2008-02-25 [Hedda]: Please note that this is just a suggestion for a contest so far!

You're welcome to submit, but it's not 100% certain that there will be a contest (but of course we kind of have to start a contest if the submissions are flooding in). And the rules might change!

2008-02-29 [Hedda]: It's officially open now!

2008-02-29 [windowframe]: "Place submissions below this paragraph. Put all your " IS that sentence just for suspense? :P

2008-02-29 [The Scarlet Pumpernickle]: erm.... I think the deadline might have to change, unless our smileys can travel back in time to appear on the page. :P

2008-03-03 [Hedda]: Damn! Why does the year have to change name every bloody year nowadays!

I mean: The Prussian-French war started 1870 and that never changes. If it was good enough then, it's good enough now!

2008-03-03 [The Scarlet Pumpernickle]: lol erm... I think it's to create more work for students... if everything happened in 1942 than there wouldn't be much to memorize. :P

2008-03-10 [Mikie9191]: I see emotions should be max 25px high... is there an upper limit for the width? or should they jus be 25 x 25 ?
Cheers.

2008-03-10 [Artsieladie]: Hmm...well, maybe the size of the moods? 40 pixels wide X 25 pixels high. :P

2008-03-10 [Mikie9191]: ok, thanks artsie
where does it say they're 25x40? you'll have to ignore my intermittent stupidity - I dont have much experience with moods (other than those of my kids)

2008-03-10 [Mikie9191]: I took the liberty of adding a small title-picture thingy to this page. If anyone doesnt like it feel free to take it down and I'll consider myself repremanded.

2008-03-10 [The Scarlet Pumpernickle]: it says the size under "format" up near the top... and I think the image is cute, but I'm not on town council so my opinion doesn't mean anything. :P

2008-03-10 [Mikie9191]: Yeah it says 25 high but no width. Anyway it doesnt matter I got an answer (25x40) so I'll work to that. Im glad you like the image, although I have to confess its only there because its almost unrecognisable as a flag at 25px high.
I realise now that they must be much more simplistic.

2008-03-10 [Calico Tiger]: Mikie, when you click the word Mood in the upper right corner of the page, where you'd normally upload your own mood images (or choose one of those that already exist), it says on that page what the max dimensions for moods are :)

2008-03-10 [Mikie9191]: Ahhhhh... I seeeee
Thankyou :x

2008-03-10 [Hedda]: [Mikie9191] Nice title image? As it's not submitted to the contest I feel like I have to ask you: Is that image also free for everyone to use, with or without the collection of the smileys below?

2008-03-10 [Hedda]: You can use any width you want. Of course a 4711x25 generally will look pretty stupid though... Maybe a 200x25 for a battlefield smiley

2008-03-10 [Hedda]: doesn't look that bad. I don't know what to use it for though.

2008-03-10 [Calico Tiger]: It would make for good banners for advertising the page (like in the calender message on mainstreet that advertises it, as one example).

2008-03-11 [Mikie9191]: Im glad you like it, and yeh Im happy for anyone to use it. Ill try to throw up just the flag at the other side of the text in a while (edit:done - that one might be of some use, maybe).
I was going to do a series of flag moods with various symbols on them (no text at the side), but when I reduced the size they looked like a load of crap. Strangely, that actually doesnt look too bad shrunk down. Maybe I'll make some alternative versions and enter them in.

2008-03-13 [Hedda]: [Mikie9191]: Very nice castle! I can't think of a time to use such a smiley though.

2008-03-13 [Mikie9191]: Thanks! it could be a "at home" smiley? lol

2008-03-17 [Lady Ice]: i had another sad coat of arms. but I cant get the transparency to look right. maybe its just my computer. does it look okay to you?

2008-03-17 [Hedda]: It's impossible for me to see what is.

2008-03-17 [Zab]: Looks like a sad smiley to me:P

2008-03-17 [Hedda]: Looks like yellow blur here.

2008-03-18 [Lady Ice]: its supposed to be yellow and maroon... i just see yellow. it might only work in firefox?

2008-03-18 [windowframe]: I'm on firefox, and I only see yellow, but it looks like a coat of arms.

2008-03-18 [Lady Ice]: hm... i've tried like four times to fix it..

2008-03-18 [Cia_mar]: it is just yellow here too.... on firefox/// hmmm you may need to redo the back ground color

2008-03-18 [Cia_mar]: ah, now i can see the frowns!

2008-03-18 [Lady Ice]: yay! I did it... but I realized the one right before it's not right either... there! All fixed!

2008-03-18 [Cia_mar]: yay!

2008-03-18 [Calico Tiger]: Much better! I can see! :D

2008-03-18 [Hedda]:
Better, but it's really too small.

2008-03-18 [Hedda]: Tip: Right now I had the need to an old-man smiley...

2008-03-18 [Lady Ice]: its too small?? theres only a 25 pixel high limit... i cant make it bigger.

2008-03-18 [Hedda]: Well, it's too complicated to fit in that small size. At least to be viewable on my monitor.

