Gallery and CGA's future

[ingo]

Ok, some might hate me for that but since the gallery is an overall memory hog for cga (and a lot of work for Jeff) and in my personal opinion totally useless, close it.OTOH what i like to see is more WIP's, despite our tight deadlines.Here are my personal arguments ready for discussion :

 

1. I've seen most of the images displayed here in the gallery before in other gallerys or on personal websites.

2. If you are doing cg as a serious job or want to start that business and want to earn money with it, get yourself a website and an own domain, it doesn't look to professional when your email adress is something like dumbo@hotmail.com and your pictures can be seen on different websites.

3. Instead of the gallery i like to see a link at cga with something like a business card, something cga already has. Maybe a bit nicer graphics ?

4. Which leads me to one question: Is this website mainly for us cg visualizers, or should we make it a nice place for architects/developers/programers... too ?

 

So now you can start to hit me....with arguments, and sorry for the nisus-long message

 

ingo

[Jeff Mottle]

hey ingo,

 

Thanks for the feedback, a great topoc for debate. Here is some more info to help carry this along, or stop it dead in it's track...you decide.

 

1. After the upgrade this weekend the gallery now consumes on minutes of my times daily rather that an hour or so.

 

2. The CGA gallery is what really helps the page views on the site. Page views = more banner impressions = sponsors = money to run the site.

 

3. If I ever get to CGA2, I was hoping to add more features to the gallery that would allow crtiques, voting, and the ability to save your favorite image in a personal online folder for latter reference should.

 

Well that's my contribution...carry on.

[ingo]

Thanks Jeff,

 

great to here the facts from you. One thing i like though are the five new images of the day on the site. Otherwise i like to see the pictures in their natural environment, means on the website of the guy/girl who created them.

 

regards, eh

 

ingo

[Paul Griger]

Well Jeff, I guess it’s hard to argue with the mighty $ as a good reason to keep it around

 

And I have been looking FWD to being able to comment/crit/vote on the images in the gallery. Although I don’t know if I really need another reason to waste, *eh hem*, I mean spend time on the Internet instead of working

[Rick Eloy]

I don't know, I think if we sit and brainstorm about it, we'd see lots of things to improve the gallery.

 

Please do share your ideas. I will get to CGA2 eventually.

 

[ November 26, 2002, 12:11 PM: Message edited by: Jeff Mottle ]

[nisus]

Hi all,

 

I think both Ingo and Jeff make good points.

 

I agree with Ingo's radical thoughts about cancelling a gallery because it is nicer to see the images in context, it takes a lot of time to manage etc. I appreciate the strong thoughts about the goal too. These are excellent all remarks.

 

On the other hand Jeff scores well finding solutions to reduce the spent time in the database and pointing out the need for the gallery to attract sponsors.

 

So what do I think (and i'll try to keep it down to only a few thoughts, avoiding nisus-long messages... héhé (lol ingo!))

 

Personally I do fever a gallery but only if there is an added value to viewing them in context, which can be:

- a database with images and a good description of applications and rendering times so one can compare

- a search system to easily find reference images on used software, rendering times, themes, building type etc.

 

The added value should be something one can't do on a personal page, f.e. comparing between artists, applications, styles etc.

Imho this perfectly fits for cga, because it's our industry portal, so in a way it's task to do so! (I don't want to force any pressure on you Jeff, just to give you ideas because in a way I feel this is a possible goal for cga2.)

 

Of course all of this will require a strict set of rules to post images, but this is something that is already necessary today.

 

I can show you an example of such a database within a week or so (when our new webpage will be launched)

 

rgds

 

nisus