Guild Wars Wiki talk:Projects/Concept art

Concept art namechanges

→ moved from User talk:Santax

I was rushed for time yesterday after marking up those redirects so I didn't get around to bringing this up; I want to now before you move/upload anymore concept art files. I have 2 primary issues about the naming system you began: 1) The quotation marks (") are unnecessary and create an annoyance in the categories (having to have |<letter> and in some cases you went with |<name> creating a bigger difference because now you have some with, say, Da being after some with, say, Dr). Secondly, art is redundant - obviously its going to be art; and in fact, some are concept renders but are still concept. As such, I propose the following naming system for all new and previous concept art: File:<name> concept.jpg - short, simple, precise yet also generic. For those with names provided which include something generic by the artist, for instance File:CH2 Beetle Hulk.jpg or File:Katy costumesfemale2.jpg, we'd remove the said "something generic" - in this case CH2 and Katy respectively - and put to the normal naming - for those two, File:Beetle Hulk concept.jpg and File: Costumes female concept 2.jpg. Lastly, for those files which do not give a "proper" name, I say either a) leave as is - e.g., File:GWXPostDos020.jpg stays as such - or b) we rename to something that it obviously is - e.g., File:KKF13.jpg should be renamed to File:Torivos concept.jpg. Which of those two would be done on a base by base situation. Konig/talk 22:28, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree about the annoyance of the quotation marks, me initially putting them as |<letter> was a bit of a brain fart; once they are all converted to |<name> they *should* all be ordered correctly within their own letter of the alphabet - that was my cock-up and I'm willing to go through and sort that out before I continue uploading. I actually generally agree with you about the quotation marks. All of Daniel Dociu's artwork has been renamed with quotation marks because those denote the "titles" of the artwork, which are clearly defined by his website. In other cases, such as that of File:2549129 orig.jpg, I would have no problem of simply describing what the art depicts as part of the file name, without quotation marks (as you gave in your example above of File:Torivos concept.jpg), as those artworks do not have a proper title. These should also categorise in the correct order with |<name>.

I'm less certain about dropping the "art" from filenames. While I find it unlikely that anyone will actually be confused by "concept", I'd be more comfortable just removing that little bit of extra ambiguity by describing something as "concept art", which has a much narrower and clearly defined definition than "concept". The only harm I can see in doing as such is in the having to type an extra four letters each time. --Santax (talk · contribs) 01:45, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Even if the category is fixed, you still have the issue that the concept art now automatically clogs up "File:" in the quick search. Previously it was shout skills (and the concept art also clogs that up). It's not a big issue, but I think that concept art would be searched far more easily without the quotation marks. I don't think there's really a need to diffentiate between "official names" or not. For all wwe know, the official name of the Toviros concept is "envoy bull head dude of awesome twinaxes" - which I personally wouldn't prefer over "Toviros concept (art)." Fair point on the art part, so it doesn't matter to me in the end on that particular issue. The quotation marks still vex me though. Konig/talk 02:38, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

To be honest, with the shout skills already, I don't think the quick search was ever really searchable like that in the file namespace. It's more difficult now if you already knew what the title of the CA you were looking for was (although the simplified naming system in some ways makes it easier), but that's what the massive categorization drive is about - so people can find more easily what they're after. As for official names, I think it's really important we preserve where possible ANet's names for the concept art. Some of them, for example File:"City of Gods" concept art.jpg, tell us things about the art that we would have not known otherwise. --Santax (talk · contribs) 03:21, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Then here's my suggestion as a compromise:

• If we have a good official title, we do what you were doing (quotations around the title, then concept art).
• If the title we get is something like KKF13 or whatnot, we do one of two things, depending on the situation:
  1. If we know what it's of (e.g., the four envoys), we make up a title but no quotation marks (e.g., files like File:Vetaura concept.jpg remain unchanged, as the orginal versions vary between a KKF# name to a #orig name).
  2. If we don't know what it is, remain unchanged until/unless another source of the image from artist or Anet is found with a better title (such as from artbooks if they include one).

