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^ By me and my SS *squiggle hugs*

I'm no graphics person so my perspective on these matters is a bit different. I came to the site mainly because of the language section and never paid much attention to the graphics. I mean I browsed through to find a banner and avatar and to swoon over favorite characters.. but never paid much attention to them otherwise.
I think we should respect the initial idea of the website and keep it LotR-oriented. I know Arwen posted graphics of all her fandoms but it was limited to one persons production and creativity after all. I fear we could soon end up having graphics about basketball, avatars with cute fluffy animals and fan-vids about their favorite musicals, all kinds of odd, irelevant stuff. But I do realise we have a bunch of talented graphics people here so perhaps we could tease/advertise our graphics section on the forum. Like let people know that if they want to see more (varied) graphics they should have a look in the graphics forum.

A lot of you have mentioned that they didn't notice the forum on the main page... I didn't either actually. It was just such a small button among all the other and I didn't realise until later that it was the hidden doorway to another realm filled with LotR fandom. Perhaps we could move it... feature it better.. if we want to generate traffic and new members to the board.

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>>Be the change you wish to see in the world<<



Banner credit: Shadowcat & Nurrantiel Mashiara

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^ By me and my SS *squiggle hugs*

I agree with keeping Arweb's stuff - I still personally admire her graphics and I would be sad to see them go.

Starting from scratch would be best, I think - a lot of those drawings and graphics are uber outdated, and like Nurr said, graphic programs have come a LONG way since then - it's not that hard to make some new, improved LotR graphics. And I do think we should keep it LotR themed, since that <i>is</i> the theme of the website. *le nod*

Separate categories for each artist is something I'm in favor of - it would certainly make the page look less cluttered and if that graphic artist wants to go back and find their work, they can just click one link instead of browsing through 283802917304 pages of other artists' work.



Promoting the forum would be a fabulous idea - I'm not really sure as to how we could do it aside from little banner ads perhaps... I think it would look weird if we had a giant "FORUM" button and then the rest are small and unnoticeable. We'll have to figure out a way to do that effectively without making it look gaudy.




<-- That's pretty much all I have to say about that.

I think Ea is right about keeping everything LotR oriented. I was thinking maybe we could hold contests here on the forum to determine which banners get on the main site. Every week or fortnight or something we could have a new round of an "Official A-U.com Banner Competition" with a different LotR character every round. The winner, of course, gets an award and the banner (with credit) on the main site. We could even do the same with avatars and wallpapers. I hope it would work, even though I've seemed to notice that, for some reason, "official" things don't seem to be very popular on here.

For the fan graphics, honestly, I think we should just take them all down. There's a possibility that a few of them might be decent, but as has been said, technology has progressed so much in the last couple of years, and people's skills have reached a much higher level with all the resources and tutorials available these days. It's very funny to think it, but I remember the days when a really great banner was two images blended together with some text and starry brushes slapped on, and when the discovery that a blurred layer set on "soft light" created a soft focus effect was a major breakthrough.

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^ By me and my SS *squiggle hugs*

Perhaps if we had a general LotR page with, say, 5 of each contributors best work spanning all sorts of themes in LotR, and then a section for the contributors to show off their own personal things.

So, a LotR Banners
20 or so pretty images

click to see more artists' work

That way, someone browsing can see the quality and styles pretty quickly, and then go deeper if they want. In order to make people happy, less clicking with less clutter is better. So showing off a small sample gives people the taste to draw them in, so that they're happy to spend a little more time browsing around.

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going on a journey through my old claims

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^ By me and my SS *squiggle hugs*

I think that'd be totally fine. After all, a lot of us are out of practice with LotR graphics, so people would see the thread and maybe brush up some to get some up to date graphics made.

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going on a journey through my old claims

Aramel:: I was thinking about whether it was possible to take the forum link out of the main menu bar and put it in a box in the side bar or something.. if that is not possible/wanted, we may promote it in say the welcome text or something. I'm sure there are many ways to do it if we agree it's a good idea.



Totally *like*!!

I mean we might soon have 6-9 people featuring their art on the main site and it could get messy and cluttered. Good idea though to irect traffic to the forum. But what do we do when new members join and they ask for their graphics to be added to the main site.. or when members leave the forum and their graphics threads are abandoned? Could there be some kind of rotation?

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>>Be the change you wish to see in the world<<



Banner credit: Shadowcat & Nurrantiel Mashiara

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^ By me and my SS *squiggle hugs*

I thought it would be a page for them on the site. I guess if they wanted to, they could link to their gallery on the forum? I know I personally wouldn't be a fan of that unless I made a new gallery for it, because mine is a mess.

But having a special page for them would make way more sense, so that people wouldn't have to sort through comments and all that. We could easily get forum traffic through it by mentioning that these graphics were made by members of the AU forum or something like that, so people would come by if they wanted.

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going on a journey through my old claims

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^ By me and my SS *squiggle hugs*

Only thing I see wrong with that is - the main site is not a graphics portfolio for each individual member. It could turn into that though if each member is given their own portfolio page. And that would be too much anyway, because each member can't possibly have their own personal page on the main site - and what happens when you want to update your page with new graphics? Remember you have to have access to the coding to be able to do that, which we will not be able to do. If you want a graphics portfolio, just make a thread here and keep updating/editing the first post with new things. Or create your own website that you can link to people and that you can edit at will. I kinda think that JF's idea (putting banners in correct categories) would work much better... just sign your work.

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^ I was just about to say that. I totally agree: it's sounding too focused on the graphic makers, and not the graphics. I think it should be like it is now, with different characters having their own pages. Except instead of small text saying, "To _____" for the person who claimed it, it could simply be "By _____" for the person who made it. We could use the exact same format already in place, which I think is a good thing. We only have to find a method by which we decide which graphics make it to the main site.

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I honestly don't care much how it's up, as long as there's a bit of teaser graphics to let people know what exactly the page is all about.

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going on a journey through my old claims