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[Treefox]

Hello fellow EQ fanart members,
I would like to issue the following challenge/request for help:

Art/Technical Layout for the New Elfquest Fanart Site

When we switch from this site to the new site end of February, Foxeye's
awesome layout of this site will also be gone.
A site and forum without any art/neat design would be rather
sad and dreary. So therefore, the
new administration team together with the help of the current
administration team have decided to ask you to send in your
designs/layouts for the new site.
The good news: we will be able to implement not just one of your
great designs, but we will install a feature that will allow you
to choose your favorite layout among the ones that we will hopefully
get in the end.

However, this is not going to be an easy task. As Maggie mentioned to
me, there is no sense to start drawing when we have no people who can
handle the technical side. So please, all you talented people, don't
just start drawing, let's start discussion first to see if we can get
the technical side and the artistic side to work.It would be great if
teams of both sides would form and work this out together.
If someone here can simultaneously handle both the technical and the
artistic side, that, of course would also be great! The more, the better.
Thanks in advance for everybody who is willing to help out with this
project in such a short time!

What is needed

Technical side

- We need some CSS/SMF/PHP/HTML tech-savvy people who can handle the creation
   of a new theme on the technical level.
 
- As Foxeye has stated before, the site is based on the
  following:
  Simple Machines Forum (SMF) 1.1.xa, so any experience on that field would be more      
  than awesome

Please see also the links below for a description of themes and how change them:

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Creating_and_Understanding_Themes#Introduction

Here is a choice of already existing themes the mods have pre-chosen and for which I will give
the sizes of the pictures we would need to make it individual below:

http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/index.php?lemma=481
(Theme Extreme yesil)

http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/index.php?lemma=520
(Theme Ayasofya)

http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/index.php?lemma=593
(Theme Hobbit (don't kill me for this, I just like the greens so much)

http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/index.php?lemma=599
(Theme DreamLike)

If you just don't like any of these and don't want to work with them, there a dozens
more to be found and used under:

http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/

Please note that I only researched the needed picture size for the four above and if you
choose your own theme to work on, you should research yourself or contact me.

- The way I understood it, you can download a theme and than change the look by modifying the sub templates. As far as I understood, it often makes most sense to make your own new version of the BoardIndex.template.php and the style.css or copy those from the Default theme and change that according to your wishes.
However, I still have no clue how to put that into action and I hope some of our PHP experienced members can help to get a simpler explanation.


Artistic side

- We need people to create an Elfquest related theme/layout for the new site
- The theme should be clearly related to Elfquest
- The theme can/should include some landscape, like the current
   one. Maybe some landscapes connected to the World of Two Moons would be nice.
- Feel free to include canon Elfquest characters (we got the permission to use
  them from Richard Pini)
- Feel free to include your self-elves
- Feel free to create your own non-canon elves for this theme, as long
   as they clearly look like EQ elves
- Feel free to create a new EQ fanart mascot/mascots (as Splotch/Blot
  will also leave *cries*)
- Even though, I don't think anyone will draw such a design for the front page, I'd like to point out that we cannot use explicit pictures concerning sexuality or gore for the main page.

Here are the picture sizes for the four themes posted above:

901x138
For "Extreme Yesil"

958x126
For "Ayasofya"

559X232
For "The Hobbit"

1024x170
For "DreamLike"

As you can see, the pictures should be horizontal/long.


All members are allowed to take part in this, including mods.
I would really like to keep this an open challenge, so we can all discuss
this, help each other out and hopefully form some artist/technician teams
to create the new layout in a successful and in the end applicable way.
Should you finish something, please post it in the challenge thread.
In the end the mods will judge the best entry and also the 3 best runners-up
and hopefully make all those available as choose able layout for the new page.

Deadline

The deadline is February 26th, 2012

I hope you all be motivated to give our new holt a unique and wonderful appearance.
And I know this is much to ask after all the calendar work, but
I'll be extra grateful for all help and feedback.

[Faerydae]

No way could I do one in that shirt of a time frame with school, a 60 hour a week job and doing themes and site on the side, so I'll have to pass sadly.

But I could always play around and do a customized one afterwards and if it was liked enough I'd be happy to give it to the site as an option (I always prefer it when sites allow members to choose from a variety of themes myself), if that would be something anyone would like.

[Treefox]

Afterwards would also be cool! We could later on put in new themes to choose for the site. I would be grateful about anything, now or later.
The deadline is there to assure we have a new theme when the site switches, but really, the worst thing that happens, when don't get the theme until then is, that we have to live with the default theme at first.

[Foxeye]

the worst thing that happens, when don't get the theme until then is, that we have to live with the default theme at first.

Or you could use one of the custom themes without any elfquest-ization.   Probably wouldn't be too painful to whip up a new header in the right colors with the site's name, even if it didn't have any shiny art in it.

