Pruning the OACPP (input plz)

[CragOrion]

As mentioned here in the thead for KregorRanger's Optional Arelith Community Portrait Pack, the file is getting pretty big. We're up to 7,500 files, with 1,500 portraits. It's gotten pretty huge, and the more portraits in the pack, the longer it takes them to load, so in order to keep it at a manageable size so I feel fine adding more portraits for people, I'm going to be looking at pruning the files.

So what I plan to do is go through the portrait pack and take 5 portraits at a time and submit them for discussion here in this thread. I'd like for users of the portrait pack to tell me what they think. Should it go? Should it stay? Have you seen anyone using it?

Each portrait put forward for review will have a specific reason it's being suggested, whether it's not lorefriendly, too cartoony, or just plain below par artwork. So, let me know what you think, please.

Now to the portraits themselves...

The first 5 portraits I'm looking at are:

#1
Filename - AdreannaDrea47
Reason - Unimmersive and not lorefriendly. Pretty sure this is a picture of one of the X-Men (the big X on her shoulder being a dead givaway)


#2
Filename - AdreannaDreaBT
Reason - Very bad proportioning. Tiny head & arms on a huge torso, and looks like she's sawing off her head with that sword


#3
Filename - ANcustom1
Reason - Artwork of a NWN Character model. Avatars should really be artwork that shows a representation that goes beyond what the game models are capable of displaying.


#4
Filename - annie_artgerm
Reason - Not lorefriendly (futuristic clothes and a collapsible blade)


#5
Filename - b_hu_fe017
Reason - Not lorefriendly (she looks like she's wearing dwemer cybernetics?)



Those are our fist five. Please let me know what you think.

Thanks!

[Death Above All Else]

Alright,

I don't think anyone has the right to judge anyone's portrait and deem it not worthy of being in the portrait pack. It was picked to represent their character and you should respect their taste.

Secondly, if you want to trim it - create a new file with only active characters and allow players the option to choose between the two. It will be hard to figure out active to non-active characters.

And, I'm no art major. Im not going to critique some artist I'm never once met on their artwork for whatever they made it for. Let people pick or choose their artwork to represent their character.

And, I don't think you know where #4 comes from. It's a military uniform with a jacket, god forbid someone wore a hood. And the blade doesn't collapse - sure, the omnidirectional unit isn't medieval but you can barely see it. Like I said, leave the critiquing to the experts on paintings in museums. Not NWN portraits.

[/premature lock thread]

[Kuma]

>#5
>cybernetic implants aren't lore friendly
>laughing_casimir_de_lanza.png

[yellowcateyes]

I don't think anyone has the right to judge anyone's portrait and deem it not worthy of being in the portrait pack. It was picked to represent their character and you should respect their taste.

It's just an unofficial, informal community portrait pack. There's really no need to get all up in arms about it.

If there's anyone with the "right" to decide what goes in and out, it's whoever is currently taking the trouble to host and curate the pack. At the moment, that seems to be CragOrion.

If you disagree with how this download is being managed, you can always make a different portrait pack.

[Lorkas]

If I saw any of these on a character in game, I wouldn't find it jarring at all.

[Cerk Evermoore]

Please respect artist creativity and add a wolverine portrait for the X-men collection.

[Death Above All Else]

I don't think anyone has the right to judge anyone's portrait and deem it not worthy of being in the portrait pack. It was picked to represent their character and you should respect their taste.

It's just an unofficial, informal community portrait pack. There's really no need to get all up in arms about it.

If there's anyone with the "right" to decide what goes in and out, it's whoever is currently taking the trouble to host and curate the pack. At the moment, that seems to be CragOrion.

If you disagree with how this download is being managed, you can always make a different portrait pack.

im not in arms. This isn't their pack. They are just going to trim it - so why not make it easier and start fresh? Leave what's there, there and start a new one. Rather than judge other people.

[gilescorey]

I read this as "PURGING" for a moment and was briefly excited at how masculine a thread this was going to be.

Alas.

[yellowcateyes]

im not in arms. This isn't their pack. They are just going to trim it - so why not make it easier and start fresh? Leave what's there, there and start a new one. Rather than judge other people.

Inviting forum judgment on individual portraits is not the best approach, I agree. And a thread like this is just asking for trouble.

That said, it's not really a community-run pack. It was KregorRanger's pack, then it became CragOrion's pack when he stepped up and took over when no one else did. It's the "unofficial community pack" insofar as no one else has taken the trouble to compile portrait submissions and keep them hosted.

So I'm not actually being facetious when I suggest you start your own pack if you're not fond of CragOrion's management. You can even take the existing pack, re-label it, and host it on your own.

But it's fairly pointless to criticize CragOrion's right to curate the pack he's managing.

[Death Above All Else]

Do what you want if it's your pack. Just don't do a forum thing. It's your baby now.

[CragOrion]

Lets try and stay calm and respectful here, guys.

This isn't about getting down on a work of art or an artist, and this isn't about taking things away from anyone. This is me, in an administrative role for this portrait pack, understanding that you cannot have continuous growth without some kind of trimming, because, eventually, when creating a character, NWN will crash once it gets too many portraits in the folder. Further, this is me acknowledging that quite a few people may be using this resource, and wishing to allow them a chance to be heard when the inevitable trimming will have to occur. This is about me respecting those who use this resource.

There really is no reason to get up in arms. If you don't want me to remove a particular portrait that I've posted in here, all you need to do is say so. I only ask that you do so politely, constructively, and objectively, and without making any assumptions about anyone else's intentions or qualifications.

