Thanks for starting this off, Martin!
On Thu, 2009-08-06 at 16:46 +0200, Martin Sourada wrote:> Now to get the ball rolling. I'm sort of tired of photo-manip and> rathercomplex backgrounds that extensively use various patterns,> brushes, etc. so while I like Jayme's design, and don't have any sound> reason for not making it default, I'd rather go with one of the other> two. Perhaps the main concern I have is that it is too concrete to my> taste and that it has some sort of religious feel -- all the clouds> (or are they waves?) and Constantine sitting in midst of that... Also> the wallpaper seems too busy to me, like composed from two different> themes (like if the statue was implanted into the design after it has> been already done), the statue steals to much attention.
It's a very beautifully-rendered wallpaper. My main concern about it isconceptually, it is a very literal interpretation of the codename. I washoping we could allude to the codename in a little more subtle manner,to leave room for people's personal interpretations. The whole codenameprocess is a bit of a fun game ('how did you get from there to THERE?')and having the artwork allude to it in a less literal manner could alsomake for some fun discussion/interpretation post-release. And in caseyou're not sure why I take this position - because I think we made themistake in the past of trying a literal interpretation (remember thesulphur artwork with pieces of sulphur? :) )
Even being a literal interpretation, I am not sure that the image ofConstantine (of which, in history, there were several) is going to bereadily recognized by most people. I think people will think 'statue'instead. Metaphorically, a statue is frozen in time, solid, stable...but we're a progressive, innovative distribution. Perhaps the notionthat the statue is in fact Constantine could be supported with someflourishes/designs/textures affiliated with the culture associated withhim. You said that you used Gustave Doré woodblock prints, and whilethey are beautiful, I'm not sure they are related to or evoke theculture of Constantine. (Although I know he's not Japanese, the textureactually reminds me of Japanese woodblock prints, eg, 'Great Wave offthe coast of Kanagawa' [1])
I'd feel more comfortable choosing a wallpaper that isconceptually-strong but needs rendering work, than a wallpaper that isrendered perfectly but is conceptually weak. This is simply because thelater has more potential for things to go wrong and for requiring moretime & effort than the former. This is not to say that the concept ofthis design couldn't be improved upon in the time left, but there is notmuch time before our decision. What John has suggested - that thisconceptually be about calmness in a turbulent sea - is for example, abetter concept than just a statue of Constantine as it can be much moremetaphorical and very much related to Constantine's rule as I believehistorically he brought a lot of order to chaos. If you wanted to pushthis concept further, there's a lot of things you could do - eg drop thevery literal statue and work in some other calming object to contrastwith the turbulence of Gustave Doré's sea.
Another concern that was brought up in IRC today is that it includes aweapon, which in the past with proposals has sparked quite a bit ofnegative feedback. Perhaps the photo could be manipulated to exclude theweapon, though, so maybe it's not as big a concern.
> For the underwater mosaic. I think it very cool and awesome, but at the> same time it still needs a lot of work. It kind of reminds me both of> the DNA and waves themes that I rather liked. And while it's still a> photomanip, it's abstract and I think the mosaic, water and glows work> great together if used right. On the flip side, it's rather big in size,> which we could probably optimize by using JPEG instead of PNG... I would> really love to see the default theme in F12 to be based on this concept.> > And last but not least - mosaico. It's abstract, it's vector, it's> simple, it perhaps has the most potential of these three, but still> needs a hell lot of work. The perspective approach is an interesting> take, I think perhaps it would be even better if we combined this with> the underwater mosaic. Create a simple mosaic in this style, but with> perspective, not as tiles -- it would be nice if it created some nice> picture, e.g. the four foundations, or just one of the foundations per> picture and it could circle between the four versions -- and add the> underwater effect.
I wonder if we could vectorize the underwater mosaic, eg., take thetiles María created, lay them out in a similar pattern to the underwaterphoto manip, and tilt the perspective to be similar as well.
I agree with all your points about the underwater mosaic. It needs a LOTof work and has an unwieldy filesize. And of course, it is bitmap, whichmakes it harder to work with. GeroldKa had one great idea for thiswallpaper though, that I think is a strong point that maybe we could useif we vectorized it - you could do a time-of-day wallpaper of it bychanging the intensity and maybe even the color of the glow coming outof the tiles.
~m
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tsunami_by_hokusai_19th_century.jpg
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