2008-03-19 [Mikie9191]: Its quite a skill to keep it simple. Thats why I removed a load of mine :(

2008-03-26 [deRevenant]: ok then; with my submission now entered, i welcome comments/criticisms. if the entries i made are satisfactory, by all means let me know -- i will add more later since i created another set, however i wanted to first see what kind of reception the basic smileys would get ~~

2008-03-26 [Mikie9191]: I added a couple more medieval flags to my (no.2) entry. good stuff rev :) I likes it!

2008-03-26 [Hedda]: [deRevenant]: Very nice. Especially the angry and crazy ones. But what are those horns? I don't remember any helmet (It's supposed to be a helmet?) looking like that.

2008-03-27 [deRevenant]: ahh, yes about the horns hehe....well, my tactic with drawing a medieval helmet was to add just little touch of something signifying the small details such as the forged protrusions that helmets used to have....but with the 25 pixel height requirement, i had to improvise with something that fit the size.....however, i guess i'll fall back on new theory: i wanted to give some panache to the li'l guy that gives him slight bit of character/emotion, hehe :)

2008-03-27 [deRevenant]: to [Hedda] & [Mikie9191], thank you kindly :D well, the smiley knights give their thanx to you as well and so they've decided to invite more of their brethrens hehe....

2008-03-27 [Hedda]: You could use the horns to reflect the emotion actually. The horns pointing down on the angry and annoyed, and pointing in different directions in the crazy. Or maybe it's just me thinking too much cat. (Oh, the cat-smileys forgot the ear-moments too.)

2008-03-27 [Mikie9191]: is that a medieval cat? :P

2008-03-27 [deRevenant]: actually that's good point [Hedda]; after i get the other series i made you'll notice a couple smileys in which i took advantange of that idea....now that you mention it, i think it would be more fitting with a slight change for the angry & crazy knights ^__^

2008-03-27 [Hedda]: [The Scarlet Pumpernickle]: I guess that pipe-smoker is from America... There wasn't any tobacco in the old world during the medieval times. But it looks like he has glasses, and that's not medieval anywhere.

2008-03-28 [The Scarlet Pumpernickle]: lerg.. you're right. I was just following up on the "I needed an old man smily comment" ... bother. How did old men look old and medieval anyways?

2008-03-28 [Lady Ice]: they were all dead... short life span.

2008-03-28 [Cia_mar]: could make him a monk with a tonsure! he already has the hair about right for that! lol

2008-03-28 [Calico Tiger]: Actually, [Hedda], you are incorrect. Glass are from medieval times. And from before. The Emperor Nero (1st century) is suspected to have worn the first recorded corrective lens.

If that's not good enough, to quote wikipedia, "Around 1284 in Italy, Salvino D'Armate is credited with inventing the first wearable eye glasses. The earliest pictorial evidence for the use of eyeglasses, however, is Tomaso da Modena's 1352 portrait of the cardinal Hugh de Provence reading in a scriptorium. Another early example would be a depiction of eyeglasses found north of the Alpes in an altarpiece of the church of Bad Wildungen, Germany, in 1403."

And the middle ages / medieval period is from the 5th century to the 16th century.

<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasses> - Glasses
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval> - Middle Ages

So we shouldn't deny a smiley just because it's wearing glasses :P

The smoking pipe and tobacco, though, are definitely not middle ages, hehe. They start out just after (17th century).

2008-03-28 [Hedda]: Oh, I had no idea that glasses actually were used that early.

[The Scarlet Pumpernickle]: I'll add the old man smiley to the other smileys on public emotions.

2008-03-29 [Calico Tiger]: Yar, same here. I was curious, so had to look it up XD I remembered depictions of merlin and various other scribes and scholars wearing glasses, but I couldn't remember how many of those were more modern depictions as opposed to actual historical depictions of scholars and the like.

2008-03-29 [Cia_mar]:
i am trying to figure out what this one is... could someone enlighten me please???

2008-03-29 [Mikie9191]: it's obvious surely cia-mar... its a paratrooper cunningly thinking about a great big steaming pile of gold. What else could it be?
:P

2008-03-29 [The Scarlet Pumpernickle]: lol well I was thinking more along the lines of an evil church person.. you know, Spanish inquisition and all that. :P

2008-03-29 [iippo]: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

2008-03-30 [deRevenant]: hehe, alrighty then....the rest of the original series i finally put up there :)

2008-03-30 [Cia_mar]: ah *hums*..."the inquisition....what a show"...*blushes*.......um sorry...lol... got lost for a moment

ah, i guess it was just that the hat looked more like a french beret than a what i thought they wore those conical hat things

2008-03-31 [The Scarlet Pumpernickle]: ha! I thought the old man knight was covered in shaving cream :P

2008-03-31 [deRevenant]: ahhh...hmm, perhaps his real identity is....Secret Agent Knight! disguised as an aging chevalier to infiltrate the Spanish Inquisition incognito, hehe 

2008-04-01 [The Scarlet Pumpernickle]: hey, do orcs count as midieval? I noticed we don't have any orc smilies yet...

2008-04-03 [deRevenant]: to [The Scarlet Pumpernickle], i like the little green dudes, they're cute...are they meant to be little orcs? or perhaps goblins maybe?

