Forum - View topicPictures for people, anime, and manga
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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After seeing several cases of problematic picture submissions and following the previous article about submitting cast and staff, I'd like to address some issues regarding rules and tips for submitting pictures for people, anime, and manga.
Before getting into the topic, let's review Rule #0 (again and again  ): Under no circumstance should a user submit a picture that contains explicit sex or violence, offending materials, or a benign picture with no relationship whatsoever to the subject. User submitting such material will be banned immediately. If you find one, report it immediately by posting here or PM a Mod.
I've mentioned in another thread that official personal websites and official sites of agencies / companies. Sometimes, news articles / interviews provide nice pictures as well, if the person has no website of his / her own. However, most pictures we could find were not in 100 x 100 pixels JPEG, the format required by ANN. Here are some steps about modifying pictures: 1. Most mug shots (portraits) are longer in heights than widths, so you may have to CROP a picture to get rid of blank spaces above and / or below the head of that person. DO NOT BREAK ITS ASPECT RATIO, e.g. resizing a picture of 150 x 200 into 100 x 100, like in this example. Distorted pictures will be removed immediately once found. 2. After cropping the picture into a square with same width and height, resize it into 100 x 100. In most cases, the picture was larger (e.g. 150 x 150), so decreasing their size won't decrease much of its quality, but in some rare cases the original picture is so small (e.g. 80 x 80) that has to be enlarged before submission and the decrease in picture quality may be evident. In this case, try to find another picture if available. 3. Save it in JPEG format. The size of a 100 x 100 bitmap is not very large, even if uncompressed (30 kB), so it's not necessary to overcompress it at the price of low quality. That's all I can think about submitting pictures of persons. As for pictures for anime and manga titles, the editing technique is similar to those for people's mentioned above, but the most important is the source picture, which should be representative that everyone could identify which anime it represents and gives some idea of the main theme and plot of the anime. Here are my preferred sources of picture for anime titles (in the sequence of preference): 1. Official poster-styled textless picture, square or near-square. These are the best ones, usually consist protagonist(s) and (sometimes) major secondary characters; require little or no editing. Best examples are KonoMini, R.O.D -The TV-, and Tristia of the Deep Blue Sea, and many old TV series produced by Toei Animation. 2. Background pictures of official site. Sometimes the good picture is not a single one like those mentioned above -- they are tiled by smaller pictures. There are different ways to put them together, but the easiest method is taking a screenshot and crop out unnecessary parts (e.g. promotional texts). Good examples are Nadia (from here), Rizelmine (from here), and YamiBou (from here). 3. Covers of OST, image album, or artbooks. Some covers provide excellent alternative pictures, sometimes even better than DVD / VHS covers. An excellent example is Laputa; the current picture is the cover of its image album (but also recently adapted by R4 DVD), and in my opinion it's way better than covers of R1 or R2 DVD. 4. Wallpapers. Some wallpapers released for free by production companies have good layout and can be quite representative; others retouched by amatuer artists and may have been altered using montage and / or mosaic techniques to enhance its artistic value. When adpating wallpapers, be sure the content is suitable and representative, and please crop out unnecessary texts (title / subtitles, signatures, etc). 5. Screencap and DVD / VHS cover. These are last resorts and are not recommended. Episodic screencaps are usually of low quality (even from DVD) and can hardly be representative (with the exception of the last shot of OP). For some reason, ANN do not welcome video covers, but there are some exceptions: either there will be no suitable picture left if we rule out covers of all international releases (as in Laputa), or the cover is significantly representative to prevent confusion among related products (Ah! My Goddess movie; not to be confused with its manga, OVA and the upcoming TV series). Pictures for manga have similar guidelines as for anime, but they are slightly different due to availability: 1. Official textless promotional posters drawn by original artist(s). This is not very common, and even rarer in electronic form. Sometimes they are available at artist's personal homepage; do not hesitate to submit it if you find one. 
2. Foldouts from tankoubon. Sometimes a tankoubon may contain a foldout page with color illustrations. Their are usually in high quality, but getting rid of folding lines may be tedious. 3. Covers of OST, image album, or artbooks. Be sure to differentiate anime or manga style. 4. Wallpapers. Same rules as anime wallpapers. 5. Cover of tankoubon. They usually contain lots of unnecessary texts, but as long as they don't interfere the theme it's (barely) acceptable. 6. Scanlations. This is the least favorable type. Even if it's from your own legal copy, they can hardly be representative (just like screencaps for anime), and dialogue bubbles are particularly annoying. Personally I don't recommend anyone submitting scans. That's about it. Thanks for your patience, and please feel free to post your feedback. Please make this thread sticky if possible, thanks! |
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Sarki-Kun
 Posts: 594 Location: Spain |
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Ok, but, I have one question. If I find an image which has not the same height and width, how the hell can I re-size it, but not "modifying" them, so they don't get distorted? And, if I don't do this, it is obvious that I can't get images 100 x 100.
Or have I just missed something? 
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Um, looks like you have little or no experience on image processing. Didn't I write in 4th paragraph about cropping? To do this, most image editing software have a tool named Rectangle Mask. Click and drag a rectangle to include what you want in the new picture and leave what you don't want outside. Watch the position of your cursor; its position is displayed on X and Y axes. Then, crop the picture ("to mask," if applicable), and you'll get the new picture.
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chris keck
 Posts: 96 Location: Rhode Island, U.S. |
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Hello,
I've been wondering why the ANN encyclopedia has that 100 x 100 pxl requirement. If the images submitted for anime titles can be automatically reformatted to fit why can't the images for people be too? chris keck |
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
 Posts: 3782 Location: Montreal |
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The mug shots could be resized, but they can't be cropped to a square aspect ratio. Since users have to do the cropping anyway, they might as well do the resizing too since the result will be better than what PHP can do.
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areaseven
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1486 Location: Makati, Philippines |
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The 100 x 100 size tends to be a problem, especially for duos or groups, but if cropped and resized properly, you'll have no problem with the size. Take this pic of the group move, for example.
Also, to give insight of what not to post, here are some examples of incorrect images: 
Why would you want this image to represent GANTZ if everyone's facing away from the camera? 
Sure, it's Naruto, but what's the point in using this image to represent the anime? It's too random and everyone's facing away from the camera. 
Only fans of Rurouni Kenshin know that this image is from the series, but what about those who haven't seen it? Besides, she's not even the main character. 
Obviously too random to represent Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu. Besides, how would others know what Sousuke looks like if Kaname has her fist over his face? And another thing: no title logos allowed. The main purpose of posting pictures is to show ANN visitors who the characters are and what they look like. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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I think that's a good summary for whatever picture for anime / manga titles: making fans of a specific title saying "Ah, this is (the title), and it sure looks good" and first time visitors saying "Hmm, so this is what it's about; looks interesting." Furthermore,
Can't this thread be marked as sticky? 
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chris keck
Posts: 96 Location: Rhode Island, U.S. |
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But why do portraits ("mug shots") need a square aspect ratio? chris keck |
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animejpop
Posts: 5 |
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A couple dead links:
And I figured I'd point out a couple nitpicks 
"the upcoming TV series" --> "TV series" (since it's come out already)
"Their are" --> "They're" I liked seeing Areaseven's bad picture examples -- Good stuff <cackles> |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Klockworx moved all their anime titles to a new website. The original larger picture is no longer available; replaced by this smaller one.
The old one was from here, but another user has found a better picture, so I took that one in the link down.
You haven't noticed that the thread opener was posted more than ten months ago, have you?
Okay, my bad.... 
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