With respect to the thread on AW regarding the use of automated effects on icons I would like to share my Point of view.
I choose the Installer icon to display the problems:
1) The Installer icon how it currently looks. Please note the fading glow effect on the arrow.
2) Remove the glow effect of the arrow and just add the effect to the contour of the object leads to an undynamic and unrealistic Icon. FAIL!
3)Cutting the effect on the edges of the hard drive looks fine if the effect is the same, but leads to an ugly icon, when this effect is different. FAIL!
4) Blank Areas for the effect looks looks good at a first glanze, but lead to transparent Areas due to the calculation of the glow effect. It is also unuseable if the user chooses no effect and it is much more work to gernerate this icons.
5) Using Emblem icons looks also very promising, but the effect could only be used very static which leads to an unrealistic looking icon.
Thanks for the insight, i do believe though, that people will come up with a third party solution and yet another icon format to gain just that (hacks probably, but you can't just tell the people to stop, now can you?)
Why would we want to waste time and energy to polish the bells when there are so much more whistles to create?
Please share a sneak peak to your new icon set, Mason...pliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiise
by Raziel on 2013/8/6 14:56:44 Thanks for the insight, i do believe though, that people will come up with a third party solution and yet another icon format to gain just that (hacks probably, but you can't just tell the people to stop, now can you?)
Why would we want to waste time and energy to polish the bells when there are so much more whistles to create?
Please share a sneak peak to your new icon set, Mason...pliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiise
Creating a third party solution is one thing - the support for it is another. A new icon system is nothing without a solid baseline of icons. Just for the record: For the next release I have prepared 800 + new icons for all kind of 3rd party programs.
Many nice and interesting ideas where brought up recently, but what I really miss is at least the attempt to think them through until the end and weight the impact on other components of the system at all.
AmigaOS is not AROS where everybody could contribute whatever he thinks is a great idea!
It is a little bit to early for previews, as the icon set was not released to the beta tester to get some feedback. Therefore the only feedback I received so far is between "Nice, but it is worth to waste that much time in front of your computer? Better go out and play with the kid!" and "Wow Daddy, cool! Now you can do a Lego Ninjago icon set for me!".
Hello Mason, I would like to ask you a technical question regarding the new iconset you are working on.
Actually the current icons in AmigaOS 4.1 mantain their border, this is mostly visible when they are overlapped, I wondering if it will be possible to make them really transparent also when they will be overlapped in order to "hide" this not so cool effect
Creating a third party solution is one thing - the support for it is another. A new icon system is nothing without a solid baseline of icons. Just for the record: For the next release I have prepared 800 + new icons for all kind of 3rd party programs.
Many nice and interesting ideas where brought up recently, but what I really miss is at least the attempt to think them through until the end and weight the impact on other components of the system at all.
your work is a very big factor in my using AOS4. the icons are gorgeous, consistent, and well-executed. i like the current icon system and would hope any major changes would be thought through very diligently by you and others responsible for the look-and-feel of the OS.
-- eliyahu
"Physical reality is consistent with universal laws. When the laws do not operate, there is no reality. All of this is unreal."
Actually the current icons in AmigaOS 4.1 mantain their border, this is mostly visible when they are overlapped, I wondering if it will be possible to make them really transparent also when they will be overlapped in order to "hide" this not so cool effect
I also noticed this, but I have no clue what forces this behaviour. Maybe it is an attempt by the devs to teach the users to always clean up and snapshot the filer before closing the window. ;)
Creating a third party solution is one thing - the support for it is another. A new icon system is nothing without a solid baseline of icons. Just for the record: For the next release I have prepared 800 + new icons for all kind of 3rd party programs.
Many nice and interesting ideas where brought up recently, but what I really miss is at least the attempt to think them through until the end and weight the impact on other components of the system at all.
your work is a very big factor in my using AOS4. the icons are gorgeous, consistent, and well-executed. i like the current icon system and would hope any major changes would be thought through very diligently by you and others responsible for the look-and-feel of the OS.
