[ubuntu-art] Progress update on the community process

[Frank Schoep]

Hello artists,

I can imagine many of you are wondering what is happening behind the  
scenes so I'll present a status update on the progress of the  
community artwork process.

What I am doing right now is writing down the directions we will  
follow for each of the four artwork targets. This basically consists  
of several steps: first I'm defining overarching styles that run  
throughout each artwork target, for example a style which only uses  
the Circle of Friends logo as a branding element. Currently I have  
defined three of these styles, currently called "Circles", "Rounded"  
and "Failsafe". These styles describe the elements and compositions  
for each artwork target, but do not define textures and colors.

That's the second part: I'm defining two "looks" which do describe  
the textures, gloss and reflections to use. By combining the two  
"looks" with the three styles, there are six possible artwork  
directions which are fully described. By limiting production to those  
six and quickly evaluating what does and does not work out, we can  
save a lot of wasted energy and focus on the artwork directions that  
work out beautifully.

The finishing touch is the use of palettes. "Looks" themselves will  
not describe the color usage for elements, those will be provided by  
palettes. We will leave out palettes in the early game and work  
towards applying and refining one once the style and look direction  
becomes clear. I will offer some initial palettes so that you can  
have a base to work from. Describing the styles, looks and palettes  
will be finished tomorrow, after which I'll make sure that these get  
an official approval stamp.

Besides the community artwork, I'm working and collaborating with a  
lot of people to get other artwork related things done. Think of the  
GTK Theme tweaking and assisting the Theme Teams. I'm also following  
and talking with Pete Savage's on his sound work which is developing  
nicely.

Thanks for reading. I'll be here to answer all your questions and  
comments.

With kind regards,

Frank Schoep