Razorvox wrote:it's "girly", plain and blunt

And if bigoted individuals can't get over that then how is it our fault? If they feel so sensitive about their 'manliness', it's them with the problem.
(And seriously .... artists with an aversion to pink? They aren't good artists. All artists should be able to appreciate all the colours.)

Imagine if Autodesk or Adobe had Kiki as their image, would it change the userbase, no probably not, would it make it look unprofessional, well yeah and weird.

The picture is professional - that's why it works. It's not like it's a half-arsed picture.

I'm just saying the mascot should please a broader amount of people then mostly kids

Photoshop and alike don't even have mascots.
They have logos. Krita also has a logo.
compared to
Yeah. I know which one looks like an arts program and which one looks like possibly anything.

So frankly your 'suggestion' is not actually that relevant.

we don't need Krita to look like Kidpix

We need a program that is amazing to run and work with. Hell, people use programs that think two letters works best to represent themselves. I think it is more about if it works, use it.

Does anybody have opinions on the web site related ideas?

(Btw - part of constructing a good article is having appropriate paragraph breaks. No one wants to read a slab of text so please be mindful in the future)

Krita has just updated the website. If it needs further tweaks in the future then so be it but for now what you are suggesting is not that significant.

Anyway, I don't see a problem with anything. Kiki is a great sex-neutral character.
Why would Krita want to be anything other than a passionate, artist focused program? If people want to choose something that is just like all the other programs then there are tons of photoshop/ corel copycats out there. I think what is most important is a creation that represents its purpose. And to me, Krita is a positive art focused piece of software. Why do we need to change that?

____________________________________________________________________

Sorry about my deadness over the past few months but .......

Funding suggestion.

First ever crowd-funded open source comic book or art book?

Backers can vote for what the artists will draw? Get it in print? Choose colour palates? Funding goes to program then artists?

@Razorvox : I think what happens here about Kiki is not about having her as a mascot or not, but more about the strong opinions you expressed over it. When you say "we have to keep in mind their are more older men (18+) that will be using Krita then young kids and women" or that Kiki is either "too feminine", "girly, plain and blunt" and using it to discard the relevance of having such a character as a mascot, you might be seen as playing on the line of gender cliché and plain sexism, and that's something people may react strongly to. Moreover, Tyson's work is stunning, and deeming it "too childish" or "too feminine" to discard it as "unprofessional" is not going to be taken seriously.
Other than that, which was probably not what you wanted to convey, the style of any mascot can evolve, Kiki could become either badass, casual or businessy, it's just a matter of imagination and painting . And after all, it's just a mascot... who cares ?

On your other points though, I vouched on IRC for a stronger activity on the deviantArt group, but that's a community management effort which requires some dedication. The artist community seems to love memes and contests, and that could be leveraged to get the average artist to try Krita.

On SEO and analytics, I remember reading scott mentioning that analytics have been updated for the new site, so I think the tools are there. And focused original quality content -like interviews and feature announcements- are regularly pushed to the website, which is good for indexation.

achibrucie wrote:First ever crowd-funded open source comic book or art book?
Backers can vote for what the artists will draw? Get it in print? Choose colour palates? Funding goes to program then artists?

I vouched for a similar idea on IRC, making an artbook featuring great artists working with krita. As scott said, there needs to be hundreds of Davids and Tysons, and this would make a statement that krita is a software used by many talented artists. I took the example of the cfsl community who crowdfunded their last artbook (fr)
I have no clue about printing, but I don't expect it to bring in a lot of money. However, it would be a powerful marketing goodie to show and sell at events !

Okay let me try to summarize and come to a sort of plan here...

First, Kiki... I know that there are people who think the design doesn't give a serious impression, but that's fine with me. Because from what I heard at siggraph, but also in other places, the impression we need to give to make Krita stand out is enthousiasm, personal involvement, fun and passion. Tyson's design does all of that I also think it would be a bad idea to change this part of our marketing just when it is getting recognizable.

Next:

* Scott is absolutely right, I need to add something to the proposal about _why_ Krita is different, and that centers around the theme of my Latinoware presentation as well, so that's on my todo list.

* Unfortunately, the Krita Foundation is not a charity, so as far as I know donations are not tax deductable.

* Scott's second argument: Krita is cheap and companies can contact the developers directly is a very good argument. I can try to improve on that.

* Getting companies to endorse Krita: that's really difficult. We tried to get them to do that for KO, but while I _know_ that Krita has been used at Digital Domain, Double Negative, Electronic Arts and even Disney, all of that has been under the radar. Artists who decided that they could use Krita to improve their workflow. So I think that this is something to develop more once we get sponsorship from companies.

* Preparing the media for the 2.9 release. That's something I guess I have to discuss directly with Scott. Right now is the right time to get people interested, so we're on track here.

