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Winston
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Forum Avatars - Updates and Issues

Post by Winston »

Hi all,
I've doubled the maximum size of picture avatars on this forum to 100k and 500 x 500 pixel dimensions so that you can insert larger avatars. It's a pain to have to crop pictures to less than 9k, which I think is way too small.
Last edited by Winston on November 12th, 2012, 4:22 am, edited 2 times in total.
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jamesbond
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Post by jamesbond »

Who is that hot looking woman in your avatar Winston?
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Winston
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Post by Winston »

She's a girl I'm dating. hehehe Just kidding.

That's Angel Locsin, the highest paid actress in the Philippines.

Here are more pictures of her:

http://www.angellocsin.com/
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New stock avatars for you to choose from in gallery!

Post by Winston »

Hi all,
I just uploaded some avatars collection packs from phpBB's archives. They appear to be anime style images (I think they are anime, are they momopi? they appear to be cartoon like drawings). There are hundreds of them for you to choose from.

You can access them by going to your profile link at the top of the forum. On your profile page, scroll down to the bottom where it says avatar control panel. Then click on "avatar gallery" button and you will see them all on the screen for you to select.

Hope you like them. I'm always looking for ways to enhance this virtual community :)

Regards,
Winston

PS - Momopi, since you're an anime fan, can you explain what the difference is between anime and cartoons?
Last edited by Winston on November 12th, 2012, 3:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by momopi »

"Anime" is a Japanese loanword from "Animation", typically used as a slang for "Japanese Animation" today. It basically means animated cartoon.

Early Japanese animators were very much infuenced by Disney, and you can see these reflected in the character design, starry eyes, fictional/fantasy European settings, etc.

Later anime were adoptations from Japanese comics (manga), which is quite popular with kids in Japan. The Japanese comic book market is valued at over $4 billion USD/year, compared to US comic market at under $1 billion/year. Keep in mind that the US has twice of Japan's population.

Anime and manga doesn't have high profit margai, but the toys and merchandise sales do. The most profitable Japanese anime series in history is Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon. During the first 3 years of its airing (1993-1995), the series genderated $1.5 billion USD worth of merchandise sales for Bandai. That's $1.5 billion dollars worth of toys in 3 years from a cartoon.

Anime and manga has been gaining popularity in the US, moving from nitch market in 1990s to mainstream in 2000's. Here's an interesting article from 2005 about Manga being popular with American girls:

http://www.wiretapmag.org/arts/24174/


U.S. Teenage Girls Prefer Japanese Heroes

By Grady Hendrix, August 24, 2005

'Shojo Beat' comic book for young women is up there with the latest Harry Potter sequel, as one of the year's biggest publishing stories.
Usually, the publication of a new comic book is not news.

But, gadzooks! The July launch of "Shojo Beat" comic book for young women is up there with the latest Harry Potter sequel as one of the year's biggest publishing stories.

A thick, square-bound magazine published by Viz, Shojo Beat collects six English-language manga (Japanese comic books) and publishes them in monthly installments and distributes them at retail outlets such as Wal-Marts and bookstores--territory long ago lost by American comics. Manga are among the most vital sector of U.S. publishing, showing double-digit growth for the past three years. In the U.S., manga is a $110 million a year industry, but in Japan the manga market grosses approximately $4.7 billion each year.

The black-and-white comic books encompass hundreds of genres, but come in two basic vehicles: shonen for boys; shojo for girls. While shonen was established in the U.S. market in the late 1990s, it has been shojo that in recent years has helped the category explode in the United States.

San Francisco-based Viz currently publishes 29 shojo titles a year in the U.S., up from six in 2002. Shojo manga now makes up roughly half of all the titles published by Viz.

"Teen-age girls are definitely driving the manga market these days," says Evelyn Dubocq, head of public relations at Viz.

Tokyopop, the other major U.S. manga publisher, reports that over half the titles they publish are shojo manga.

"Absolutely, it's really being driven by girls, teen-aged girls in particular, but also older women," says Calvin Reid, senior news editor at Publisher's Weekly.

Girls don't read comics, according to traditional U.S. publishing wisdom.

"American comics, pretty much since the early 1960s, have been aimed at adolescent boys," says Reid. "American comics are action-adventure comics, superhero comics. There's just not that much out there for girls."

Shojo Are Different

But shojo -- usually written and drawn by women -- are different. And Shojo Beat's six series are, in particular, strikingly different from U.S. action-adventure fare.

There's "Baby and Me" about an 11-year-old boy who is forced to become the caretaker of his 2-year-old brother. "Nana" features two young women, both named Nana, trying to make it in Tokyo. "Crimson Hero" follows the ups and downs of a teen-aged volleyball player whose parents want her to give up her sport of choice and enter the family business.