-- eliyahu
First of all, thanks for the nice words! The evolution of the icon system is a very slow and sensitive process, because the intuitive recognition of the icon is one of the main point when it comes to icon design.
To make a long story short: There will be no drastic or evolutionary changes in the expression of the icons. They will be just a little bigger... ;)
Thanks for your insights into the "automatic effect" topic! Still, I think, a well thought and implemented "embleming" might be useful. But this isn't something that will replace the typical amigan "animated and glowing" effect...
And, by the way, I'm looking forward to see your new, shiny, perfect and excellent artwork for the next OS release!
The icons are truly transparent. The problem here is that they don;t have a depth, so one icon is not on top of another, so they always render against the background of the window, not the background plus preexisting icons.
This produces the ugly artifact shown in your screenshot.
Icons *Should not* be positioned in overlapping positions though and it is a slight flaw in the snapshot system that you can.
By overlapping your icons you run the risk of dropping an icon on the wrong app or worse into the wrong drawer. Imagine accidentally scattering 1000 ohotos into your mp3 drawer becuase you badly position two drawer overlapping!
Ideally when you try to overlap two icons they should bounce apart or something, unless you drop the icons close enough to indicate a true intention to copy or usae with an appilcation.
@mason
I thouroughly agree with your sentiments re automated glow.
I really must put a require for images / icons together to send you for sketchblock sometime! (When you yourself have time to make some).
Sure i never intended to overlap them intentionally because i know all the possible risks, expecially the risk to drop a folder inside another one and so "lost" your directories elsewhere, this may happen frequently ...
But still, from time to time you will obtain automatically that strange "allineament", for example when you extract an archive and so on, that's why i asked for a better graphical solution
regarding the overlapping of icons, it is a pity we don't have a visual feedback when draggin and dropping yet. If such a mechanism could be integrated, it would solve the problem I think. Folders and AppIcons could maintain the boundary they have, which would cause the file icons to be moved to/copied to/used by the underling icon, while file icons could just be piled one on top of another.
btw, I think the "ugly" effect samo79 describes is because of the border you can set in Workbench-Prefs. Infact with the icon borders enabled it does not look ugly but kind of overlapped.
And btw, Thank you Mason for your beautiful artwork, your icons-sets are something I would not like to miss in AmigaOS at all!
Thank you for pointing out these flaws. You have thought about this considerably. Good work on the OS4 icons! We all eagerly await you newest offering. You have done wonderful work.
I thouroughly agree with your sentiments re automated glow.
I really must put a require for images / icons together to send you for sketchblock sometime! (When you yourself have time to make some).
The icons for Sketchblock are already done! In fact it was one of the first new 3rd-party icon sets I did, because Sketchblock is from my point of view one of the most interesting active projects.
With respect to the thread on AW regarding the use of automated effects on icons I would like to share my Point of view.
Your reasoning and examples of why an algorithmic solution wouldn't work are valid. However, they are based on a single, and only, premise: the existence of the glow effect. It is the glow effect that makes algorithmic solutions look unrealistic.
If the glow effect was dropped, as SpotUP suggest, there would be no problem with using an algorithmic solution. And I really second what Spot says: why should the icons glow at all? Do they start burning when you select them or what? Where did the metaphor come from?
Not having to care about applying the glow effect would leave your hands freeer for creative work which we Amigans (including me of course!) so much admire.
(Just to provide some slap-reality-in-your-face-logic to the discussion ;)
I think some people are taking this far too seriously.
The tiny difference mentioned here isn't worth discussing in the first place. The "general public" wouldn't give a rats ass if the glow of the arrow was gradiented for a 3d effect or not. No seriously, they just wouldn't.
I can understand that artists wants things to look "perfect", just as audio afficionados can't stand listening to "imperfect" mp3's but all in all, that cannot be a basis for curbing enthustiastic developers.
Keeping by a regime where you have to be prepared to do "800" individially pixeled icons just to make a viable icon set for amigaos isn't exacly helping the platform. If anything it's just crippling creativity. "I can't get the super correct glow fading!" just isn't a valid argument.
If you are a developer with an idea, just go for it!
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