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ANN Custom Skins (Sharing, Feedback, and Requests)


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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
Posts: 13224
PostPosted: Wed Jul 06, 2016 9:25 pm Reply with quote
Wasn't sure where to put this. Mods, please move as necessary.

So, custom skins. Are you using one? If so, which? If you've made one you want to show off and get feedback on, or if you have a request for someone (me) to make one for you, use this thread.

I was looking through the list awhile ago and to be perfectly honest with you I found most of them to be no good. Just random images slapped in there with no regard to positioning perhaps even tiled (which I think looks awful in most cases). If you've seen me in the avatar thread you'll know I'm pretty demanding when it comes to getting these things exactly right so naturally I'll take matters into my own hands.

When custom skins first became an option I made two High School DxD ones featuring Xenovia and Irina (might be NSFW). I primarily used the 2nd one and while Irina is my favourite I prefer the way Xenovia looks there.

When I wanted to change it up I made this Sword Art Online one. Wanted it to be just Suguha since she's best girl, but there was a lack of good official art of her suitable for skin dimensions. Transparent PNGs are best for this (Irina and Xenovia came from the official site) and while there's some from the SAO mobile game they were all of Leafa. Anyways, that image was the best I found and Rika made it in (as opposed to Asuna and Keiko who were also in the image) as she used to be best girl before Suguha came along.

And now with Tales of Zestiria airing I just made two more skins, one of Alisha and Edna (for the gents) and Sorey and Mikleo (for the ladies). My main motivation was to use that image of Alisha for something because she's rockin' that swimsuit. Edna's there because she's the only other Zestiria girl with official swimsuit artwork that I could find. But hey, Edna's fine too. The Sorey and Mikleo one was significantly easier to put together. Can't keep the best bros apart!

I wish I knew ANN's preference for image sizes because there's a noticeable drop in quality when I upload images. I can preserve quality better by resizing it myself than relying one whatever automatic program ANN uses. Having two foreground layers would be nice too, since there's no option for the background to stay in place and you have to repeat it to fill up the screen.
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Tempest
I Run this place.
ANN Publisher


Joined: 29 Dec 2001
Posts: 10419
Location: Do not message me for support.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 10:08 am Reply with quote
Hmm, I'm really not certain about the best place to make this post. It's sort of a "community" type post, but not in the sense of the OT community forum we have for subscribers.

Unfortunately in this forum I don't think you'll get a lot of feedback. Most people don't read this forum unless they have a problem.

As for image quality, we don't resize / resample skin images. What you see should be what you uploaded. If the image is really large, our CDN might be doing something.

We tell our advertisers to keep their skins under 400kb total, and we refuse their skins if they are over 500kb. These rules don't apply to user skins (because they aren't forced on people).

I'll ask the mods if they can suggest a better forum for this post.
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
Posts: 13224
PostPosted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 1:51 pm Reply with quote
I put it in the anime thread because I figured it was along the same lines as the "Your Avatar" thread.

The funny thing about the image quality is that when viewed on the site there's a noticeable drop in quality, but if I right click and save the background file from the site it's at the same quality as the original image I uploaded.
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Tempest
I Run this place.
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Joined: 29 Dec 2001
Posts: 10419
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 2:39 pm Reply with quote
Post a link to your skin and I'll take a look.

I took a look at Alisha and Edna by opening the skin & the left gutter image in tabs, and there was absolutely no difference in the images as I switched between them.

-T
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
Posts: 13224
PostPosted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 4:00 pm Reply with quote
Well, once again it appears to be because ANN hates Internet Explorer. The skins do look as they should in Firefox.

Firefox on left, IE on right:

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nobahn
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Joined: 14 Dec 2006
Posts: 5120
PostPosted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 5:49 pm Reply with quote
Hum! I'm not seeing that at all!



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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
Posts: 13224
PostPosted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 8:50 pm Reply with quote
If that screenshot is the same resolution of your monitor, man it's small Laughing

Sure, when it's shrunk down like that it's harder to see the different but at the size I created it (for a 1600x900 screen) you can tell the right one is lower res.

Also, w00t 10 thousandth post.
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Touma



Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2651
Location: Colorado, USA
PostPosted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 9:48 pm Reply with quote
^ Each of those images is 212x336 pixels on my 1600x900 screen, and I can not see any difference.
I opened each in a new tab and zoomed them to the maximum that the browser will allow, and they still look the same.
Are you sure that you did not accidentally post the same one twice?

Or, could what I am seeing be caused by the image resizing that you were talking about in the Bugs forum?
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor


Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 9902
Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC
PostPosted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 10:17 pm Reply with quote
Touma wrote:
I can not see any difference.

The left one is much sharper than the right one. Look carefully at those white "speckles" on her pink bikini top. Differences between eyes, eyebrows, and hairline are also quite evident.
Don't do this if someone else is behind you though.
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Cam0



Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Posts: 4884
PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 7:29 am Reply with quote
Yeah the left one is definitely sharper.
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Crisha
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Joined: 21 Apr 2010
Posts: 4290
PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 11:56 pm Reply with quote
Yeah, I can tell the left one is sharper, but I have to really focus on it.

Anyways, I might be interested in a Princess Tutu skin. I honestly never use skins because I like the basic blue ANN skin and I have the forums set to 150 character text width. But I might consider using a skin for my favorite anime series.
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Mr. Oshawott



Joined: 12 Mar 2012
Posts: 6773
PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2016 11:54 pm Reply with quote
So far, I'm using the Sayaka and Kyōko skin. It looks beautiful on my browser. Smile

I would be overwhelmed with delight if there were a skin for Cardcaptor Sakura featuring Sakura, Tomoyo, and Kero.
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Tempest
I Run this place.
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Joined: 29 Dec 2001
Posts: 10419
Location: Do not message me for support.
PostPosted: Tue Jul 19, 2016 2:17 am Reply with quote
Vaisaga wrote:
Sure, when it's shrunk down like that it's harder to see the different but at the size I created it (for a 1600x900 screen) you can tell the right one is lower res.


The right one is definitely lower quality / higher compression, but they are the same resolution.

This is a known problem with the IE image rendering engine that is not unique to ANN and has existed for over half a decade. I don't know if the problem still exists in edge. MS won't fix this. They ignored it for years, and IE is now deprecated in favor of Edge. I do not know if this problem exists in Edge.

I suspect if you remove the box shadow (by editing the css in advanced mode) it *might* correct the problem. I'm skeptical though.
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
Posts: 13224
PostPosted: Tue Jul 19, 2016 10:48 am Reply with quote
I've been using Internet Explorer for over 15 years and this is the first time I've noticed that. But that's fine, since I know it's not an issue on ANN's end I can live with it.

Don't know how Edge handles things as I don't use it. Microsoft needs to finish the damn thing first before I consider switching.
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nobahn
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Joined: 14 Dec 2006
Posts: 5120
PostPosted: Tue Jul 19, 2016 12:07 pm Reply with quote

Why not use Firefox? Or Chrome?
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