Trisha Sebastian, a former associate editor at Anime Insider magazine, says the key difference between U.S. comic-book content and that of manga is ownership.

U.S. comic books are owned by corporations and their major franchises, with characters like Spider-Man and Superman treated more like trademarks than fictional characters. Their appearances, personalities and storylines are carefully monitored by the publisher and their titles are expected to maintain their status quo indefinitely: no deaths for major characters; no retirement; no reevaluation of priorities.

"Japanese comics are creator-owned and the creator makes sure that their characters evolve and change over time," Sebastian says. "With manga there's a beginning, there's a middle and there's always an end. It's story oriented rather than franchise oriented."

While some manga series may run thousands of pages, they are all expected to draw to a conclusion at some point, giving their narratives more shape and urgency. The major obstacles in manga series are resolved in one way or another, even if their resolution means the end of the comic.

Shojo manga has numerous sub-genres, from yaoi (focusing on relationships between gay male characters) to science fiction and fantasy.

However, as Evelyn Debocq notes: "Regardless of the level of fantasy, artifice or artistic ambition involved, most shojo stories remain grounded in universal concerns."

Characters in manga, and especially shojo manga, cope with loneliness, moving to new cities (sometimes in other dimensions), falling in love and chasing after workplace success, whether the workplace is in a restaurant, a rock club or a space station.

Savvy Marketing

In addition to the appeal of its content, savvy marketing has also helped shojo manga reach beyond the male-dominated U.S. comic book market, whose top-selling titles regularly top out with monthly sales of 250,000.

Publishers have regularly advertised manga on television and in magazines such as "Teen People." They have also gotten their product out of specialty comic-book stores, which some people have compared to locker rooms: dirty, full of soft-core sexual imagery and unwelcoming to outsiders. Although many retailers have gone out of their way to make their stores more accessible, comic book specialty shops are few and far between outside of major cities and they are the kind of place where someone not already in the market for comic books is unlikely to ever set foot.

"Comic book stores aren't necessarily girl friendly," says Julie Taylor, the editor of shojo manga at Tokyopop. "Manga reaches people because we got into the major book chains where girls feel comfortable going."

There's also the recent alliance between Tokyopop and CosmoGIRL! magazine, which will see monthly installments of the manga "The Adventures of CG!" appear in the popular monthly, starting this August.

Written and drawn by Russian-born artist, Svetlana Chmakova, the strip will follow the adventures of a U.S. college student studying in Japan and will reach about 6 million readers each month.

'Princess Knight' Started Shojo

Created in 1952, shojo got its start in Japan with "Princess Knight" about a young princess whose parents raise her as a boy to ensure they have a viable male heir to the throne. The serial -- created by Osamu Tezuka, the father of Japanese manga -- ran for three years.

While aimed at female readers, the first shojo were written mainly by men, but during the 1960s and 1970s, as more and more female creators were drawn to the form, that changed. By the 1980s, if a man wanted to write shojo, he usually adopted a female penname. Today in Japan, shojo manga represents about 30 percent of the comic market.

The Japanese women who create shojo manga are doing very well these days. Takeuchi Naoko, the creator of the enormously popular Sailor Moon, is practically a one-woman industry. Rumiko Takahashi, famous for combining shojo and shonen manga styles, has sold over 100 million copies of her manga.

In the U.S., however, fame and fortune usually evade comic-book creators.

"Comics, traditionally, have not really been a serious part of the book trade, other than collections of daily strips like 'Peanuts' or 'Calvin and Hobbes,'" says Publishers Weekly's Reid.

As for why it took comics from another country to reach the large, untapped female readership in the U.S., he shrugs. "American comics publishers just didn't get it. They didn't like manga; they thought it was a fad."

Now, however, the U.S. industry is trying to catch up.

Last year, New York based Archie Comic Publications gave "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" a shojo makeover with manga-styled art and an emphasis on ongoing relationships and storylines rather than issues that contain three or four free-standing "gag" stories.

The experiment was apparently successful. Archie Publications is now launching a manga version of "Josie and the Pussycats."

Harlequin, one of America's largest publishers of romance fiction, has been selling shojo manga versions of their romance novels in Japan for years. Now, the New York romance house has just signed a deal with U.S. comics publisher, Dark Horse Comics, based in Milwaukee, to start bringing these titles to the American market.

"It's not all superheroes and macho guy power," says Taylor of Tokyopop. "Shojo manga is traditionally written for women, by women, and you get a unique point of view that people haven't really seen in comics before."

