Three Kingdoms Badges Competition - Discussion Thread

[Lifthrasir]

What settings you guys are using to compress your pics on that website? My original models are about 26-27kb. If I want to fit them under 5kb, by using the site, the quality setting must be quite low (around 15). As a result, details are preserved but the models are a bit less colored/contrasted. I might miss something considering cedric's models are originally about 36kb and about 5kb once compressed. But the colors are still good
Below an example to show my meaning (original model on the left - compressed one on the right):



PS: still no news from Squid about that "size issue"

Edit: full set in its original size in my workshop for comments/critics

[Katsumoto]

Just tried compressing your badge too but couldn't get it down to 5kb - my one seems fine with quality set to 80. Seems your badge is only compressing about 60% at the same quality setting, where mine is compressing 80%. Not sure why.

I did export mine as an 8-bit png in Photoshop originally but I don't think that really did anything. Just did it again with normal png and it compressed it down to 5kb.

[Lifthrasir]

It does actually. I had to do the same (PNG-8bits under Photoshop) to get their size around 10-11kb. Then, I went to the site to reduce their size more. But even so, I had to go down to 15 in quality to reduce their size below 5kb

[Katsumoto]

Oh right. You can try this site in combination which may shave a few kb off too: https://tinypng.com/

[Lifthrasir]

I've been playing around a bit. I can get below 5kb with a rate of quality at 25% (compression rate at 99% if I resize the pic by using the site as well). No the best but that's 10% more than before and colours look better

[Lifthrasir]

Important Note: For infomation purposes, the OP has been updated with the colour codes for all user groups

Here are the different colours codes (decimal RGB and hex RRGGBB). Thanks to Araval for providing most of them:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Tribune – RGB code 0.0.0/Hex code #00.00.00
Сталкер – RGB code 72.72.72/Hex code #484848
Censor – RGB code 72.36.57/Hex code #482439
Creative Assembly – RGB code 78.11.94/Hex code #4e0b5e
Curator – RGB code 128.0.128/Hex code #800080
Patrician – RGB code 75.0.130/Hex code #4b0082
Tech / Vault Staff – RGB code 5.79.142/Hex code #054f8e
Content Staff – RGB code 0.0.255/Hex code #0000ff
Moderator – RGB code 0.0.128/Hex code #000080
Modding Staff option 1 – RGB code 0.102.0/Hex code #006600
Modding Staff option 2 – RGB code 0.102.48/Hex code #006633
Slitherine Dev Member – RGB code 18.92.29/Hex code #125c1d
Feral Interactive – RGB code 233.112.22/Hex code #e97016
Gaming Staff – RGB code 255.69.0/Hex code #ff4500
Hexagon Council - RGB code 238.0.0/Hex code #ee0000
Citizen – RGB code 165.42.42/Hex code #a52a2a

[PikeStance]

I don't know about anyone else, but if the final vote was held today, I would not have an idea which one to vote one. Looking forward to seeing more submissions.

[Lifthrasir]

There are still 3 weeks for the submissions. But yes, I hope to see more as well - the more, the better

[makanyane]

I'm, er, trying something... They're fairly horrible but having got this far I would submit them - however when I try any of the file size reduction sites suggested I lose what's meant to be transparent bits of the png around the edge. Any ideas why it's doing that? I'm trying to have some soft shadow there, does that not work with the compressed png's?

EDIT: Nevermind apparently it does work - it just doesn't look transparent in photoshop anymore...

EDIT 2: posted - even I'm not sure I like them... but at least it might give people an idea of what not to try!

[Flinn]

4 submissions and all of them are awesome, this is gonna be indeed a hard choice

[Lifthrasir]

Don't be that modest Mak. They're not bad at all. As you don't have a worshop in the GW, I'll comment them here
Some fonts seem bigger than the others. I'd use the same font size for all of them. I know that the Hexagon Council - Administrator one is quite long and another option for it is to slightly reduce the size of Administrator. It allows you to save some space a bit
I'll also make the same remark as I got myself from others about the background: no background at all? I mean, no "embellishment" behind the text?

[PikeStance]

I think mak, you have some real potential there. I agree with Lifth's assessment about the font size too.

Also, I think they are a little inconsistent.





Both of these have shading

Then, ho shading









Perhaps they are all the same, but they don't look all the same approach.

On a plus side, I love the background. I love the concept. If you polish them up a bit, It will really be hard to pick three out of these four.

Good work

[cedric37]

Good work indeed

[makanyane]

Thanks for the advice chaps. Shading is meant to be the same - text size was different, I was getting too tempted to fill the gap with it...
Will try standardising that, which probably will mean it definitely needs more 'background'

[Lifthrasir]

If you need any help/tip/advice/whatever, let us know

[Iskar]

I particularly like Cedric's and Katsumoto's submissions, although the other submissions are great in themselves as well, setting a very high minimum standard if you will.
Cedric's badges carry over the appealing plasticity of the current badges to the China theme, while Katsumoto's badges have the most integral look of images and script looking like they really belong together.

[Leonardo]

I'm, er, trying something... They're fairly horrible but having got this far I would submit them - however when I try any of the file size reduction sites suggested I lose what's meant to be transparent bits of the png around the edge. Any ideas why it's doing that? I'm trying to have some soft shadow there, does that not work with the compressed png's?

EDIT: Nevermind apparently it does work - it just doesn't look transparent in photoshop anymore...

EDIT 2: posted - even I'm not sure I like them... but at least it might give people an idea of what not to try!

That's nonsense and I like the badges you made.

Below mine;

The badges you created are equally good as the other submissions.

[Lifthrasir]

A gentle reminder to say that we're entering in the last week for submissions
More submissions would be more than welcome

[Lifthrasir]

The submissions are now closed and voting poll is up

[Commissar Caligula_]

The first set of badges isn't loading for me. You might want to upload all the images to the same site.
Also re-order the images so they're in the same order for all the submissions? The order you used in the Discussion thread was
Hexagon Council | Moderator | Citizen
Content Staff | Curator | Magistrate