2021 Swag Refresh

Profile picture for user Eclipse

Eclipse

 Member since: 2013
Location
Oklahoma City
Forums
Community Discussion

I've already listed a bunch of stuff in the news section, so here's a quick cross-link to that.

Conquistador

Thank you for all your work and efforts, Eclipse :)
Really nice to see good old SWAG shine in a new bright light.

Regards,
Conquistador

JawaStu

Yeah, thanks Eclipse!  


I was looking at the site a few weeks ago and reminiscing about how important Swag was to me and my development as an artist and a designer all those years ago (almost 20 years ago now I think). I was also itching for some characters to draw after watching the Mandalorian and feeling inspired about Star Wars again and I may be tempted to pick up a request at some point.

JawaStu 

Eclipse

That's great Stu!

I think, in many ways, there's never been a better time to be a Star Wars fan site than right now. We can debate the finer points of what's been happening in the Star Wars world, but there's so much renewed interest. A new(ish) gaming license, new content (of all sorts) and of course... The Mandalorian. I've been wanting to get SWAG to a better state, a more modern state, for a long time now. I hope others enjoy it as much as I do.

Eclipse

JawaStu

Yeah, kind of. I’m a designer for a travel map app company. I make maps of public transit systems and design UI/UX for our apps. I haven’t really done that so much lately though since I’ve been furloughed for almost a year at this point. It’s because of that that I’ve had so much time on my hands and made me want to start illustrating again. 

Stargate38

Definite improvement over the old look. Also, I'm glad that I'm able to view profiles now. Before the revamp, I wasn't able to view them, and it was near impossible to guess an artist's gallery ID (to get to their gallery page) as a result of that. Thanks! :)

Eclipse

Many things should be much easier to fix now. I'm sure I've said that before, but it's increasingly true with each new iteration of the site. :-D

In truth, there are a bunch of things that are still "broken", but I'll be fixing them soon. Top of that list is search results and responsive design. There's some custom code I built just for controlling our page layouts, and I want to make that breakpoint aware so that I can customize layouts both at the desktop and the phone (and anything in between) level.

Eclipse

I've posted some INITIAL improvements to the search. There's a LOT to do over there, but at least for the images (not blogs) I've built the beginnings of a better experience.

Stargate38

I found a bug: I can't scroll horizontally when I have my browser window set to be less wide than the forum layout. Could you please fix that? It could cause problems for people whose screen resolution is less than 1600x900, or they have their browser snapped to the left/right side of their screen (i.e. on Windows 10).

Eclipse

Thanks, and it's on the list. Right now the forum is in a table. I'm going to reformat it all into divs and a css grid. Once I do that we can change the layout at different screen sizes. It was on my shortlist earlier but I got distracted with the features images. I'll make this the next item.

Asok

Eclipse, what do you think about us uploading higher-res artwork? I remember the old site had limitations on artwork size, so my uploaded pieces are all small and look kind of terrible now. But I have higher res versions of all of them! Can the new site handle larger files? Can I re-upload old pieces?

 

Edit: I see what's happening now. The new layout displays all pieces at a uniform width, so portrait-oriented pics are blown up. Still, could be solved with higher res pics!

CCR

Site looks great so far! Thanks for keeping SWAG alive, Eclipse. It's great to see some familiar names here, and I dearly hope some of my fellow founders, namely Hisham, Bralt, and Reverend Strone are able to find time to check it out!

Eclipse

Yeah, Hish is definitely 100% still around. He's been in the discord a bit (timezone overlap makes that trickier). Unfortunately, Bralt removed all his artwork a few years ago. I'm unsure why, but I'm sure he had his reasons. I'd love for him to come back, even just to hang out with us. Happy to see you back and around.

I have a lot of plans for this iteration of the site. Right now, I've been looking at my analytics, and about half the traffic we get is mobile, so I'm really working hard to get the site mobile friendly. I'm almost ready to release a minor update to forums that will make them way better on mobile. Image pages and others will be next after that. :-)

Spread the word! SWAG is back!

JawaStu

I’m looking forward to that update, I almost exclusively browse the site from my iPad at the moment, viewing on my iPhone is a bit trickier as the layouts make it difficult to navigate. Keep up the great work, Kris 😊

Asok

I'm still using Photoshop, but I finally caved and bought a new Wacom tablet (Intuos Pro L). I also recently downloaded the Lazy Nezumi extension for PS, which is awesome for getting straight lines and perfect circles, which I have always struggled with.

JawaStu

That sounds a lot like a feature in Procreate that lets you draw straight lines, curves and circles really easily. It’s really helped speed up my drawing too, makes my inking neater, though perhaps sacrificing some of the energy of a hand drawn line. 

JawaStu

Yeah, the Hutt pic was entirely done using Procreate on my old iPad Pro (the small one). It’s taken a while to get used to and the Pencil is slippy and uncomfortable to use for long periods compared to my old Wacom pen and tablet, but the ability to just sit on my sofa and draw with everything I need is great. I’m wanting to upgrade to a newer iPad model, the new Pencil looks better and it’d be nice to have a bigger screen, but I’m trying get into the habit of drawing more regularly to justify the cost. 

Which model iPad are you using? 

Drig

I have the latest iPad Pro and pencil and my college job pays for my Adobe subscription! I primarily use the latest procreate update. It’s very nice! Photoshop on a Wacom and computer is unbeatable but I am the same and drawing on a couch, bed, or on the job is too good for me to pass up on. I no longer have a home PC either. Just don’t need one anymore. I live in the future!

Asok

Kris, I know you probably have a lot on your plate, but can I make a request? I love the SWAG twitter presence, but I think the impact is going to be low if it's just links to art hosted here. Is there a way to at least post thumbnails of the art on the twitter page? That way, people from outside SWAG will see the art and have more incentive to follow the links here. Maybe we can rebuild a community from other social media streams, we just have to find SW RPG/art fans.

Tusserk

Whee! Hey! So I still open SWAG every other day, even though I haven't DONE anything here for... way too long, haha. Though I did try clicking that discord link over there to the left, but it just keeps telling me the 'invite has expired'? Do we have a discord? Is it still accessible somehow? It'd be nice to hang there if the rest of you are there too!

Baronbob

Site's looking great Kris. Always enjoy stopping by and seeing the next generation of creators and artists (and even those old timers) and what they are coming up with. Great job everyone! Hard to believe its been two decades since we started putting this thing together. 

MTFBWY.

Always.

Baronbob

Lol, this is true. Is there a time when most Swaggers are around? Might even see about adding a few items to my ancient gallery even. I'm into 3d printing and painting now, when I get the chance at least. Work and life snatches that time without remorse.

Eclipse

I understand that. Real life prevents me from doing SWAG stuff regularly. :-)

I'd love to see your 3d prints! Seems like an awesome thing to add to you gallery.

Discord goes in fits and spurts. I think it's just a matter of getting a critical mass of people there. Join and when enough people do it, we'll have a really chat and hang out. :-)

Baronbob

That def sounds like a plan! When I get home t my comp I'll check out Discord. 

Elfgirl and myself just got a new resin 3d printer, so were putting it to task by printing out 3d statues of our Raptor Squad roleplaying characters, ships and other stuff. Gonna be basing and painting them up soon, so we'll definitely be adding some stuff to our galleries. It's a fun hobby, when its not driving you insane with the learning curve, lol. 

 

Eclipse

Yeah, I've heard from coworkers a few times now that the 3d-printing chat rooms are filled with how-tos on repairing your printer and less on the prints themselves. I've also heard the resin printers are generally way better because just fewer moving parts.