Working on a smiley

[Lykke]

Hey Been working on a smiley - and would like to know what you think and if I should continue. The thought is to make them both as small text smilies, but also as bigger dynamic smilies, which can be used as avatars.

I posted them on our forum now and did customize some to a few members:

First a few flags - the bg color is here made white - and can of course be customized the forum's bg-color. The idea is to use those in the profiles when people add their 'flag'/country (today we use an ordinary flag)



A member of ours asked for his own smilie - and I made him look like his avatar (with our forum's bg color for now) :

I am a Nun in game And we have an alien

CONTINUED IN NEXT POST ...

 

[Lykke]

Here are some more ordinary smilies (but with our forum's bg color for now)

View attachment 13795

Will also be working on some still smilies ...

Thank you

 

[Paul B]

Moved to resource discussions.

 

[Lykke]

Moved to resource discussions.

oh sorry - but thanks

 

[shenmuee]

wow how cute :'D i would like to see if you could do Japanese, Korean, Chinise, Thai, Turkish flags too in cute smilies :' )

 

[Lykke]

wow how cute :'D i would like to see if you could do Japanese, Korean, Chinise, Thai, Turkish flags too in cute smilies :' )

Thank you
I will work on those cute-flag-smilies tonight when I'm home from work ^-^

 

[Shelley]

First thing first, you should definitely continue. I do like these but the main issues I find are the sizes. If you're designing at this scale I'd probably ship a smaller sized set if this a potential release. And secondly, I noticed on the base image and feet you've introduced a drop shadow effect which I think entices blurring and throws out the perspective. Possibly remove the drop shadow and add in a 1 px stroke (border) to distinguish the edging. I'd also add some kind of hand holding the flag but apart from that these are shaping up very nicely. Good job.

Ps. Really liking the alien and the sword smiley.

 

[Peggy]

I like the indian smiley!

I agree that the edges of the smilies are blurred, and definitely need to be sharper.

 

[Lykke]

Thank you for the nice comments and ideas I actually made the blurred edges in purpose, because I found it 'different' but I see what you mean, and it will be better with a more sharped edge for smaller icons!

IRB BACK!!! ^^

 

[EQnoble]

Hey Been working on a smiley - and would like to know what you think and if I should continue.

Please do!

 

[Lykke]

Alright - new ones

 

[Lykke]

I have a slight problem though. At this moment I have to put in a bg color. If I don't have any (transparent) the border seems somehow 'flossy'. How can I make sure the gif has a 'clean' and sharper edge/border?

Thank you

 

[Shelley]

Using .gif will always come with problems when saving a dynamic (animated image). You'll be best using the matte feature in photoshop or whatever program your using and associate a colour for the matte (matte being the background colour it's being applied upon). Trouble with that is many people use different coloured backgrounds on their forums/site so you'll never get a matte colour that suits all. I used to release animated gifs in a black and white matte that way you have the two most common background colours catered for. For those that are wanting specific matte coloured images will need to ask for a support in the way of matte colour changes unless your releasing the source file which means they can do this themselves.

I posted a guide about the save for web feature on the chance it may help you. http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68783

Looks like the screenshots are not showing in that guide I wrote.

 

[Lykke]

Thanks Shelley That's actually what i've been doing so far. I am making the icons in Photoshop, yes. Because that's the program, except for Indesign, I know best, which then was obvious for me to try out with

I do believe the new one is much better, so thanks again for the advice.

 

[Lykke]

Some updated flags

 

[Kim]

Those are very cute Lykke, I like the new ones very much

 

[Peggy]

Haha I love these new ones. Great job!

 

[Shelley]

I nice improvement.

Just a thought, and I'm sure you've already thought of this but have you thought of integrating these flag smiley designs and make them into avatars? I think if you did that they would prove very popular but without the animation. Regardless of that, nice work.

 

[Lykke]

Hey shelley, Thank you

Yes, as I said in my first post here: "The thought is to make them both as small text smilies, but also as bigger dynamic smilies, which can be used as avatars".

However, I would like to keep the animated avatars on our own forum if possible.

Today we have some smaller flag icons on each avatar, to show what country they are from. The thought was, that they can use these

I will be working on some more animated avatars - but also a set of smaller text smilies ^_^

 

[Lykke]

Updates: