 

That's fine.

Anything I design will be cropped to a long landscape orientation, and I have a general standard I use for banners. I generally don't make them very tall (200-250 px), and width will generally be thrice the height. While I'll put graphics in, the majority of my focus will be on the logotype.

 

There is no logotype here, actually. The instructions I got are in the OP.

 

Yo, thanks for thinking of me! I'm actually getting my laptop fixed/upgraded right now, so I'll be out of sorts for a bit because I'm probably going to lose Photoshop, but I'll likely be replacing it with Pixelmator so I should have some sort of image manipulation program again soon.

I've done a few banner-ish images for my own fic stuff, so anything could be possible.

 

I guess my edit didn't make much sense, so I am sorry and let's rephrase it: the established SW characters on the banner should be those featured in our stories and not absolutely random ones.

As for the later, I agree.

 

I can't do hand-lettering? D:

 

I guess yes, but the lettering won't be the name of the entire board, just of the subforum(s)? So, not a logotype per sé.

 

Calligraphy font for the banner it is.

That should be lots of fun to do! *gets out French curves and flexible curve*

 

I wouldn't do that (unless you want me to, and it's a challenge ), just trying to make it relevant.

 

Holy necro-post, Batman!

I've been advised that I could possibly do banners for the FF boards...so yeah, consider this a hat tossed into the ring...

 

I would definitely want to get OCs onto a banner, in addition to the regular SW stuff.

 

...so....because it's me...MARA JADE MUST BE ON A BANNER AT SOME POINT SOMEWHERE PRETTY PLEASE WITH A CHERRY ON TOP!!!

I have....literally no skills on this, beyond googling abilities. If someone came up with themes, I'd be happy to like...find several images of whatever the theme was so the artists would have several frames of reference? But other than that, I'm useless in the art department. But I can knit some darn good socks!!

As far as ideas go, I love the idea of an alien one. I love all the varied Aliens in the GFFA...I think it's something that makes it awesome. I think it would be spectacular to use "well-known" ones from the EU, not just the movies (Bothans, Ithorians, Noghri, to name a few).

Also....I think a "favorite couples" one would be super fun. The fav's from all the eras (I'm going to show my limited breadth of knowledge), like [okayIknownobodyfromBeforetheSaga], Anakin/Padme, Han/Leia, Luke/Mara, Bail/Breha, Obi/Siri, Jaina/Jag, Jacen/Tahiri, Winter/Tycho, Janson/Hobbie , and ...even the obscure (but oh so delightful) Tarkin/Daala.

OH! A rogue squadron one would be fun!!!!

Those are my ideas. Now I'm going to go adult and prep for the class I'm teaching tomorrow

 

Well, for the Before era, there is Revan/Bastila. There's also Col. Jace Malcolm and Satele Shan for those who might be adventurous TOR shippers...