Art

[zach-morris]

IAGL has a lot of art assets, that I made. The main problem is that I'm not an artist.
This is a general issue to see if anyone who is artistically inclined would be interested in re-vamping the assets in the addon.

Main assets include:
Any skin specific items (icons, info page layout, etc). All available here.
Any images in the Addon specific browse-able sections. These are all maintained in database xml files here and are just links to images.

Most fonts used in the images were produced here. I liked the retro look it provided. Other assets in the images themselves were not found in any particular place, but there are lots of resources for retro sprites, again which match the retro feeling that this addon focuses on.

In general, I'm very open to anyone taking the reins with this as I have no artistic talent.

[zach-morris]

Adding a little more description to this issue.

As I mentioned, most of the art for the addon is maintained in xml databases in this directory.

For example, the main browse page of the addon:

Uses the info in the browse database. Here's the art assets for the first listitem:

<category>
	<label>Browse All Lists</label>
	<localization>30059</localization>
	<thumb>21h8hfm.jpg</thumb>
	<banner>lmDtEph.jpg</banner>
	<fanart>G5PYNPY.jpg</fanart>
	<logo>gi5qfGn.png</logo>
	<trailer>EFhii04Piww</trailer>
	<plot>Browse all game listings</plot>
</category>

Each listitem has a thumb, banner, fanart, logo, trailer and plot. The images can either be http sources or imgur image links. If it's the latter, then only the imgur image id is needed and the addon will resolve the url.
Example, here is the thumb for the browse all listitem:

The project would mainly involve generating art, then updating these databases to contain the new art assets, preferably all uploaded to imgur or another server (you could even use github) for portability.

Also looking into the possibility of theming, so the user selects Theme A which just grabs the correct database file(s) for that theme.

[joaosagrath]

HI @zach-morris! I have been working on a sketch for poster art, icons and other art from your addon. What do you think of something like this:

I'm still looking for some kind of icon to give a visual identity, but the background and text would be something like that.
Let me know what you think!!

Cheers!

[zach-morris]

Thanks for the interest @joaosagrath!
The more themes the better in my opinion. If you mock up enough to populate say the browse database file, I'll make some changes in the addon settings to allow for theme selection and then put the changes into a beta update for the addon for you to play with. Sound good?

[joaosagrath]

Sounds perfect to me!

By the way, I'm the same Sagrath on Forum Kodi. LOL
So, I will kept this pattern to the others arts.
You need:
Poster (1000x1500),
icons (512x512),
Clearlogos (800x310) and
Banner (1000x185) right?

With these labels:
Browse All Lists
Browse by Category
Favorites
Search
Random Play
default (this one I don´t have any clue, it would be a generic one?)

Right?
png or jpg?

cheers

edit: So, I just ca't wait, so make these. what you think?

[joaosagrath]

@zach-morris Finished!

What you think?

olnt the "default" is missing. It is a generic?

[zach-morris]

Looks pretty good! Thats fast work

I'm not partial to jpg or png. Both work just fine as far as I'm concerned. The best size I'm not exactly an expert on. For the assets there now, I focused on the aspect ratio and Kodi pretty much took care of the rest.

Default is basically whats used for a lisitem if it can't find it in the list. I think those assets are directly in the skin folder (but if thats a problem, they wouldn't need to be, they could be URL based).

As far as which are needed, it really depends on how 'deep' you want to go.
Everything in this directory is fair game.
At a minimum I'd say your list is correct with one addition:
Browse All Lists
Browse by Category
Favorites
Search
Random Play
Choose (for breaking down games into smaller filtered lists like Alphabetical, by Year, etc)

Then, depending on how 'deep' you want to go, there's:
Categories (grouping game lists by category)
Genres (grouping games by genre)
Studios (grouping games by studio)
Alphabetical (grouping games by alpha numeric)
Tags (grouping games by tags)
Groups ( (grouping games by custom groups)

There's also a few defaults in the addon directly (in the skins folder):

self.defaults['thumb'] = 'special://home/addons/plugin.program.iagl/resources/skins/Default/media/default_thumb.jpg'
self.defaults['banner'] = 'special://home/addons/plugin.program.iagl/resources/skins/Default/media/default_banner.jpg'
self.defaults['icon'] = 'special://home/addons/plugin.program.iagl/resources/skins/Default/media/icon.png'
self.defaults['fanart'] = 'special://home/addons/plugin.program.iagl/fanart.jpg'

'thumb':'special://home/addons/plugin.program.iagl/resources/skins/Default/media/last_played.jpg',
'poster':'special://home/addons/plugin.program.iagl/resources/skins/Default/media/last_played.jpg',
'banner':'special://home/addons/plugin.program.iagl/resources/skins/Default/media/last_played_banner.jpg',

'thumb':'special://home/addons/plugin.program.iagl/resources/skins/Default/media/favorites.png',
'poster':'special://home/addons/plugin.program.iagl/resources/skins/Default/media/favorites.png',
'banner':'special://home/addons/plugin.program.iagl/resources/skins/Default/media/favorites_banner.png',

'thumb':'special://home/addons/plugin.program.iagl/resources/skins/Default/media/netplay_box.jpg',
'poster':'special://home/addons/plugin.program.iagl/resources/skins/Default/media/netplay_box.jpg',
'banner':'special://home/addons/plugin.program.iagl/resources/skins/Default/media/netplay_banner.jpg',

[RetroDean]

Can i add my own custom art to iagl? I have a massive collection and its 100%. I know this is not what this thread was about but i dont know where to connect with you at @zach-morris. Im not a noob, you can tell me straight up. Thanks for all you have done.