Reference The RPF's Colossal Banner Thread

Wow. My congrats to whoever did that splendid Aylaa Secura banner at the login screen! Fantastic, and bold!

 

*BUMP*

Um, we had no new submissions for March, so there is no winners this time around.

April session is currently underway. This contest is ongoing until we fill our quotas!

With Reynar's sudden absence, we haven't gotten his banner uploaded. If someone could send the word out to him, that would be great.

We'll probably give him a month or two before we open that category back up to competition.

-I_H

 

*BUMPITY BUMP BUMP*

No submissions for April or May.

We're still lookin'!

Whenever you guys feel the need, I'll be here for this!

-I_H

 

So we're getting a new NSWRPF banner soon, and perhaps more besides.



Stay tuned.

 

Annnnnd ... we have a lovely new space-themed banner up in the NSWRPF, courtesy of Kahn_Iceay!

Kahn gets colours for a month, as is standard for banner makers.

If anyone else would like to submit banners for the RPF, we're still looking ..

 

Its ugly, fat and unprofessional looking, like a 12 yr old cut and pasted a bunch of images together. Nor does it fit with the NSWRPF either. Only thing I can say good about it is the color scheme, easy on the eyes.

Shoulda just stayed with the old one and waited for a professional looking banner instead of grabbing the first submission available.

 

Ahh I remember trying to put an RPR banner together but wasn't able to complete it . I like making banners. Oh well next cycle I might submit something!

 

You're entitled to your opinion, but the fact that it's not to your taste doesn't mean it's ugly, fat or unprofessional-looking at all. In fact, I think it's excellent and having a space-themed banner in the NSWRPF makes for a nice change.

If you'd prefer another kind of banner there, feel free to submit one. If we get enough cool banners, I'd love to set up a monthly rotation.

 

To quote Arthur Dent, who is excellently referenced in the banner, "I quite liked it."

 

I'm sorry but it is neither ugly or fat (How can a banner be fat?), nor is it unprofessional looking. Over the course of me making that banner I worked closely with Xani herself to get things to her liking and specifications. Kindly keep your unnecessarily harshly worded criticism to yourself if you can say nothing constructive. And as Xani said, you and anybody else was and is more than capable of making a new banner.

 

Oh it has nothing to do with taste. I frankly don't care if its spaced theme or not. The fact that it is not put together well makes it ugly, fat and unprofessional.

You think that is harsh from me? You don't know harsh criticism then. You want constructive criticism? Fine, but you won't like it.

First off the reason the banner is considered "fat" is because you have too much negative space and not enough positive space. If you don't understand those artistic terms, I direct you to dictionary.com or any art teaching website. The fact that there is too much negative space makes the art look fat and also drowns out the objects you want to draw attention to. The other reason why it is "fat" is that the banner does not conform to the normal size that all other forums use. Whether it is the actual banner itself or the ad banner adding to it does not matter, either way it makes it look fat.

The fact that your objects are too small defeats the point of having them there to begin with. The eye ends up going directly to the planet. That is a no, no in creating any kind of artwork. You do not want the eye drawn to one specific item unless that is your intended purpose. I highly doubt that you want the eye drawn to the planet.

Speaking of the planet, you cannot tell that the black hole is actually suppose to be the eye of the Smiley Face. The second eye is covered up or cropped out, so again it defeats the purpose of even having that little feature in the banner. The Smiley Face should have been raised a few more pixels to include the second eye. Right now all it looks like is a black hole with a blood splatter on it.

The Hitcherhiker's Love Ship conflicts with the planet since they are both spherical in shape. The rule of thumb is Odd Not Even. If you place more than one object of roughly the same size or shape together, make it a minimum of three or use an Odd amount to evenly distribute the positive space that is being used if you want more than three.

Next the lighting. Now with photographs sometimes you have no control over where light and shadow falls, but in the case of the planet and the Love Ship you did have control over it. You could have either flipped the planet or the ship so that the lighting on both comes from the same direction. The way you currently have it shows that the lighting is coming from two directions. The rest of the ships and station (except for the one to the right of the station) all have their lighting coming from the same direction as the planet, so the Love Ship stands out like a bleeding eye.

The ship to the right of the station, you may not have control over (unless you find another photo) but at least it's lighting is dark enough that it can be overlooked easily. Speaking of dark and light, compared to the Love Ship, the lighting of the non-add ships is too dark. The illumination on those ships need to match the rest of the images or the illumination on the Love Ship needs to be reduced. I recommend reducing the brightness on the Love Ship since increasing such on the others will ruin the images.

Overall if you wanted a space based theme, then at least get the lighting correct.

