Yet another one of the projects I'm working on. Thus far, I feel they are turning our quite well but with room for improvements I'll take any suggestions on improving upon these. I plan on adding this pack to my existing smiley pack that I use with my style and eventually release to the public but for now this is what I have so far. With these complimenting the existing smilies they'll be 24px x 24px although some of them may differ in width slightly but I'll retain the height so they haven't got alignment issues in the smiley previewer or when these are used in posts.
This pack and the post icon/smiley pack are the pack(s) I am focusing on. I can see myself getting out of hand starting too many projects, so I want to finish these packs, and then finish some other packs off but this pack is on my high priority list of packs to complete.
I can imagine. These Smilies are taking longer to design than their average circular counterparts. I won't be designing many of these, maybe around 10-15 which will be enough creature smilies to give me and maybe users that variety. The spider smiley is proving to be a pain to design (especially the legs). Oh well, 15 max and this pack is done.
Great work, Shelley! They're sooo cute. Question: I noticed that you were watermarking these...do you just want to wait until you're finished for people to start using them, or do you sell your smilies? (I'm almost hoping that you're planning to sell them! Not only would that allow you to benefit from your work in a financial way, but it would also encourage me to start on a few for-profit projects of my own...) And yes, there are far too few GOOD animal smilies out there. Edit: Ah, just looked at your new site and I'm encouraged.
The reason I watermark some sets is mainly because in the past, people would start using these early previews on their sites and I hate when my w.i.p works are used because they aren't complete designs, and constantly get tweaked/updated so I'll (most of the time)post the pack on completion. These variants will be posted in the freebie section of my site where members can download though there are restrictions with distribution and selling them off which people have also done in the past. I will be selling packs where customers will have exclusivity or if they want to resell then this would cost slightly more. It's something I'll need to set when I open the commercial area of my site. I'll first open my site and then give it a month by then hopefully people can purchase an array of packages to suit their needs. I just haven't done much in the way of setting the commercial side yet. I like to post some freebie packs for members first before i concentrate on the premium packs.
I'll be stopping at 15. That is 3 (might even be 4) more than the standard vbulletin default pack. These designs aren't a quick design like the rest of the emoticons I designed and this pack calls upon me spending more timedesigning them and then return to them to tweek them visually. 15 is the limit, by which time, I will submit them on my site ready for people to download once registrations are open. Updated First Post in this thread with a second & final preview before completion.
Those are great smilies. One quick question though... are the ones shown in the first post the only animals you'll be using for the smilies?
Apart from myself, Yes, these will be the only animal themed smilies that I'll be using on the style and that will come included in the pack. I could see a premium pack consisting of a far larger variety. And, maybe dedicated animal packs (example: Cat pack, Cow Pack, Dog Pack) although I think dog and cat packs are allocated to another site that wants to commission me for these two animals. Not sure I answered your question hopefully I did. Just so I know, Your the guy that is using thousands of smilies on your forum? If my memory serves me well.
Thanks for your clarification. Although the cat and dog smiley packs would be pretty good ideas to release in general. As for using thousands of smilies... not quite, thousands of smilies is a lot more than it seems in speech. But I do add every smiley I can find, and then a few hundred custom ones.
A little update. LOL coming back to these. Created and added two new animals. It's a slow process due to my plain laziness but we'll get there eventually. (Latest preview Below) Ps. I'll be re-working the spider aka "god knows what happened to it's legs" emoticon.
