I haven't run any kickstarter projects! I haven't even followed kickstarter very closely! But these are my thoughts.
"$15 - The same image, printed as an 11x17 poster and signed." - I'd think in many cases most or all of the 15$ donated would be spent on the fees involved with printing & delivery; I've heard it said by kickstarter project runners that a lot of problems outside of your control may pop up with creation & delivery of physical stuff, so the costs & time can quickly grow out of your hands.
What is the "high-res Sara" anyway?
"$20 - An uncompressed digital download of selected music tracks from OGA." - This suggests that opengameart generally withholds uncompressed music (and maybe by analogy other high-res versions of assets) for unpaid users, while this is not true; it's antimarketing
"$100 - [...] OR a personal chat with BartK (online)." - This sounds silly considering you're available on #opengameart anyway. And for those who do not know that, it'd suggest that you're not available for conversations online by default, because otherwise this wouldn't be a prize - and that's horrible - because you being generally available is a big plus for the site & suggesting the opposite is antimarketing, and asking for money but refusing to be contacted online sounds like something a scammer would do (kickstarter folks being probably suspicious of scammers by now).
Also as by default each tier seems not to include previous tiers, I get the impression that only those who give less than 10$ get a "medal" here to show them as backers of the oga effort? But all backers should get that, it costs nothing & they deserve to be marked for this
I know spheres are the standard for previewing materials in the 3d world, but imo they don't work well here; one problem with the particular spheres is that there's banding around the top hilight, but it's difficult to get a solution around banding on something as necessarily smooth as a sphere - and then the solution likely wouldn't be general enough to work as a sample for various palettes. Maybe speculars should be shown on gem-like boxes instead?
Also, much of the joy of pixel-art is that shape/texture/light are all connected - that if you change a few pixels from one color to another, then you might change all 3 in various, complicated ways (especially with tiny sprites/tiles). But with a sphere, the shape is very precisely prescribed to the viewer; imo it's much more interesting to see how perception of a small blob with no such prescription changes with various palettes.
It doesn't look nearly smooth enough. I have great difficulty tracing the movements/transformations of particular strokes of fire, it looks like sets of strokes just replacing other sets of strokes, rather than persistent strokes of flame moving upward. A lot more frames and shorter frame times (~70ms?) would help, with most stuff moving like 1-pixel-a-frame, not jumping rapidly. I'd omit the pink color that's darker than orange, I'd omit all outline-like things. Also the shapes of strokes could be more fire-like, not just squiggle like worms; eg look at the "bursting" shapes & transformations of the strokes of fire here:
1) OGA is a resource for freely licensed graphics/sounds, but it also aims to be a community hub for the graphics/sounds aspect of open-source games; many of the features of OGA that interfere with it working as a good resource, are intended to build the community hub aspect of it
2) As Danimal said, in the long run ratings & collections should make the more useful parts of OGA relatively more accessible
Why the ugly (120x160?) stretching of previews? Use the same 100x100 previews as the rest of the site... so an uploader can provide a 100x100 preview image and know it won't be distorted.
@u, you're the third person asking this; it wouldn't be as useful as you might think since i keep my psd's very messy, so it's a collection of in-progress junk; if you want to change something, you'll be better off editing the final files directly; also i personally don't like to put my in-progress junk out in public.
There was; no such thing is run anymore (I think its main purpose was to build community, and now that there are a whole bunch of people around, it's not as necessary).
But a problem with your idea is that a game benefits much more from 10 months from a single graphical assets contributor than 1 month from 10 contributors (perhaps this goes less for music & even less for sound effects), because (1) it takes time to familiarize yourself with the context in which the assets would be used (2) more importantly it is difficult for different people to reach for a unified graphical style.
And the "weekly challenge" entries normally didn't take a week to create; they took maybe a single session of some 1-2 hours, and the week would just be the time in which the theme would be changed.
I haven't run any kickstarter projects! I haven't even followed kickstarter very closely! But these are my thoughts.
