2007/1/4, Matthew Nuzum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > OK, I've been a part of the art-team since the very beginning. We started > out by being a bunch of people who liked art and wanted to help the Ubuntu > community in some way... some by contributing web graphics (powered by > ubuntu, etc), some by creating wall papers, others by creating themes, and > yet others by simply giving feedback and encouragement. > > Then, we had a drive to make the art-team productive... instead of just > being a community of artists and enthusiasts we became driven to produce > something. Make specs, complete specs, etc. That's not bad, but its starting > to feel like the team is burned out and it appears that activity has > plummeted. > > While we struggle to regain our identity and get back on track to produce > something, lets distract ourselves a bit and return to our roots. Let's just > do art for fun again for a while. > > Here's my suggestion. But first, some people know that I have a > canonical.com email address... I am not using that address because I am > speaking as a fellow art-team member. This is just my own personal > hair-brained idea, not that of my employer. > > Many people participate and contribute to the Ubuntu community by creating > packages that get into Universe. Now, while it's really exciting to have > packages in main, it's still cool to be in Universe and a lot of people use > it. > > My suggestion is that we create a package called art-team-edgy (or > art-team-feisty) and elect an "artist in chief" (aic) for a release. The > team, lead by the aic, will choose a palette and a few guidelines and then > engage the community to create a desktop artwork package that meets the > guidelines. To complement the package we would also have > art-team-edgy-calendar (or whatever) that would have a new background > monthly until the next release and then continuing on as long as that > release's aic gets contributions. > > I'm not suggesting a coup, I'm just suggesting something to make > contributing art fun. Maybe our process will get good enough so that one day > we could get art-team-* into main, but again, by not making that the > immediate goal it gives us a lot of freedom. It also gives a lot of artists > the opportunity to contribute, since new backgrounds will be out monthly. > > The aic would be elected by the team and would be the person to make the > final decision for art during that release. The team would vote and cast > opinions, but it would be the tabdfr (team appointed benevolent dictator for > release) who gets to take the votes into consideration and make the final > call - note that this is different than a democracy, the only democratic > part is who the aic is. This is just a suggestion, I'll leave it to the team > to decide how the role should work if we decide to do this, but my $0.02 > worth is that without a leader to make a final, potentially difficult > decision, some important decisions will get lost in the committees. > > So, Feisty releases in a few months. We know practically nothing about what > to expect for that release, but that's OK. We know it will use gnome 2.18 > and soon we'll know if it will have a compositing window manager. If we're > not aiming for main, we can do whatever we want... polka dots, stripes, > flames, kittens, whatever. We can choose our palette, our icon theme > (although it makes sense to go with the flow of course), everything! > > OK, I've been thinking about this for a while, and I even mentioned the > calendar idea a couple months ago... I saw the recent bug report (#77289) > and this forum thread recently > http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=326420 and decided > to get my it in gear and actually do something (send this e-mail). > > How about some people +1 this if they like the idea, ensuring to note if > they feel competent enough to contribute a monthly background. We'd also > need a person willing to be the scape goat and be the first aic...
+1 for a reboot :-) I say - let open the floodgates once again. Let's have a storm of what ever people create, mockups, screenies, wallies, themes, logins, splashes (just like the good old warty/hoary days). Find some stuff we can agree on looks cool, and then work in that direction. If I know in good time what my deadline will be and what general theme and guideline to follow, I could contribute a calender wallpaper. Cheers, Mikkel -- ubuntu-art mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