Grady Hendrix is a film critic and programmer living in New York City.
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Post by Master »

what are the avatar rules? I tried to get a good one but the restrictions really suck.
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jamesbond
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Post by jamesbond »

You can link to an off site avatar or upload a picture from your computer, there shouldn't be any problems with it.
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Post by Master »

well there is. you see. i tried to upload a pic from my pc. first it said too big in size then too big in dimension. I cant win. I must have a small icon of some sort. i want a big icon like yours but not one as lustful.
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Post by Winston »

I've already stretched the avatar dimensions generously, far beyond the restrictions of most forums and beyond the default here. If the pic doesn't fit, open it in a simple program like Paint, which comes with your Windows, and resize it to under 100k and under the pixel requirements. Then save it and upload it to your profile.
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Post by Master »

Thanks for your generously and respond. Those limits just dont do it for me. JB response and method worked. I feel I can express myself better now. Thanks.
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Forum Avatars - Updates and Issues

Post by Winston »

Hi all,
To change your forum avatar, go to your User Control Panel linked at the top. Then select Profile and then Edit Avatar. You can upload an image or link to one off site. But it has to be within the specified dimensions on the page. Let me know if you have any questions. Post them below.

We also have stock avatars that you can use from our gallery. In your Avatar control panel, click "Display Gallery" to see them. They are arranged by category. You can select one to use from the gallery.

I just installed a mod that will automatically resize images for your avatar from off-site URL's to within the confines of 200 pixels width and 300 pixels height. This saves you the trouble of having to resize it yourself. However, the off-site image must be less than 500x500 pixels. All you have to do is copy and paste the image URL of the avatar you want in your profile panel in this field:
Link to off-site Avatar:
Enter the URL of the location containing the Avatar image you wish to link to.
So in that field, you would paste an image URL such as this for example:

http://women.happierabroad.com/images/p124585-1.jpg

Remember that image URL's usually end in .jpg, .gif or .png.

Your profile panel can be accessed by clicking on the Profile link at the top of the forum, which will go to this URL:

profile.php?mode=editprofile

Note: Please note that this mod will NOT resize images that you upload as files. If you plan to upload a file for your avatar, make sure the image is equal to or less than 200 pixels width and 300 pixels height.

Otherwise, it's easier if you just use an image URL for the image. To get the image URL of an image, right click on it and select "Copy image URL". However, if you are using Internet Explorer browser, you will have to right click on the image and select Properties, and then copy and paste the image URL you see in the Properties window.

Btw, if you have already uploaded an avatar file that is bigger than 200 width x 300 height, can you please resize it to fit within those confines? Otherwise, it will look overly large in the forum. Some of you uploaded your avatars before I set those size limits, so you may have an avatar that exceeds the limit.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Admin
Last edited by Winston on August 26th, 2013, 7:01 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Check out my FUN video clips in Russia and SE Asia and Female Encounters of the Foreign Kind video series and Full Russia Trip Videos!

Join my Dating Site to meet thousands of legit foreign girls at low cost!

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Post by xiongmao »

Sir,

I have a question.

Will this change reduce the size of Rock's avatar's booty?

Yours,

Xiongmao
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Winston
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Post by Winston »

xiongmao wrote:Sir,

I have a question.

Will this change reduce the size of Rock's avatar's b***y?

Yours,

Xiongmao
If his avatar exceeds the size limitations, then yes it will be resized. But currently, it is under the limit.

Why do you always ask such stupid questions? lol

Ask something more intelligent will you? :P

Btw, your panda avatar exceeds the width limit, so I will be manually resizing it.
Check out my FUN video clips in Russia and SE Asia and Female Encounters of the Foreign Kind video series and Full Russia Trip Videos!

Join my Dating Site to meet thousands of legit foreign girls at low cost!

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jamesbond
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Post by jamesbond »

Winston, the avatar size of 200 by 300 pixels is just too small. How about 300 by 400 pixels or at least 250 by 350 pixels?

Some people's avatars need to be at least 250 by 350 so you can see all the details in their avatars. Please consider making the avatar size at least 250 by 350 pixels.
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xiongmao
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Post by xiongmao »

Winston wrote:
Why do you always ask such stupid questions? lol

Ask something more intelligent will you? :P

Btw, your panda avatar exceeds the width limit, so I will be manually resizing it.
Is there a limit on how many bitplanes our avatars can contain? And if they're JPEG format can we use progressive encoding?

Seriously though, avatar size is pretty generous here. My own forum has a later version of phpBB and the size limit is tiny.
I was Happier Abroad for a while but Covid killed that off.
Fed up with being foreveralone.jpg? Check out my comprehensive directory of dating sites.
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