Maybe we should at least consider whether the darkest color at the first
end should be solid or semitransparent. If it would be semitranpsparent
than the amount of lightness in that point could be handled only by the
transparency. As it is in real world - when the object which casts the
shadow is nearer than the shadow is darker and less blurry, in oposite
way a light find its way (due to diffraction and dispersion) and allows
us to see more details of background and less details in a shadow. So we
could in that case decide the basic values - when the shadow is casted
from a solid object directly above - and the other values simply would
be an alternation of these - like in the case of glass more degree of
transparency. Do you think this could work well? I think shadows for an
icon set should be consistent.
Diana Fong wrote:
The shadow, quickly examined, is a sort of gradient with the darkest
(sometimes solid) color at one end (often closest/touching the object)
and a transition to transparent pixels at the other thus allowing the
sense of integration with the panel, background, and such. The
general guideline provided was to describe my approach of using a dark
gray as the starting point for the shadow's gradient. When creating
the initial icons I often found myself creating far too dark shadows
if I started with black. When creating several of these icons a day,
I easily found my shadows getting darker and darker. Thus starting
with a dark gray, instead of black, helped me take care of this
problem and thus my posted suggestion to other contributors.
What should the values be?
Colors and shapes are relative. Artists should be encouraged to use
their artistic sense in determining relative colors, with the posted
palette as a base guideline. A color determined for one icon might
not work as well for another, thus the value added by artists who can
visually compensate and flexibly combine colors and shapes to create
pieces that work both as an individual icon and as part of the whole
set. An example of this is...system-search...the tilt of the object
requires darker shadows near the handle and a lighter shadow cast by
the glass itself. Compare this icon to any of the others that sit
directly on surface, such as applications-internet, the shadows for
those are slightly darker.
With that said, I am not opposed to further clarifying, correcting, or
expanding the initial guidelines. With specific questions such as the
ones raised about Stars and Pluses, the guidelines can be made to be
more detailed and informative. This is an ongoing project.
Presenting works in progress, runs the risk of missing and inadequate
information. However, these can be constructively discussed, proposed,
and remedied.
To address this specific issue, I still stand with my recommendation
of starting with a dark gray instead of black. Due to the blur aspect
of the shadow, it seemed somewhat obvious that the shadow would be
semitransparent...but this can be specifically added in the guidelines
for additional clarity. As for the exact value of dark gray...perhaps
Luya can propose (and Martin or others can confirm) a few Hex Values,
since the shadows on the emotion icons seem to be good starting
points. However, I would like to stress again, that these numbers
should really be used as references, allowing artists the flexibility
to tweak as appropriate from icon to icon.
Diana Fong
---
Red Hat
Visual Designer | Desktop Group
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