Best of luck to anyone who gets involved in this! I'm also available for questions if needed.

[Treefox]

Best of luck to anyone who gets involved in this! I'm also available for questions if needed.

Thanks so much! That's highly appreciated!

[silentleaf]

I will see what i can come up with for background art!

[Maggie]

I'm insane, I have calendar art to finish but I have an idea so I'm gonna participate...mwa ha ha! 

[Treefox]

Thank you! Ooo, I'm sure that will look great!
As usual, I also have ideas, but as soon as the calendar work is done, I think I will try to concentrate on the technical side for now. So that in the worst case, I could try and put the themes together.

[Tevokkia]

I'm going to try to participate, but I have a gallery showing that I'm participating in, and the deadline for submission is on the same day. XD

I have a couple of ideas, though, so hopefully I'll be able to pull at least one off.

[Foxeye]

Ooh, I wonder if there is an SMF mod for having a banner that changes each time you visit the site. The old eqfanart did that, and if there were a lot of submissions it might be neat to resurrect that old approach.

[DestinysGift]

That would be amazing to have!
That way, everyone gets a fair chance at having the banner.
I think I remember a site that had that, I don't know how they did it but it was really cool.
I might do a banner, depending on if I get an idea for one.
For now though, good luck to those who want to tackle this! And, have some fun with it!

[Obi-Rak Kaeliri]

Beware scope creep...

[DestinysGift]

Beware scope creep...

Aaah, true that.

[Treefox]

Oooh yes! I also think we should get this going at all and then we can still improve afterwards.
Besides, we still haven't got anyone who can handle the technical creation of the theme... I hope somebody will be able to do it.

[jaRf]

I vote for the use of Reiser4 (once it is in Kernel) or btrfs (once it is declared stable).
*makes freaky eyes*
No? Ext4 will also do.

Maybe if I find leisure this afternoon I might have some ideas on the site's phenotype itself.

[Treefox]

No? Ext4 will also do.

  It surely will! 

[Obi-Rak Kaeliri]

Everybody knows ZFS is where it's at

[Faerydae]

I've customized themes for a variety of CMS platforms and forum boards like phpBB and others. SMF can't be all that much different really, it's all based off the same things pretty much is my understanding.

If you need someone to tinker with theme stuff, I can do that if no one else wanted to.

[Treefox]

Sounds good to me! Gets my hopes up that we'll be able to whip something up.

[Berit]

Heya! well, I'd just like to ask the art side people not to add anything too adult to the banners or what ever, I like to remind that there are people who don't like sexuality or violence... of course everyone understands this, but now that many people are so into the calendar's I liked to brought this up... also, I'f you'll use mushy stuff... keep in mind that there are those who don't like that stuff... no one has to hear me out of course... but I think some sort of calm atmosphere would be best for starters... what say you?...

[Treefox]

Oh yes, I agree! I think explicit sexual or gore images on the front page should be avoided. Even though I have complete faith that our members will come up with something fantastic, I'll update the first post.

[Maggie]

Heya! well, I'd just like to ask the art side people not to add anything too adult to the banners or what ever, I like to remind that there are people who don't like sexuality or violence... of course everyone understands this, but now that many people are so into the calendar's I liked to brought this up... also, I'f you'll use mushy stuff... keep in mind that there are those who don't like that stuff... no one has to hear me out of course... but I think some sort of calm atmosphere would be best for starters... what say you?...

I totally agree, none of that stuff in the banners etc.

[Treefox]

Hello again! Even though I would like to point out that the calendar work should be finished first, I still hope we can get some nice design done before the switch of the site.
I you have something done or also rough version of something that I could use to start playing around with, please send it to my new wonderful e-mail address:

Treefox@gmx.de

[carmaleetah]

Ooh, I wonder if there is an SMF mod for having a banner that changes each time you visit the site. The old eqfanart did that, and if there were a lot of submissions it might be neat to resurrect that old approach.

Foxeye, I'm just curious. Will you still continue to contribute your beautiful artwork to the new site? I have really enjoyed seeing you work and I think I speak for everyone when I say that we would all miss you wonderful creations!

[Faerydae]

Hear hear!

I had a few additions for a few supplemental pieces for the calendar, but suffered a hugs setback, when my cat knocked over my water bottle that I was using for my brushes all over my watercolor paintings and I was in another room at the time so I did not catch it right away.

Sooo having to redo them completely. So can't do anything yet theme-wise! But generic themes are totally workable for a temporary fix ... the real heart of the community is the text that we write in our posts and the writing and art submissions ... that is what makes this space great really and truly.

This place I don't think would ever really suffer if it had a few weeks where it used a generic theme, it's not like none of us would stop visiting this place just because it has a generic theme, you know? Functionality is 1000 times more important than eye candy .. JMO though!