StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I'm still looking for submissions on recruiting graphics for the main website, but in the meantime, I thought I'd present a few twists on the existing theme. As you may know, the site currently has a logo graphic which is composed of two separate images and looks something like this:








I've been thinking of replacing them with a single picture which looks like this:

or this:

or this:

What do you think?

Cog wheel and "Join now!"

By the way, anybody who wants a layered scan of Vader's picture (transparent background, no embellishments) for his own purposes can find it at http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Media/Vader.xcf (this is GIMP's native file format; you can get GIMP at www.gimp.org)

Instead of "Empire" the first one should say "I want YOU for the Imperial Navy!"

But I think you should take the "Join NOW!" for the second pic, and use the text type of the third. I believe that would produce the best result.

Kill the glitzy effects.

I like "Join Now", maybe with the Imperial emblem in the background like the third pic.

Two words: Better colors.

The choice of colors is.. less than pleasing, shall we say? I can offer my assistance to you, Mike. I would be more than happy to help with a Vader poster.

Hokay.. heres my semi-eh attempt.

WOW, nice koji. I change my vote to that one.

Is that Earth in background ? Maybe implying that the Federation has been conquered by the Empire ?

Prototype of updated Empire mainpage:

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/index-new.html

thats nice koji... have you vectored vader or something?

he looks... odd somehow...

There's a dark cloud around him and he's a bit fuzzy. I'm not sure what Koji used for his Vader pic. I provided a link to a transparent-background Vader pic on the third post in this thread.

Darth Wong wrote:Prototype of updated Empire mainpage:

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/index-new.html

I like it.

The quote was good for a laugh.

Specialist Jaren Korr wrote:These aliens have been living for hundreds of years without hyperdrive, without decent pan-galactic travel, without even simple necessities such as droids and bacta. They're constantly under threat of extinction from other species and even a cyborg army. By bringing them into the Empire, we bring them not just civilization, but hope for the future. It can be hard work; you will always find people who oppose change, even positive change such as the Empire brings. But it's well worth it.

Zac Naloen wrote:thats nice koji... have you vectored vader or something?

he looks... odd somehow...

i think it´s a photoshop filter called aquarel.

Pre-Emptive Defence

I like it!

The planet is a picture of Coruscant with the hues shifted about 150 or so degrees clockwise. Both the planet and Vader were modified with the Median filter to give them something of a non-photograph look.

Darth Wong wrote:By the way, anybody who wants a layered scan of Vader's picture (transparent background, no embellishments) for his own purposes can find it at http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Media/Vader.xcf (this is GIMP's native file format; you can get GIMP at www.gimp.org)

Your server is misconfigured or something, since galeon is attempting to display it as text, also it's 1MB, which takes ages to download. Try zipping, bzipping, or zipping it who really cares about those windows users using inferior compression programs anyway :wink .

Pu: Not sure what you meant, but I was able to install WinGIMP in about five seconds and open the xcf file. So uh.. yeah.

Pu-239 wrote:Your server is misconfigured or something, since galeon is attempting to display it as text, also it's 1MB, which takes ages to download.

Isn't there a "save as" button?

Try zipping, bzipping, or zipping it who really cares about those windows users using inferior compression programs anyway :wink .

I made a zipfile at http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Media/Vader.zip so you can try that, but it's not much smaller. It's a higher-resolution picture than the shrunken ones I showed earlier.

kojikun wrote:Pu: Not sure what you meant, but I was able to install WinGIMP in about five seconds and open the xcf file. So uh.. yeah.

Yeah, but that's version 1.2- Gimp 1.3 is better (for one thing, it doesn't look as ugly) , despite missing documentation due to broken debian packaging, and being "unstable"(never had it crash or do anything funny). Also GTK on Windows sucks.

And yes there is a save-as, I'm just saying the server should send the correct type or the generic binary type- when DLing w/ wget, you get
--14:25:14-- http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Media/Vader.xcf
=> `Vader.xcf'
Resolving www.stardestroyer.net... done.
Connecting to www.stardestroyer.net[66.39.46.41]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1,037,315 [text/plain]

which causes the browser to assume the data is text and attempt to display it- really a cosmetic issue/minor annoyance, though sometimes it causes browsers to crash (and in AOL's case, it completely corrupts the horrid linux version of their AIM client). Not something that really has to be corrected though, since this image appears to be the only example. And you didn't have to zip it, since I already waited 20 minutes last night for it to download (I meant in future cases- I'm already complaining too much and being annoying). Sorry.

OK here's my Effort. It's 225kb so it's linked rather than put up as an image.

I tried to ge the old WW1 feel of the original and gave it a stock Gallaxy background for variety. Doubtless someone with actual artistic skill could get the elements blending together more naturally. I just smoothed the whole thing and ended up with fuzzy text.

As to the new front page you posted, perhaps making the Recruiting spoof a portal/gateway page might be best (no frames, just the Legal stuff at the bottom). Either set it to jump to the main page after a set time or make the poster clickable so they can get to the main page - where there would be the Button Frame, polls and the Explaination of the sites premise. As it is the Poster is off to one side, the whole thing looks cluttered and the explaination for the site is buried almost off-screen at the bottom.

Here is my go at it. I am an amateur, but I enjoyed making it and learning by doing is always good.



I made Vader look like that because I feel it gives a more retro WW2 poster look. Anyway if anyone wants to play around with it PM me and i will send you all the img's i used to make it.

Atavarius wrote:Here is my go at it. I am an amateur, but I enjoyed making it and learning by doing is always good.

Where did you find the Vader? An unusual pose for him.

Google Image Search.