* More artists: I have high hopes that my visit to Latinoware will have convinced a few more high profile artists to try Krita

* Razovox: thanks for that huge list of places to look into! Is there someone who could volunteer to bring our dA group back to life? I'm currently doing twitter, facebook and g+ myself, and that's about my limit!

* Reaching out to companies: anyone who has an 'in', please contact me privately. If you know someone who works at a company who might be interested in Krita, please let me know. I think the best way here would be to directly contact people, not spamming a companies public email address or twitter.

* Next years open content project: I would love a calendar and an artbook. Printing is not even a huge problem, with print on demand services available. I think we can do both, with the calendar showing a subset of art in the artbook. I need volunteers here, though, both for approaching artists for collecting art and text, and for creating the actual book and calendar. If we start on this now, we could have something ready mid next year, I hope.

I know next to nothing about printing, so I can't help there.

Eo', stuart and I are the deviantart mods. Eo keeps the deviantart updated.

As for meme's, 'draw something with every brush engine in Krita' perhaps?

Or a general 'help out Krita! Draw for the artbook!' Type of contest, where the best design gets to be on the cover. The first part of the contest would be crowd-picked, whittling down to ten entries. Then the paid developers all get to make a top 3, and from there the cover could be chosen.
(Though the initial explaination for this must be absolutely clear)
If we can keep people up to date on art being produced for this, we could create a really competitive artsy athmosphere.

@Razorvox - I know you're trying to help in spirit, which is great, but the website is only a very small portion of the big picture. Companies like Adobe have *millions* of dollars available to them for hiring advertising, marketing, sales, prospecting, publicity, product evangelists, media analysts, and such. I don't know your knowledge in any of those subjects, but they make a big impact on how a brand is communicated. Photoshop is a program designed for photographers. Current artists don't choose it because it is a 'great art program'. They choose it because it has a clean, simple design, and is the 'industry standard'. They see other artists make pretty pictures with it, so they come to the conclusion that it can't get any better. Art can be subjective, so anything you don't like with art styles and colors will be offset by other artists that do like it. We need to find other ways that are more concrete that can get the word out about Krita.

If you look at the Photoshop product and website, it has really never focused itself as a tool for painters and illustrators. Judging by its name, it is obviously a good idea that they don't. They add nice features, but the company is driven by stockholders wanting dividends, and trying to meet their quarterly sales forecasts. Their moral compass is skewed towards the bottom line, not a community of individuals.

I'll volunteer but unfortunately I only run a 32-bit system so I'll have to wait until the next release to fix a lot of my problems.



For those people that dislike Kiki's current interpretation

Well, I don't like to draw the ire of anyone to myself, but I have to admitif I were to judge Krita by its mascotte, I would think it is another manga dedicated software like Paint Tool Sai or Manga Studio.
Which is a drawing style that the majority of western world, working professionals simply don't do. When they don't plainly hate it.
I remember back in the days when I followed actively conceptart.org, (at that time it was simply the best professional-packed place to be, not the shadow it is now) that anime and manga style was largely disregarded and, simply put, seen as what amateurs and noobs from deviantart did flooding the web.
Obviously there's plenty of beautiful manga-like art around, and TysonTan pieces are an example, but it's still a style disregarded by the vast majority of the entertainment art world even if things got better in the last years

My two cents


P.s.
I obviously know that Krita can do a lot more than manga, but I did my researches when I was looking for a software to substitute Painter with. Others may not be so diligents or interested.

achibrucie wrote:I'll volunteer but unfortunately I only run a 32-bit system so I'll have to wait until the next release to fix a lot of my problems.



For those people that dislike Kiki's current interpretation

To disregard a previous mistake, "plain and blunt" was related to my statement, not the design, my apologies. I also think I used "we" too much and I can see that being taking the wrong way, please understand I hardly ever go to forums.

Thanks for your point of view everyone, it's just harmless criticism and I love to see your take on it. I'll say it again, I "love" the design, it looks professional please don't misunderstand, but I just didn't think it was the best mascot IMO. I think some of you are taking these points too seriously, these are harmless viewpoints, not requests, nor squabbles. Keep in mind that everything I've said are just that, the web site propositions aren't going to fluctuate the market whatsoever either. Like I was saying, just as Adobe gets ideas from their customers I'm just doing the same. You can see my opinions as being disagreeable, that's dandy, but when people think too much about it and start bickering like all these pictures above and stating things obvious like the logo, I feel as though it's not getting anywhere. As far as the guidance on paragraphs Achibrucie, I already stated it was disorganized, perhaps you just misread. I'm a very busy person so I can't get it chipper as much as I want to, but thanks I hope this looks better, I was thinking more about ideas then readability. That aside, I like pink, mostly from an artistic standpoint, but I would never wear a pink shirt or pants, so you see where I'm going that I "think" most "guys"' don't like it much. But, if you honestly think that not liking a specific color defines your artistic ability, that is completely absurd. What really matters most of all, "effort" and "perseverance", that's what shows in a good artist. Whether or not you "like" something is what defines your art as original, not a carbon copy. Sorry if I'm taking it too far, just need to get things straight and get the thread out of a loop.