Also, there is no need to compare the proposed portraits to anything else in the pack, because what ever portrait you may be thinking of may actually be slated for consideration as well. Let the discussion be over what is currently on the table, and if any of them survive the cut, then let it be on their own merit, not because something else deserves to go more. (Although I am flattered that you recall a portrait that I used for a character whom I haven't played in 4 years )

So, tldr, lets keep this constructive and stay focused

Thanks!

[FrozenSolid]

5 portraits at a time is going to take forever. And the merits for removing some of the ones posted above were about personal tastes in artwork.

Eeeeither way. Portrait packs can get pretty big and be a hefty download. Maybe it could use some trimming? But that should be done privately, or maybe remove really old portraits? Idk. Either way meh.

[DM Symphony]

I'm not a big custom portrait guy, but I did do this around January to make it easier for anyone using this portrait pack to use the -portrait command in the Arelith Entry area, so that you didn't have to choose one on character creation if you already knew which one you wanted.

Since it is from January, it is missing the most recent additions.

As someone who does a lot of file management, I'm absolutely going to side with yellowcateyes supporting CragOrion here. While it can be the case that removing some portraits a few at a time won't make a sizeable decrease in such a large collection, and that it was someone else's pack to begin with, in-no-way does omitting portraits from a portrait pack tell anyone what they can and cannot choose for their portrait.

As portraits are drawn from client-side data, and there's no way for Arelith to police character creation, there's absolutely nothing stopping anyone from making a portrait of Wolverine for their character and using it IG. Only someone with the same files on their computer would even know.

Going through a pack like this to see which portraits pass the tests of time, for precisely the reasons listed above is one of the reasons I really respect this portrait collection to begin with, since it is entirely composed of hand-picked files. Nearly any portrait pack I've ever seen in the 15 years larger than 20 portraits has been far sloppier and full of files everyone could agree as taking up space and completely unusable, and I created this Google Drive page purely because of the inconvenience of scrolling through large portrait collections on character creation.

Meanwhile, once the pack has reached a new stable point, where things seem to have been appropriately added and removed to last a bit, let me know, I know a neat trick to keep them from taking up anywhere near as much space on your computer.

Ciao

[A little fellow]

I'd like to nominate any with an anime haircut for removal please?

[Rwby]

Just like to add in some words for Crag. I used a slightly smaller pack and it's already taking forever to use.
Keeping every thing old in favour of nothing new isn't the way for progress.

[Toss out the above five, is my vote. Let's see round two!]

[Cortex]

not MY ANIMOO

[gilescorey]

I LOVE ANIME SO MUCH

[Death Above All Else]

I'm all for people taking initiative and wanting to help reduce sizes of downloads for players. What I am against was the critiquing on them as the reason - because it was a target against the decision that the player made to have it in the first place.

If you want to trim it, post them and ask if they are active. If you don't get active characters responding, delete them. Makes it easier.

[Rwby]

I'm all for people taking initiative and wanting to help reduce sizes of downloads for players. What I am against was the critiquing on them as the reason - because it was a target against the decision that the player made to have it in the first place.

If you want to trim it, post them and ask if they are active. If you don't get active characters responding, delete them. Makes it easier.

Are you suggesting Crag posts every single picture at once and asks if anyone's using them? Because that seems impratical. Otherwise how is he supposed to know who is using which picture?

[Cortex]

isnt that what hes doing right now except in parts

[Death Above All Else]

I'm all for people taking initiative and wanting to help reduce sizes of downloads for players. What I am against was the critiquing on them as the reason - because it was a target against the decision that the player made to have it in the first place.

If you want to trim it, post them and ask if they are active. If you don't get active characters responding, delete them. Makes it easier.

Are you suggesting Crag posts every single picture at once and asks if anyone's using them? Because that seems impratical. Otherwise how is he supposed to know who is using which picture?

Going with Cortex here - Crag is already doing it in 5's. Can't be any more impractical than it is - I just gave an alternative avenue for the reason of deleting. Not based on style of art. But based on activity.

[CragOrion]

Thanks for keeping constructive and focused on the task at hand, it's appreciated!
And also thanks for understanding that if you don't like what we're doing here, you don't have to participate
So just to paraphrase so far...

No Objections to any of these five being cut

Got it, thanks for the input!

No objections to any of these five being cut

Got it, thanks for the input!

No objections and offer to help with saving space

Thanks! I'll hit you up when its time to go down that road ^.^

No objections to any of these five being cut

Got it, thanks for the input!

Acceptance of the five portraits being used, but no objections to them being cut

Got it, thanks for the input!

No objections to any of these five being cut, and suggestion for a portrait to add

Got it, thanks for the input and I'll take it under advisement!

No objections to any of these five being cut, and suggestion made for future pruning

Got it, thanks for the input!

Support cutting these five

Got it, thanks for the input!

No objections to any of these five being cut

Got it, thanks for the input!

No objections to any of these five being cut

Got it, thanks for the input!

No objections to any of these five being cut, supports posting portraits to make sure people aren't using them or don't want them removed, and suggestion made for process of future pruning

Got it, thanks for the support and the input, and I'll take it under advisement!


So it looks like there's no objections so far to any of this first batch being cut, but we'll give people a little more time to chime in and let me know if they want any of them kept.

[Nightglory]

I vote for keeping the X-man one. Its a very nice portrait with a style that fits NWN portraits. Its only (slightly) immersion breaking at its current scale, I imagine with the smaller sizes, its centered around the face.

I vote to remove the one based on the NWN model, and I am indifferent about the other three.

[Cortex]

i vote to keep all

[CragOrion]

i vote to keep all

Can you expound on your reasoning for wanting them all to stay?

Thanks