Animesuki Banner Contest - General Discussion Thread
 

Yup, you read the title correctly, we're having another banner contest!

The purpose of this thread is to discuss the Animesuki Banner contest.

If you would like to see our previous contest threads, you can find them here.

As a reminder, please keep discussion about the contest in this thread. Any off topic discussion that is not related to the banner contest will be dealt with accordingly.

With that, lets get this started! :D

Woot, banner contest! :D :D :D

I seriously can't think of anything as a theme right now, but it's still great to see a new competition finally lined up. :)

Time to change the link on my sig! :cool:

AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! So happy!!!!!

As for suggestions...hmm... I gotta think about that. Is the current banner theme sky? It seems a hard theme to top. I look forward to seeing all the suggestions people have!

Wohoo! :heh:

It is about time :)

As for theme, I think it would be best not to choose one that is a seasonal event. You never know how long this set would be up for and it would just look weird for a xmas banner to be shown during summer :heh:

Current theme is sky...

It's going to be hard to think of another general theme...

mmm, how about scenic banners? They would display landscapes of nature, w/ characters of course, or cityscapes.

Question, is it necessary to change themes? I'm very fond of the sky images and I sorta would like a stab at it. >.<

Another question: do you guys know about whether or not they'll use Christmas banners? I noticed the past christmas banner contest and think it would be nice to see them in use during the holidays. They weren't used last christmas, I believe, and I'm hoping to see more activity around the holidays.

I believe the point of a new contest is to change the old ones. :p I doubt we'll go with another Sky contest for this round, but you never know.

I don't have an answer for this, but I can ask.

I don't think we have any Christmas specific banners that are the right size. The one or two Christmas ones we do have are too small (we increased the banner height in 2005). We have a few Winter 2006 banners that are usable, but they are not Christmas specific.

Edit: Having reviewed them again, I suppose one or two of the Winter banners could be considered as Christmas-oriented; so the answer is yes, if I can find a suitably large set.

:D About time eh, Altho, with the influx of new GDers, chances for KiNA's banner to go up is gonna be close to nil :heh:

Nightwish, are suggestions on improving the current system welcome?

Difference with current version:

1. banners will scale up and down gracefully
2. scroll bars will no longer appear when you scale animesuki bellow 700px
3. ad blocking css will no longer block it
4. banners can be as big as desired as long as the height is larger then the height set (in this case 100px)
5. the entire surface of the banner is a link (in the current only the actual banner is a link)
6. the system allow for reuse of old and new

(it doesn't contain a border-bottom style; thick borders are ugly =|)

[example] Rules:

1. Theme: Japan / Anime / Manga
   
   
2. Minimum height: 100px
   
   
3. Maximum height: unlimited
   condition: must look good if cut to only 100px from the top down
   
   
4. Minimum width: 700px
   
   
5. Maximum width: unlimited
   
   
6. Gradient: anything desired as long as no sharp edges will appear where the banner meets the gradient.
   hint: the banner and gradient are centered, screen resolution will not effect the calculations on position
   
   
7. Must contain the text "Animesuki forums" in a prominent position on the banner. The text must also be in the relative center of the banner, which is to say from the center it's right edge must be no further then 350px to the right and it's left edge no further then 350px to the left.
   
   
8. Size: banner no larger then 75kb, gradient no larger then 15kb

I do not have a problem updating the HTML used by the header nor do I mind basing it on your example, if/when it is changed. Note: there is no technical reason for not using the old banners, it is simply a desire to not go back to the small header now we've got used to the larger one.

I certainly don't like the idea of images scaling up and down, that in practice is a recipe for disaster. Make them fixed sizes that way the people who create them know what they look like and there won't be any horrible results due to some s/w resizing an image.

I'm not talking about resampling the image if that's what you're thinking (s/w = software?). The the current code forces scroll bars to appear if the user resized the window down bellow 700px, the link is also relatively small if you have a wide screen, since it's just 700px (the above version fixes this).

I can't see how the image would appear as not intended.

If you say "banners will scale up and down gracefully" then what are you talking about if not scaling the image from one size (i.e. 700x100) to another size (i.e. 500x71).

In practise, claiming "banners will scale up and down gracefully" does not happen, not when the s/w does the scaling on a relatively small image.

Your rules also allow images of 1000x1000 pixels to be submitted, which again is rather daft.

The banners will get smaller/bigger but they are not resampled, it's the same image you just see less or more of it (not the full image constraint and redimensioned). The point was they'll still look right in both cases. I'm not a native english speaker so you'll have to forgive me if I am missing or abusing some meanings of words. The rules as said are just an example, I didn't make mention of what format is allowed and so on intentionally, that doesn't mean the official version doesn't need to. I intended the example to eliminate all unnecesary rules since they are counter-creative (the theme I "recommended" was suppose to hint to you this ;p).

Demo:
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/816...0511hj0.th.jpghttp://img80.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

• Top row new code, bottom row current code.
• Left row extreme example of browser window shrinking (note the extra scrollbars on the bottom one).
• Right row simulation of extremely wide screen. The mouse is hovering at the extreme left edge (top is still a link, bottom is dead space).

Your top-left example is flawed because you are using over simplified typesetting; there are many other page elements that will force the scroll bars to appear on the real page.

Also, most modern browsers (in fact probably all that support image resizing with the page zoom) will re-sample images, technically. You can see that from how smooth they look, rather than being composed of blocks representing the enlarged pixels, when you change the page zoom. On this point I am, of course, being pedantic for effect; I know exactly what you're trying to say and deliberately misunderstanding. :p

What you're actually talking about is browser window re-sizing; which simply affects the flow of the page layout (position of page elements) rather than the actual size of those elements. Your original use of the word "scale" is probably where the confusion crept in, as it is ambiguous.

Incidentally, I have already changed the style; so from here on lets keep this thread about the contest and not changes to the forum; leave such things to other threads or contact me directly.

Hey NW, do you still remember that old idea of yours? the one about the different times of the day. How about doing something along those lines?

Kinda like having a 'Night' theme. :)

I like that idea :D

It would be a nice contrast to the current "sky" theme ^^

Actually after that contest I experimented with the idea since I thought it was pretty cool. I basically created a prototype system in a wp theme that functioned much the same only it was slightly less sane. Nightwish wanted 2 or 4 times of day but mine went something like 5-6 since it was something like: WTF are you doing up!?, Sleepwalking, Early morning, Schoel time laziness!, School break, After school and so on. Of course there was a different set for weekends and some exception weeks, then the sets would change to hole new ones depending on months/seasons (yeah it covered the hole year, in total there were only 81 banners, since summer days for example are pretty simple).

It's pretty fun, but the small snag is that unless you make one banner then deviate it to the other themes you need it's just going to look somewhat random. A good example of deviation at work are the artisitic banners for iGoogle (which split the day in 3 parts). So the idea of using different style banners is cool and is used, but it require a lot more work to get right then just creating 1 or 3 extra banners.

I'm not sure if you mean having a set of banners to represent the different times of the day or if you are suggesting the theme should be Night.

I like the idea of a Night theme since is ties in with Winter.

Yes, Night as a single theme. :)

Just like Cats, I also though NW suggestion was pretty cool; Then again, I also feel it would be a bit hard to pull off. (at least for me :meh:)