Joined: Nov 28, 2004 Posts: 49 Location: Colorado, USA
Posted: Sat Dec 04, 2004 10:36 pm Post subject: *SPLASH* image...
Hi all,
Well, here's my latest creation:
I'm afraid I failed in my quest to do what no-one's done before - I was hoping to figure out a way to give the crashing wave an Aqua look... but it was too hard to figure out what that would actually look like, and with only a small image space anyway, I gave up. I stayed with airbrushing it.
Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out.
Compositionally, it was really hard to pull off, with near-field surf, mid-field ship and distant horizon. And of course a block of legal text is no-one's favourite compositional element!
The ship has been shrunk (obviously), and I've given it the promised gold sails. It's also tilted back a little, so it's sailing more placidly.
The font I used for "NeoOffice/J" is called Georgia, and the font I used for "Bringing..." is Skia. Both of these text items have been rasterized, so when I send the PSD file along to Patrick and Ed, their Photoshop sessions won't affect the layout. The copyright text is still a live layer in the PSD file, so Ed can change "2004" to "2005" in January.
And yes, yes, I know... I've up-cased the "B" of "Bringing". Just seemed right, this time around.
I'm not planning to do anything further to "integrate" the ship into the scene, or somehow to increase its "realism". Remember, it's pretty much a "cartoon" ship, based on a very fanciful engraving. Treat it like the iconic image it is. And don't try tracing the scene's perspective further than it'll bear, either.
I've removed the slight bevel from the edges of the image. But I might put it back, just one or two pixels wide and very subtle. Dunno.
Are people and Ed happy with this? OK, OK, Ed's probably included in "people" , but he Owns The Brand, so his opinion counts more that the rest of you plebs.
Shouldn't it be "Bringing... to Mac OS X" instead of "Bringing... to Mac OS" though? And is that line high enough for the blue progress bar not to run into it?
Smokey
Last edited by sardisson on Sun Dec 05, 2004 12:20 pm; edited 1 time in total
It's byoo-tee-full! Microsoft users will be defecting en masse when they get a load of this. I imagine them quitting and opening over and over just to see the pretty graphics!
Should the Neo... line perhaps be a smidgenette higher, owing to the large incursion of that slash right on top of the Bringing... line's capital M? (We know the latter line may not itself go down.)
P.S. I'm editing this because I just read the fine print. It *does* say Mac OS X is a registered trademark, implying that those words exactly appear somewhere on the page. By the way, if adding an X at the very end makes the last line right-justify so that the slash is pointing to a small letter rather than the capital M, the smidgenette I suggest above might no longer be necessary.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2004 10:41 am Post subject:
I think it looks good The legalese should be fine too. The lack of any type of mark on the Mac OS X itself comes from Apple's own requests on their trademark pages that recommend it be omitted for any things that are distributed internationally, opting for the sentence explicitly indicating the US instead.
One minor detail: you need to leave at least 1/4 inch at the bottom for the progress bar. No text should be in this area as it will get obscured by the OOo progress bar.
Joined: Nov 28, 2004 Posts: 49 Location: Colorado, USA
Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2004 3:18 pm Post subject:
Hi all,
Glad you like it!
sardisson wrote:
It's gorgeous. I miss the bigger ship, though
Yeah, I know. Me too, kinda. Well, if I get yet another cool idea, which reinstates the bigger ship, I might propose it too. How about the ship emerging spookily from the fog?
But let's go with this one for now, eh?
sardisson wrote:
Shouldn't it be "Bringing... to Mac OS X" instead of "Bringing... to Mac OS" though?
You spotted the, uh, deliberate mistake. I'll fix that.
sardisson wrote:
And is that line high enough for the blue progress bar not to run into it?
Yes, I *think* so, but I'm happy to move it up a little.
VFrost wrote:
Should the Neo... line perhaps be a smidgenette higher, owing to the large incursion of that slash right on top of the Bringing... line's capital M? (We know the latter line may not itself go down.)
P.S. I'm editing this because I just read the fine print. It *does* say Mac OS X is a registered trademark, implying that those words exactly appear somewhere on the page. By the way, if adding an X at the very end makes the last line right-justify so that the slash is pointing to a small letter rather than the capital M, the smidgenette I suggest above might no longer be necessary.
Yeah, I played around with the vertical positioning of the two text items there. I agree that the slash intrudes on the M's space, but you're right - once I add the "X", it should sort itself out. I didn't want too much of a gap between the two items. And moving "NeoOffice/J" further up the picture increases the risk that the curve of the surf won't get seen so clearly.
pluby wrote:
One minor detail: you need to leave at least 1/4 inch at the bottom for the progress bar. No text should be in this area as it will get obscured by the OOo progress bar.
I *think* I've left enough room there, but I can push the text up another 3 or 4 pixels if need be. Anyway "1/4 inch" makes no sense... I'm running 1600x1200. Your 1/4 inch ain't necessarily the same as my 1/4 inch.
Well, so far, it looks like people like it. I'll make those tweaks, and a couple of others that I want to do (such as making the "NeoOffice/J" text stand out a little better visually), and I'll post a new version.