Any opposition? If not, I'll start doing that for Kekai's works, as I looked through all I can find of his. Konig/talk 21:09, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

On second thought, I saw this... Konig/talk 23:15, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd have no problem with your proposal. If we can't find a proper name for the title, then I definitely agree we should simply describe the image (but without quotation marks, so people know that it's not the images title) if possible. What situation do you anticipate where we would be leaving the original title unchanged? I imagine most artworks will be easily described. By the way, I have a large (700+ images) folder of concept art gathered from artist websites, do you want me to send it? --Santax (talk · contribs) 15:05, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I only see titles being left unchanged for things not implemented in the game. So most Utopia/EN stuff with technical naming. And I'd rather not describe them (like it was done for GDC images over on the GW2W) but if we know if its of a certain NPC/place, we put the NPC/place's name rather than the technical name. E.g., File:GWCH2Cha005.jpg becomes "Factions armor concept art5.jpg" (5 because there's 5 up there that I see) and File:GuildWars2.jpg becomes "Echovald pillars concept art.jpg" - what we wouldn't do would be to move something like File:GWXPostDos010.jpg to "army march concept art.jpg" as that becomes unnecessary and the technical name may be better. I'm also considering splitting off the various combined concept where possible - such as File:KGW.jpg and File:Monster3.jpg, as its obvious anything with multiple images was put together for showing off, and I have alternate versions of the images in File:Monster2.jpg and File:Monster.jpg - these alternate versions giving new creatures too. Or would you prefer they are kept together? Lastly, regarding the Utopia/EN concept art - I think it'd be better rather than renaming the Utopia concept art category to "Possibly Utopia" we merge the Utopia and EN concept art, since its nigh impossible to properly split anything not in the game. And of course have the Utopa/EN concept art as sub-categories. In other words, the concept art we know relates to one of the two but not sure which one goes in "Eye of the North and Utopia concept art" while those we do know go in either "Eye of the North concept art" or "Utopia concept art." Konig/talk 18:14, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Combining the Utopia and Eye of the North categories, and then placing them in subcats when known for sure, seems like an excellent idea. I also agree with splitting off concepts where multiple images are combined into a single file, like in File:KGW.jpg. I know for a fact that I have full versions of all of those images in my folder, but I really will need a hand in uploading it all, especially as I have a pretty packed next month or so. I'm still not sure about keeping the technical names because of category navigation and such, but I suppose we can handle that on a case-by-case basis. --23:49, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Tonight I'll be uploading all the rest of the images that I have (except combined images) and finish moving Kekai's artwork. After that I'll go through the combined images and crop them and re-upload, which I'll probably get to tomorrow night. Since it'll be a long string of images, I'd rather not do it while others are active on the wiki as not to flood the RC when its most watched. After that, I'll attempt to find sites of the individual artists (most concept I have are from Conceptart.org, excluding Kekai's - I know of Katy Hargrove's deviant account which has at least some GW concept art, so I'll look for her artwork once I'm done with Kekai's). So after tonight just upload what you have and if I find a better/bigger image I'll just upload over it, as I've been doing. Konig/talk 00:12, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Typos in titles

If the original/official name of a concept art piece has a typo in it, should we retain said typo or fix it? E.g., File:Grenth shirt print.jpg is originally named "GreanthShirtPrint" from what I found - so should it become "Greanth Shirt Print" concept art.jpg or "Grenth Shirt Print" concept art.jpg? Konig/talk 03:16, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Numbered concept art

A lot of concept art have numbers at the end to denote how many of said concept art there are in-house. However, not all of these concept art pieces are available to us. Should we retain said numbers, or just number as we find them available? For instance, what is currently File:"Abbaddon God Statue" concept art 2.jpg is originally "AbbaddonGodStatue7.jpg", but there's only 2 such named concept art (that I know of) rather than 7, so I named that one "2" rather than "7." Likewise, for all those named 1, should we remove the 1 and merely number subsequent duplicate named? Konig/talk 03:22, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

In-game assets

Some of the recent uploads being categorized as concept art (such as this) are actually in-game models and shouldn't be labeled as such. Sounds Risky | 02:30, 19 July 2011 (UTC)