[kde-artists] default artwork for 3.5

[Janet Theobroma]

Hello all, 
We would like the core-developers insight on a situation we are having in the 
KDE-artists community. It started with a request on the KDE-Artists mailing 
list for the default wallpaper for 3.5. I went the the #kde-artists IRC 
channel and asked if there was time to make new artwork for 3.5. I was told 
"absolutely".  So we started a Kollaboration on the artists site. The first 
thing we did was to plan an IRC meeting at #kde-artists to decide what 
direction we wanted to go. We announced this meeting on the website, blogged 
about it and sent an email to all the members of KDE-artists.org. At the 
meeting we decided to change the colors a bit on the Start pages and use a 
stylized version of the wave graphic that is on the current Konqi start pages 
as a unifying element for all the new artwork. We decided to start with the 
new wallpaper then move onto the splash screen and Start pages. I posted the 
decisions the group made on the artist site and we got a huge response...we 
narrowed it down and then had a vote. 
 
I submitted the top two from the polls to the kde-artists mailing list to get 
their comments and approval . To which Ken replied: 
"What in the hell is going on? We discussed this stuff- the wave should not 
change for 3.5 IT IS USED IN OTHER PLACES AS WELL; SO WE CANNOT CHANGE IT IN 
ONE PLACE WITHOUT CHANGING IT EVERYWHERE!!!!!" 
 
Then today Ken set the channel topic on the #kde-artists' public IRC channel 
to: "who in the hell said to change the wave for 3.5!!!!!" and he went on to 
say... 
     "[03:36] * kwwii is extremely upset about this crap 
      [03:36] <kwwii> there is no point in having the kde-artists website if 
all it does is make things worse!!!!!" 
 
The new KDE-Artists.org website has provided artists in the KDE community with 
a place to contribute their artwork to the applications that they love. Not 
to mention that the developers now have a means to connect with a much larger 
group of artists to get the artwork they need.  Despite any disparaging 
remarks we have followed through on what we proposed and provided exactly 
what was promised. 
 
See http://kde-artists.org/files/wave/ to view examples of the graphics that 
we will be referring to below. 
 
The weird thing is that the wave is the same shape...it is just stylized. 
Another weird thing is that Ken was the one who requested completely new 
Start pages on the artists site. I think we went about this the right 
way...we announced a meeting, had a vote etc etc. At one point Ken said that 
he agreed with what we were doing (excepts from the IRC meetings: 
http://kde-artists.org/files/wave/excerpt.txt.tar.gz). 
 
We believe that there is no reason left why one of these cannot be the default 
wallpaper in KDE 3.5 unless it is an issue of individual control. If we were 
trying to be renegades we would have just committed the wallpapers but we 
didn't. We submitted them to the mailing list where we could discuss them but 
instead we were attacked. 
 
To summarize: The wave used in the creation of the proposed default wallpaper 
is the same shape as the wave in the Konqi start page. We have adjusted and 
then readjusted the approach to the artwork to meet the timeline for the 
features list as requested by physos. We have submitted the artwork to the 
kde-artists mailing list before submitting the final wallpaper to svn. We are 
not taking the lone cowboy approach and forcing unwanted changes on anyone 
nor has this been developed in secret. 
 
These are the logs from two public IRC meetings. One that was scheduled to 
address what we were looking for in the default artwork for KDE 3.5. Another 
to discuss a new timeline and then redefine the elements for the default 
artwork so that screenshots could be included in the feature guide.  
http://kde-artists.org/files/wave/full_logs.tar.gz 
 
Click here to read the threads about the default artwork on KDE-Artists.org: 
http://kde-artists.org/main/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,48/expv,0/board,43.0 
 
So we have two questions:  
What should we do about the new artwork for 3.5 but more importantly how 
should decisions be made about the default artwork for KDE in the future? We 
have an ever growing resource of artists in our community but we need clear 
guidelines if we are going to more forward in a positive direction. 
 
Thank you for your time, 
The Kde-Artists.org web team
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