Joined: Nov 28, 2004 Posts: 49 Location: Colorado, USA
Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2004 9:44 pm Post subject:
Here's the next rev of the image:
I've changed a bunch of things:
* The ship's bigger.
* Being bigger, I now have room to make the gold flags look more "flaggy".
* I've changed the colours in the sky, and pushed the sunset closer to the horizon. In fact, I've dropped the horizon a little, which allows the legal text to not quite fill the vertical space.
* I've streamlined the legal text a little more.
* I've made "NeoOffice/J" look glossy and cool (Photoshop makes this way too easy!), and I've improved the kerning (letter spacing) manually. Even the registered symbol is glossy.
* I've added the "X" to "Mac OS". This allows the slash of "NeoOffice/J" to move closer to the tagline, as predicted. Plus, I've moved the slash upwards a few pixels to allow me to move the tagline even closer. See, I need to leave space for the progress bar, but if I move "NeoOffice/J" up even a little, it obscures the most important part of the crashing wave, and the wave ends up looking like a meaningless white patch.
* I tried putting a tiny version of the ship in black as a silhouette on the horizon, but it looked cheesy. Same thing with a few stars in the dark blue sky, so you're gonna do without them too.
Joined: Nov 28, 2004 Posts: 49 Location: Colorado, USA
Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2004 9:50 pm Post subject:
OK, so I was thinking about the composition, and didn't like it.
Here's another, which is a stronger composition:
I've squashed the crashing wave down a little, so it doesn't take up so much of the picture's height. And, of course, moved the text elements up, and the ship down.
Seems to work nicely.
I might still find things to fine-tune, but I think it's pretty much ready for prime-time.
Hate to throw a, uh... bone (? rock? WRENCH! That's it) in here... but I kinda liked the Neo/J text a bit lower as presented previously rather than centered top-to-bottom in the frame. I dunno why exactly, but it just seems a little high to me. Kinda looks like it's floating. I feel like the text wants to hug an edge, like there's a lot of "white space" below where the wave is. Maybe when the progress meter shoots across it'll balance it out, but that's just my reaction...
Also, I said this earlier, but didn't see any response about specifying "GPL, v2"... there are two versions of the GPL, with one more on the way soon...
Nice work overall-- it's much cleaner than the previous one with less sky.
W
foxcorner wrote:
OK, so I was thinking about the composition, and didn't like it.
Here's another, which is a stronger composition:
I've squashed the crashing wave down a little, so it doesn't take up so much of the picture's height. And, of course, moved the text elements up, and the ship down.
Seems to work nicely.
I might still find things to fine-tune, but I think it's pretty much ready for prime-time.
Hate to throw a, uh... bone (? rock? WRENCH! That's it) in here... but I kinda liked the Neo/J text a bit lower as presented previously rather than centered top-to-bottom in the frame. I dunno why exactly, but it just seems a little high to me.
I think I'm with Waldo on this one; the Neo/tag texts seem too high in version 2c and things look a bit crowded with the top half of the splash. The ship position I think is a little better vertically in 2c, though, but closer to the left edge (Boy, you wonder how I managed to not get marks against my "plays well with others" grade in elementary school, don't you )
Waldo wrote:
Also, I said this earlier, but didn't see any response about specifying "GPL, v2"... there are two versions of the GPL, with one more on the way soon...
I don't understand why that's important for the splash screen? The file "LICENSE" as well as the displayed license in the installer do indicate what version of the GPL they are
Waldo wrote:
Nice work overall-- it's much cleaner than the previous one with less sky.
Joined: Nov 28, 2004 Posts: 49 Location: Colorado, USA
Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 8:33 am Post subject:
sardisson wrote:
I think I'm with Waldo on this one; the Neo/tag texts seem too high in version 2c and things look a bit crowded with the top half of the splash. The ship position I think is a little better vertically in 2c, though, but closer to the left edge (Boy, you wonder how I managed to not get marks against my "plays well with others" grade in elementary school, don't you )
Hmm... Yeah, maybe 2b's better. Maybe I shouldn't do this stuff at 10:30 at night.
As for the ship's position, lifting the text in 2c is what allowed me to do it. Without the text, if I put the ship too low, there's a risk that it'll look like it's about to go surfin', which would look silly. See what I mean about it being a difficult composition to pull off?
Waldo wrote:
Also, I said this earlier, but didn't see any response about specifying "GPL, v2"... there are two versions of the GPL, with one more on the way soon...
The exact wording of the legal text ain't a question for me... you should ask Ed and Patrick. Me, I'm just the dauber.
sardisson wrote:
Waldo wrote:
Nice work overall-- it's much cleaner than the previous one with less sky.
I think that this looks excellent with or without the little tweaks that are being suggested. Great job on making it more visually appealing to the eye! The other big add to this effort is that if or when any CDs need to be created for events this is a great looking appearance for the CD!! (If that type of use was warranted)
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, but he Owns The Brand, so his opinion counts more that the rest of you plebs. 