I hope these links are useful to someone, if I get the time I'll post there too. Main thing, I think we need to spread the word and in a professional manner, groups aren't enough unless there popular, otherwise there not recognized. I still think a decent Krita feature reel with good music would be of a "little" help, I would like to see exactly what I'm downloading visually with someone explaining, It seems to be common among all software I've seen. I don't want to see people using it on youtube, rather I would like to know what it has that I should be inclined to get it and how its demonstrated by the developers. Features page works, but it's not the fanciest way of doing it I think personally. I also think it would be wise decision to contact CtrlPaint and see if he were to suggest or review Krita in twitter or his blog as his fanbase is large, and I'm sure they would, maybe him, like Krita better. If you don't need photography tools or plugins, I think Krita is a no-brainer. The brush engine alone is what got me lovin' it, but it's also easier to use and has a dark ui unlike others such as painter, artrage, and opencanvas. I can't wait till animation comes, giving me goosebumps!!

Razorvox wrote:start bickering like all these pictures above and stating things obvious like the logo

Bickering refers to arguing about trival matters. You have made posts about changing three words on a website and changing colour schemes. I'm not fretting over it.

And logo? I was just pointing out that kiki is complementary not center focused. So much on the mascot when the icon is more prevalent. The mascot only sort of appears when you open the product. And if you are in a company, you'll barely see it. Plus, there are plently of companies that have cute animal mascots. Twitter. Android. Doesn't stop them.

And you seem to be under the idea that these images are some sort of personal attack. Not really. One image is of kiki volunteering (as in I'm volunteering) and the other is my interpretation of kiki starting a revolution - in light of mention of the mascot can be used in many ways. It was a joke and was also thinking of uploading it somewhere as the hidden side of krita.

but thanks I hope this looks better, I was thinking more about ideas then readability.

Yes. Thank you.

if you honestly think that not liking a specific color defines your artistic ability, that is completely absurd.

About as absurd as trying to cover up pointing out how pink aversion is bigoted in many ways by writing an unnecessary massive slab about Michelangelo?

Sorry but gendering bullsh*t really p*sses me off.

Plus like you said, you appreciate pink as colour. Good. Because it works really well with the blue, white and grey. There is no problem here as far as I can see.

I still think a decent Krita feature reel with good music would be of a "little" help, I would like to see exactly what I'm downloading visually with someone explaining, It seems to be common among all software I've seen.

This is actually a good idea. I agree we need to make a video like this available.


Also I feel like I need to make a signature that says, "I'm very blunt. Sorry." Everyone thinks I'm attacking them when I'm trying to be helpful

And on discussion of a video, shall we do a call out for artists on that as well? Or wait until 2.9? The website downloads are still 2.8.3 and calling to help the kickstarter I think. That is if we go down that path.

I am interested in working on the calendar and artbook. Mostly the graphic design part. I am new to print but I work with some people who have experience with it. Let me know the deadline for these and some dimensions reference. If someone wants to do a collabo, I only request that please
communicate, communicate,
so work isn't repeated and time not wasted. I will do some research myself and get back here soon.

monkeyPlanet wrote:I am interested in working on the calendar and artbook. Mostly the graphic design part. I am new to print but I work with some people who have experience with it. Let me know the deadline for these and some dimensions reference. If someone wants to do a collabo, I only request that please
communicate, communicate,
so work isn't repeated and time not wasted. I will do some research myself and get back here soon.

Cool! I think it would be good to be able to start selling the artbook and calendar around September next year, which gives us a good amount of time to prepare.

@boudewijn - have you given any thought to my proposal about sending out communication to the media about the upcoming 2.9 release? It would be good to make a list of media sources and outline new features, how to obtain a development version of it, and getting feedback on it so far. If you don't have time, I am certainly willing to help. I have some ideas.

I am wanting to improve my sales skills as well(I read a lot), so this might be a good opportunity for me to grow.

For helping with the application's UI, I am starting to email well-known concept artists and asking them for feedback on the application. It should be interesting to hear their thoughts and progress on it so far. I think everyone has good ideas, but getting feedback from more artists that do this 40 hours a week should create a good perspective.

We should start setting up a proper press-release document for 2.9 anyhow(though I think boudewijn has a start of a draft somewhere). The list of features is staggering already, and we still have two months of development to add!

Hi! I'll try to promote Krita on dA more. I'm sure a lot of my watchers might be interested in the program (especially the wraparound feature and transform tools and assistants) Maybe through a tutorial type thing to showcase my favorite features. ^^

I only have around 600 ish watchers but im hoping i can help more. Krita is amazing, and I really want to help ; v ;

edit: anyway im not sure if i can contribute art for krita but ill signalboost once we have set that up. it's not till september, right? maybe earlier?

Uhm, it'll be earlier if boudewijn wants to publish it in september next year