2008-04-04 [Hedda]: I love the orcs, but they aren't medieval. Don't remove them though, because I think we should add them to the public emotions first.

2008-04-05 [Lady Ice]: ogres and orcs lived in medieval times. you know, with the unicorns and dragons.

2008-04-06 [The Scarlet Pumpernickle]: blarg. Just my luck. I thought maybe they would count... ah well. I guess I still get to see them on public smilies.. which is also cool. Public emotions is getting rather large though...

2008-04-06 [The Scarlet Pumpernickle]: oh, I just noticed that part of the green is showing outside the orcs' main head space. Give me a day or so to erase the semi-transparent green and I'll re-post them.

2008-04-15 [deRevenant]: fyi, i added one new guy, and changed the others ~~

2008-05-05 [HardRockAngel]: [deRevenant] , I adore those smileys
hope you win

2008-05-05 [deRevenant]: [HardRockAngel]-thank you kindly! i tried to do a simple but effective job, just hope it goes well with folks here who wish to use the smileys :)

2008-05-15 [((lost))]: [deRevenant] i love the blushing knight hehe

2008-05-16 [Hedda]: Voting is up! Vote! Vote! Vote!

2008-05-16 [Hedda]: Oh, damn! There I found an error with that smiley. It's not transparent! Then it's quite unusable. That has to be fixed before I accept it, but you can vote for it as if that is fixed already and eventually we'll somehow get a transparent version.

2008-05-16 [Hedda]: Here's a quick look how all the smileys look like on this background:

1. [Zab] - Happy swordsman.
2. [Mikie9191] - medieval flag - happy
medieval flag - sad
medieval flag - sleepy
3. [Calico Tiger] - It's a Sword...
4. [Mikie9191] - weee... its a medieval castle
5. [Lady Ice] coat of arms - Happy
coat of arms - angry
Coat of arms - in love
Coat of arms - sad
Coat of arms - surprised
Challenging?
Silly
Another happy coat of arms
Another sad coat of arms
6. [deRevenant] - Knight in Smiling Armor (hehe) - plain knight
- happy knight
- sad knight
- winking knight
- annoyed knight
- angry knight
- surprised knight
- intrigued knight
- sleeping knight
- confused knight
- crazy knight
- dead knight
- crying knight
- sick knight
- busy knight
- blushing knight
- love knight
- idea knight
- shocked knight
- rockin' knight
- demon knight
- scary knight
- old man knight
- hockey knight
- pin yin knight
[The Scarlet Pumpernickle]

2008-05-16 [windowframe]: I presume there's not a limit to how many we can vote for. <.<

2008-05-17 [deRevenant]: my apologies to [Hedda], the img's i made do not have transparent backgrounds, sorry about that...when making pix for ET, i simply have a color scheme saved that is a similar color make-up as the ET page background (i have a color for both the light green and darker green schemes). since these are my submissions for ET as elftown graphics, I'd be willing to allow an ET pro to recreate the img's using whatever program they have to make transparent bg's. sorry for any confusions!

2008-05-17 [windowframe]: What program do you use? If it's photoshop, there are two easu tutorials here: ECGTD Transparent GIFs & Generating Transparent GIFS that show how to make the background transparent.

2008-05-18 [deRevenant]: i don't use photoshop....just MS paint; {sigh} i guess my entries don't count now, cuz i didn't use photoshop......

2008-05-18 [windowframe]: I'll have a go at making them transparent for you.

2008-05-18 [windowframe]: Done: medivalsmileygifs (ignore the typo in the wiki name <.<)

2008-05-19 [Hedda]: Great!

I'll make sure you get some credits too, [windowframe].

Yes, you can vote on as much as you want.

2008-05-19 [Hedda]: For some reason the rules states "png" images only though. I judge that these GIFs look good enough though, but PNGs generally can have a smoother transparency than GIFs.

2008-05-19 [Calico Tiger]: In the case of almost all of the submitted icons for the contest, gifs work awesomely. They wouldn't look any better (or worse) in png in this case :D

2008-05-19 [Janouk]: *looks like a vote-whore* :o

2008-05-19 [Artsieladie]: Hmm...I just had to vote for yours, Cali, b/c it has made me chuckle every time I've come to this page with "It's a Sword... What? (geesh, you pervs)" & [Hedda] does reiterate 'useful', after all. he he I think the orcs are cute. :)

2008-05-21 [deRevenant]: question for [Hedda]: about the "re-done" smileys that [windowframe] made for transparent bg's, would you prefer that the gif versions from [windowframe]'s wiki be re-saved into png's then transplant those png's here to the contest page?

2008-05-25 [Hedda]: No, there is no point of turning GIFs into PNGs. The idea to use PNGs is that they can have better antialias, but of course not if they are directly made from a GIF.

2008-08-07 [Grandamelf]: Really tough choice! They are all great!

2008-08-08 [deRevenant]: wow, the knights are gettin' lots of votes....i feel very humbled, but also proud that they are receiving such acclaim :)
Herren und Damen, thank you very much~~

2009-03-30 [Jadala*(Once upon a moment)]: This was a pretty awsome contest, might I recommend a pirate one? I spelled that really wrong...oh well