Back to the rule of Odd Not Even. If you include all the ships, the Smiley Face and the planet you have an even number of items regardless whether it is the banner w/ or w/o the ad banner. Banner alone h

 

[image=http://www.lol-site.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/a20fb_funny-dog-pictures-incoming.jpg]

 

I ... am not a professional graphics artist and have no idea about most of what you just said, so I'll leave that to Kahn. But 900x110px is an acceptable main banner image size nowadays, if that's what you're referring to by the size...?

 

Actually yes, yes it does. A banner's main image can be upwards of 950x110, the same applies to the image applied to the BACK variable, though it need only be a multiple of the main. i.e. if the Main is 900 the back image can be just 300. As for the Background image that runs under the main and back it needs to be 110 tall and preferably the same length as the two others combined. Since most of my Back variable is transparency to keep it to the proper length I only have the background going so far as the actual solid aspects of the picture. So this point of yours is really moot.

The contrary applies here. This is an image denoting space, space is vast and large. Planets tend to be far far far larger than the things in proximity to them save other planets, and stars. As such having the other objects in the picture larger would not only completely ruin the scale of the image (and in some cases go beyond the size limit of the adholders) it would loose any potential realism to the fact that its a Planet being orbited by ships from various 'verses. It makes no sense to have an image in space and then simply have the focus be on the ass end of a starship. This is why everything is spaced out and at different levels of distance, to give a feel of scale and the vastness of space.

You're one of the few people who have said that, however the vast majority of people whom I ran this banner by as I was working on it happened to notice that tid bit right away. Besides the point was for the pin to be part of the image not the image.

I'm sorry but that's laughable. This would mean that every artistic endevour any artist, such as Nameless-Designer over on DeviantART who has ever created a beautiful composition containing a planet and its spherical moon or moons has committed some cosmic artistic crime and thats absurd! Can you seriously tell me that something like this is wrong?
[image=http://www.deviantart.com/download/53265369/Pillars_of_Loki_by_Nameless_Designer.jpg]

That was an artistic decision that I stand by. I Could have an

 

Ah but that is where you're being simple. You can have the planet be large and have one or two other objects be nearly as large or close to it. The image you provided is a prime example of using scale and creating the feel of space at the same time.

[image=http://www.deviantart.com/download/53265369/Pillars_of_Loki_by_Nameless_Designer.jpg]

The fact that you chose to make the planet the largest object and made all the other objects the same scale of each other, you failed to create the massive scale that is space. All you did was slap a planet onto a space background and added a bunch of ships. Use your example image as an idea of how to create Space while keeping the illusion of scale.

Some lessons in the use of negative/positive space can help too.

The ad ships I can understand that you're limited to the canvas size and I was not disputing those.

I am not saying it is suppose to be the image. I am merely stating that you've defeated the purpose of adding it into the banner by cropping the second eye out. Does the second eye have to be entirely visible? No. Less than a quarter of it is all that is needed to remove the feeling that the other eye is not a black hole with blood splatter. Those who are familiar with Watchman will know it right off the bat, but those who are not will see it as I had described it.

You should learn to count. He has an odd number of objects in that image. Would you like me to count them for you? You should also look at nature some time and make a frame with your hands. You will find often than naught that nature is organized in an Odd order. Rarely do you see an order of Evenness in things.

I am quite aware of how dark space is, however I am also aware of how much a Star effects objects in space in terms of lighting. You should look at some photos of actual space objects from as small as a satellite to as big as a planet and you will see that although space is quite dark, objects in space that are near a powerful light source, such as a star, will always reflect light up to a certain distance.

I did not recommend changing the brigh

 

Border images on one subsection of one section of a Star Wars fan site's message board: SERIOUS. BUSINESS.

[image=http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp39/darthramza/SOMUCHAPATHY.png]

 

I believe further discussions on the minutiae of Kahn's banner can be discussed via PM. Some of this is getting a bit close to baiting for my tastes; if it crosses that line, I will edit accordingly.

 

I like it.

Having the smily as the planet is a great idea!

 

Is there any specific kind of banner y'all are looking for besides it simply being non Star Wars (e.g. Kahn's space theme)? I just installed Photoshop to my new laptop so I'm ready to cook something up. I've made banners in the past for the NSWRPF that didn't turn out to be what the mods were looking for, so I'd like to get an idea of what's needed before I get started.

 

Nothing I can think of off the top of my head - Kahn's space theme came about when we were talking about banners and the NSWRPF not having one like that came up. Right now I'd actually still like to get a new RPR banner along the lines of the ideas Imp and Saint outlined in the first post of this thread: an academic-ish Theed or Jedi Library type idea, perhaps, or the industrial, forge-ish/manufacturing background one.

That said, a lot of this stuff is definitely down to taste, so it's hard to say for sure "We're looking for X". If you like, catch us on IM sometime and we can brainstorm.

 

I like simpler banners, myself. Darker colours are easier on the eyes in the long run, too. Basically, something that looks nice but isn't distracting.