"$15 - The same image, printed as an 11x17 poster and signed." - I'd think in many cases most or all of the 15$ donated would be spent on the fees involved with printing & delivery; I've heard it said by kickstarter project runners that a lot of problems outside of your control may pop up with creation & delivery of physical stuff, so the costs & time can quickly grow out of your hands.
What is the "high-res Sara" anyway?
"$20 - An uncompressed digital download of selected music tracks from OGA." - This suggests that opengameart generally withholds uncompressed music (and maybe by analogy other high-res versions of assets) for unpaid users, while this is not true; it's antimarketing
"$100 - [...] OR a personal chat with BartK (online)." - This sounds silly considering you're available on #opengameart anyway. And for those who do not know that, it'd suggest that you're not available for conversations online by default, because otherwise this wouldn't be a prize - and that's horrible - because you being generally available is a big plus for the site & suggesting the opposite is antimarketing, and asking for money but refusing to be contacted online sounds like something a scammer would do (kickstarter folks being probably suspicious of scammers by now).
Also as by default each tier seems not to include previous tiers, I get the impression that only those who give less than 10$ get a "medal" here to show them as backers of the oga effort? But all backers should get that, it costs nothing & they deserve to be marked for this
how about something like this? Sort of abstract but not minimalist
I know spheres are the standard for previewing materials in the 3d world, but imo they don't work well here; one problem with the particular spheres is that there's banding around the top hilight, but it's difficult to get a solution around banding on something as necessarily smooth as a sphere - and then the solution likely wouldn't be general enough to work as a sample for various palettes. Maybe speculars should be shown on gem-like boxes instead?
Also, much of the joy of pixel-art is that shape/texture/light are all connected - that if you change a few pixels from one color to another, then you might change all 3 in various, complicated ways (especially with tiny sprites/tiles). But with a sphere, the shape is very precisely prescribed to the viewer; imo it's much more interesting to see how perception of a small blob with no such prescription changes with various palettes.
anyway, generic blobs (rocks? skin? foliage?):
It doesn't look nearly smooth enough. I have great difficulty tracing the movements/transformations of particular strokes of fire, it looks like sets of strokes just replacing other sets of strokes, rather than persistent strokes of flame moving upward. A lot more frames and shorter frame times (~70ms?) would help, with most stuff moving like 1-pixel-a-frame, not jumping rapidly. I'd omit the pink color that's darker than orange, I'd omit all outline-like things. Also the shapes of strokes could be more fire-like, not just squiggle like worms; eg look at the "bursting" shapes & transformations of the strokes of fire here:
@Ganry,
1) OGA is a resource for freely licensed graphics/sounds, but it also aims to be a community hub for the graphics/sounds aspect of open-source games; many of the features of OGA that interfere with it working as a good resource, are intended to build the community hub aspect of it
2) As Danimal said, in the long run ratings & collections should make the more useful parts of OGA relatively more accessible
add this ^
Works best on dark background. I'm really happy with the head; a bit unhappy with claws & wings but too out of patience to improve them
Why the ugly (120x160?) stretching of previews? Use the same 100x100 previews as the rest of the site... so an uploader can provide a 100x100 preview image and know it won't be distorted.
Do I get any certificates at the end of the workshop? I could really use a couple of certificates from UOKgames, the more the better.
@u, you're the third person asking this; it wouldn't be as useful as you might think since i keep my psd's very messy, so it's a collection of in-progress junk; if you want to change something, you'll be better off editing the final files directly; also i personally don't like to put my in-progress junk out in public.
"I know there is a weekly challenge here on OGA."
There was; no such thing is run anymore (I think its main purpose was to build community, and now that there are a whole bunch of people around, it's not as necessary).
But a problem with your idea is that a game benefits much more from 10 months from a single graphical assets contributor than 1 month from 10 contributors (perhaps this goes less for music & even less for sound effects), because (1) it takes time to familiarize yourself with the context in which the assets would be used (2) more importantly it is difficult for different people to reach for a unified graphical style.
And the "weekly challenge" entries normally didn't take a week to create; they took maybe a single session of some 1-2 hours, and the week would just be the time in which the theme would be changed.
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