Icon Suggestion

Cartoonz · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 6:20 pm Post subject: Icon Suggestion

Alright, admit it. Most of the time, the icons/thumbnails given to pictures makes them look bad! Especially pencil drawings, large pictures and even some of the smaller ones.

So, I thought, what if instead of just a tiny version of your picture, there was a space in the submit-a-picture page for your [i]own[/i] thumbnail? The artist could just cut out a key peice of the picture, save it as another file, then put it into the space when they submit a picture. Simple as that. If you don't understand what I mean, I would be happy to demonstrate it...

And if the artist didn't want to make a thumbnail, it could show up as the current smaller-version thumbnail. There might also be a rule that the thumbnail had to be a part of the picture or something, too.

I think it would look very nice and neat, but I just wanted to know what everyone else thought.

disneylover66 · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 6:39 pm Post subject:

That's a good idea! There should be a rule that it has to relate to the picture in some way... However it would give you less of an idea of what you're going to see, which is the one flaw. I'll back you up on this suggestion, though!
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fallenangel · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 8:06 pm Post subject:

Honestly, that technique is more of an annoyance than a benefit. [i]Except[/i] on some personal sites where the artist chooses good, desciptive pieces for thumbnails. But you'll find it a lot on independent sites where people cut out absolutely useless parts. One eye. A quarter of a face or a hand or some detail of clothing that just looks like random color and shading. [i]Fewer[/i] people will click on them than would click on a lesser quality mini version because they're lazy and don't know what they're getting.

Something that looks ok in the cropped thumbnail could be complete garbage in the full version. If everyone could make good thumbnails, it'd be nice, but mostly it would just make the thumbnails strange looking and inefficient.

For example.

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/blackleatherart/art/oreilyex2.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/blackleatherart/art/oreilyex3.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/blackleatherart/art/oreilyex4.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/blackleatherart/art/oreilyex5.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/blackleatherart/art/oreilyex6.jpg[/img]

The details may represent the quality of the picture better, but they don't tell a person anything about what they're gonna look at. That's what you'd get a lot of.
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cstdenis · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 8:12 pm Post subject:

[quote]Honestly, that technique is more of an annoyance than a benefit. Except on some personal sites where the artist chooses good, desciptive pieces for thumbnails. But you'll find it a lot on independent sites where people cut out absolutely useless parts. One eye. A quarter of a face or a hand or some detail of clothing that just looks like random color and shading. Fewer people will click on them than would click on a lesser quality mini version because they're lazy and don't know what they're getting. [/quote]

Agreed

Trinity_Fire · Forum Stalker Joined: 31 Dec 1969 Posts: 1042

Well, couldn't you set perhaps a limit as to how small the cut can be? Therefore, a large [enough] portion of the pic will be shown as thumbnail as to attract attention, and blank space that was made just for a few strands of hair or whatnot won't take up space on the thumbnail. It seems like an okay idea, though it might take a while to set up.

But I think it would benefit for a lot of pencil drawings, since they tend to be light [is quickly sketched and not darkly shaded] and a close-up would leave less white space to kind of 'unfocus' the rest of the pic.
Dunno. :/

Cartoonz · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 4:00 am Post subject:

Hmm, Fallen, you have a point. Sometimes I overestimate other people's judgement. It just came up because sometimes it's the other way around; a really good picture can look very bad on the current thumbnail, so it might keep viewers away.

But I don't know, maybe it would be an option? It's not my choice anyways, it was just an idea. =]

Brianhjh · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 7:40 am Post subject:

Maybe it should be an option, for pictures that has predominantly filled with background and small points of interest.

But newbies will screw it up somehow, I know it.
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Stratadrake · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 7:59 am Post subject:

Like fallen and others have said, sorry no, we're not doing that. Approval Panel staff depend on those thumbnails when reviewing submissions, we can review many pictures at a glance that way instead of having to full-view every freakin' one of them individually. If those thumbnails weren't an accurate representation of the submitted picture... no, let's just not go there.