[DW Help] TASK: Public Mood Theme Creation

[Denise Paolucci]

Role: Public Mood Theme Creation
Available: Unlimited
Time Estimate: 5-20 hours, completed before end of August
Scope: Pre-launch

Description: Dreamwidth needs public mood themes!

Requirements for public mood themes are:

* Must not use any images or source to which you do not hold sole  
rights (such as: no publicity photos, screencaps, art that is not in  
the public domain, etc). Images must be entirely your own work, and  
you must be the sole owner.

* Must be reasonably-sized (smaller is better; ideally, no more than  
30px by 30px, although exceptions can be made).

* If animation is used, animation should be smooth, slow, and  
unobtrusive -- no blinking or flashing. It should also loop smoothly  
(no jerking or seizing at the end of the animation).

* You must be willing for us to place your work under a generally- 
accepted open license, permitting others to re-use your images and  
permitting Dreamwidth to include your images in our source code  
distribution.

* Mood themes should ideally have separate images for all 134  
separate moods. However, we know that's not always possible. If you  
choose to take advantage of the mood theme inheritance, you should at  
the very least have separate images for all 15 top-level moods, and  
the more secondary and tertiary (inherited) moods you can create  
separate pictures for, the better.

(Quick explanation of mood theme inheritance, which is not really  
explained on LJ: the mood theme system is set up like a tree, with  
similar moods capable of 'inheriting' the master picture. For  
instance, you can choose to set a picture for 'angry', which is a top- 
level mood, and have it inherit to aggravated, annoyed, bitchy,  
cranky, cynical, etc, which are the second-level moods under 'angry'.  
Second-level moods can have sub-moods as well, which also can  
inherit; 'rushed' is a subset of 'stressed' which is a subset of  
'angry'. You can create a mood theme with as few as 15 images if you  
want, although for Dreamwidth we prefer as many unique images as  
possible.)

* Please make your images as high-resolution as you can.

* Images for each mood should either be background-transparent and  
anti-aliased to display smoothly on backgrounds of all colors, or use  
a border that will distinguish mood theme from background.

* We do prefer PNG over JPG. However, as many browsers won't support  
PNG transparency, if you're using transparency, please save your  
images as a transparent GIF instead.



If you need a list of the moods in a mood theme, either  
alphabetically or by inheritance, you can see it here:

	http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/232779.html



There are two ways you can submit a mood theme to us for consideration.

EITHER:

* Title each image with the name of the mood ('angry.png',  
'rushed.png', etc). Add a text document (plain text only please)  
explaining any special instructions, such as inheritance. (Please  
also include your name-or-nickname and your email address in the  
textfile.) Put all images in a separate folder, along with the text  
document, and zip the folder, attaching it to the email you send.

OR:

* Provide us with a link to the mood theme uploaded to a LiveJournal- 
based site, if you've already uploaded it somewhere.


Please email your submissions to denise at dwscoalition.org, along with  
a statement that the images you're submitting are your own original  
work.

As we get submissions, we'll choose our favorites and ask those  
artists to provide us with a formal statement of license. (We haven't  
decided yet which license we want to use for things like mood themes,  
S2 styles, etc -- there are advantages and disadvantages to all of  
them.) We'll then add the ones we select to the site before launch,  
with the images hosted on Dreamwidth itself (so you won't have to  
worry about hotlinking or bandwidth use). You'll get to name the mood  
theme (although we reserve the rights to reject any name we feel is  
offensive or not in the spirit of Dreamwidth and ask you to choose  
another), and as recognition for your work, we'll make sure you get  
an account invitation as soon as we open, as well as a couple of  
invites to hand out to your friends.

(Please *particularly* forward this announcement to your creative  
friends.)




-- 
Denise Paolucci
denise at dwscoalition.org
Dreamwidth Studios: Open Source, open expression, open operations.  
Coming Summer 2008!