Re: [eigen] Owl sketch

[Benoît Jacob <jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(This is just my personal opinion. Everybody's welcome to state his):

I like this very much !

The most important thing for me is funny/chubby/cute, and your sketch achieves 
that very well. Also, you have found clever ways to represent both wisdom and 
silliness (the professor's hat hanging on the woodstick) and also 
representing matrices (the identity matrix). Excellent! The book under the 
wing is also perfectly done.

First some generalities that I should have said in my blog post:
1) The most important size for us is 135x135 pixels as that is the standard 
size of a logo on the mediawiki: the mascot will appear in the topleft corner 
here: http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/wiki
That parameter can be changed, but I like the default value.
2) Of course, we're still very much interested in having a bigger-size 
version, even though it might not be directly used. SVG is also an 
interesting option but not at the cost of a less "human" drawing style.

Now some suggestions (just suggestions! It's your artwork and you get the 
final word):
1) Your owl looks quite old/serious, I wonder what could be done to make it 
look younger. Maybe it's the shape of the head, with the eyes very near the 
feathers that delimit the bottom of the head, which (remotely) evocates 
flappy cheeks/eyebags. Maybe you could also experiment with an open beak, as 
if it were shouting "eureka!!" or "it feels good to be a fluffy owl" 
enthusiastically.
2) About the readability of the identity matrix, especially at smaller sizes, 
I'd suggest reducing the number of 1's. Probably 4 are enough.
3) About the professor hat on the stick, I wonder if that will still be 
understandable at smaller sizes. The hat's ribbon on the head might also be 
harder to understand at smaller sizes.
4) Maybe (I know I'm pushing it) it's worth experimenting without the hat and 
stick, instead rasing the right wing in a professorly way ?

Anyway, these are just random ideas from someone with little artistic sense, 
so only consider them if you like them.

Now that I've blogged about this, I think we'll let this "contest" open for at 
least some days. Others on this list: please contribute your opinions too.

Cheers,

Benoit

On Saturday 29 March 2008 23:07:04 David Benjamin wrote:
> Something like this?
>
> I'm not sure how well the identity matrix on his chest came out. I
> expect it'll work better in color.

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