Meegons is a name coined for the unique MeeGo characters. This page will display custom meegons created by volunteer community artists as well as information related to their creation.

Contents 1 About 2 Customization 2.1 Creating your own 3 Automation 3.1 Feature Requests 3.2 Current Progress 3.3 Team responsible 4 Gallery 4.1 physalis 4.2 marnanel 4.3 texrat 4.4 Tim Samoff

About

According to Darren Wilson/dpwilson, "We commissioned a special agency out of London called airside to design the [MeeGo] characters. You may remember them from the lovely moblin characters they also designed."

Claire Alexander/clairealex was involved in creative direction and deployment.

Guidelines for character and use as well as graphic elements can be found in the MeeGo Style Guide characters section. Scroll up the page for color options.

Customization

On request from forum members, Randall Arnold/texrat began designing customized versions for avatar use. The general idea is that these avatars should adhere to MeeGo character conventions as much as possible but still allow for individual member identity to come through.

Special consideration was given to MeeGo Greeters, in that a badge (typically MeeGo yellow) is added to their avatars with the letter 'G' (typically MeeGo purple) applied using the Alte DIN 1451 font. Other badges can be considered for additional uses.

Use PNG bitmaps for avatars, with transparent background. Note that vbulletin expects graphics to match the size constraints of its image boxes. This is 100 x 100 pixels for profile pictures, and 80 x 80 pixels for forum avatars. If this is exceeded, transparency may be ignored by vbulletin.

Any artist is welcome to contribute!

Creating your own

Other than using a "Meegon assembly application" (see Automation), the easiest way to create your own is to start with an existing MeeGo character and edit it in a vector manipulation program like Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator. To get you started, here are some general tutorials:

• Inkscape Tutorial: Basic
• Inkscape Tutorial: Advanced
• Various Inkscape tutorial videos on YouTube

Of course, you are welcome to start from scratch as well, but keep in mind that to be a true Meegon the design should fit in with the original characters as much as possible.

Automation

Reggie Suplido/reggie and others have brought up the idea of an avatar generator. This is currently being discussed in the forum. Some considerations are:

• menu of available characters, props, poses, etc
• customizable colors, orientations, etc... and possibly expressions
• web-based preferred
• SVG master design with transparent PNG export
• user account + database for future avatar changes/additions

A web-based solution should also host the PNG images (see Feature Requests).

If you're interested in helping, please provide examples of existing tools, references to coders and/or your own ability to code up such a solution.

From Timo Härkönen/timoph, 2 similar services to what we are discussing, for reference:

• http://www.sp-studio.de/
• http://doppelme.com/

From cowbot:

• http://www.myavatareditor.com/developers.html
• http://code.google.com/p/myavatareditor/

Feature Requests

• export to print-on-demand (POD) services:
  • zazzle image guidelines
  • cafepress image templates

• link up with Gravatar or similar for avatar hosting. An example of Gravatar API support: http://gravatarnet.codeplex.com/ (.Net)

Current Progress

At the present time we are working on two solutions: a web based one by lindqvust and a desktop version by physalis. The progress can be tracked here or on the official thread (including screenshots).

FEATURES

(struck-outs are implemented)

Desktop

• General
  • add functionality for component database generation to MeeGen
• UI
  • tool bar (working, not final)
  • More categories
    • items
    • custom creations
    • basic shapes
  • customizable interface (background color for the DrawingArea, ...)
• Image Customization
  • Transformation
    • scaling
    • rotating
    • flipping
    • dragging
  • Color customization
    • support for transparency
  • Move layers up/down
• Exporting
  • Auto-crop the images before exporting
  • add wizard page for size & file type selection
  • SVG
  • PNG
  • PDF
  • database connection (creation available on the web & the desktop)
  • forum.meego.com
  • social networks
  • devices
• Feature Requests
• make it work, then make it fast -> handle performance leaks

Web

• Design/UI Requirements
  • conform to MeeGo Style Guide [1]
  • package project as Drupal module for easy integration with MeeGo.com
• Image Manipulation Requirements
  • click and drag of image elements
  • cropping
  • transformation
  • scaling
  • color change
• Interface Requirements
  • toolbox context menu
    • crop
    • scale
    • transform
      • flip vertically
      • flip horizontally
      • rotate 90deg clockwise
      • rotate 90deg counter-clockwise
      • rotate 180deg
    • move up (layers)
    • move down (layers)
  • work panel
    • dynamically display parts count on parts header
    • refresh thumbnails on part selection change
    • double click thumbnail to load to workspace
    • click and drag thumbnail to workspace to load
  • export to SVG
  • export to PNG
• Integration Requirements
  • save to forum avatar/profile picture
  • sync with desktop
  • sync with device
  • sync with social network platforms

Team responsible

• physalis (development lead)
• texrat (mentor)
• lindqvust (developer)

Gallery

physalis

marnanel

texrat

Tim Samoff