[Grok-dev] Re: I know it sucks, but here goes.... grok.zope.org :)

[Martijn Faassen]

Sebastian Ware wrote:
> Personal vs. personalised...
> 
> I just want to clarify my view about old vs. new grok style. I realise 
> some feel this is a storm in a teapot -- I apologise for my annoying 
> persistence!!! :)
> 
> My objections are along the lines of potential, rather than popularity.
> 
> Even though the old grok has a more personal style (being hand drawn 
> with lots of detail), he can't be personalised. My suggested modernised 
> grok could easily be personalised so "everybody" got their own personal 
> grok. A cool grok avatar. It just feels more like a community to me that 
> way.

Two points:

* I agree with Lennart that a personalized Grok avatar is not a high 
priority for our project. Would be cool if we ever have a planet Grok 
aggregating blogs - I've seen people make "hackergotchis" and such on 
planet.gnome.org off their heads, and I've also seen south-park inspired 
versions.

* I got mail back from the vectorized Grok volunteer this morning, and 
he had completed the work on his train ride back home. It looks pretty 
good so I hope I can get the illustrator files to you within a few days 
(he wants to get an OK from the original artist, my wife, and until then 
he's shy :).

One of the things he explicitly talked about is the potential this gives 
us to have different Grok images by, say, moving the club, or changing 
his facial expression, etc. If we reach the personalization point in the 
future, I think this version has potential. Of course we don't have to 
throw away your work either, and simply base personalized versions on 
that work instead if we want to.

> The fact that the new grok style is very low in detail gives us several 
> advantages (over old grok). Firstly, you can easily mix and match bodies 
> with faces, thus anybody can create illustrations by cutting and pasting 
> in photoshop/gimp/illustrator... secondly, it is a style of illustration 
> that is fairly easy to copy, even with limited experience of illustrator 
> you will be able to create your personal face.
> 
> With this style you get the excellent side effect that all these avatars 
> are scalable from stamp size to books to building wide projections.

Scaling down is a good point. I'll ask "my man in Germany" about how 
well his image scales down, given the current complexity.

Regards,

Martijn