User Badges of Honor!

[TheAllusionist]

What is that?
You may have noticed that some people have badges below their ranks and right of their avatar. After we update to the new vbulletin when it goes gold, I will try to make these appear in the user profiles as well and perhaps even the 'Members List'. I just figured out how to do this and worked out some initial graphics, it hasn't all been worked out yet. Think of these as secondary usergroups for members.

Where's Mine?
What's it all about and why does he have one and not me, you ask? Unlike the post based rank and more noticeable than the awards we give out, these badges are subjective in nature. Initially I shot from the hip and gave them out to those I could think of and as we move forward and I see others, I will award them.

As stated they are issued a bit subjectively, but there is a method to our madness and they are intended to reward quality and generous participation on the site.

3D Fanatic?
So someone may have 500 post, but they are all posting their work in an effort to get comments and recognition, but they never post in others threads or offer advice and observations, they probably are not going to get special recognition. New members that come out of the gate fast and rack up a 100 post and then dissappear, once again, they are probably not going to get special recognition even if it is probably our fault for not having a community worth hanging out at

Basically tenacious members who have been around a while and have been active throughout the site get this recognition and if I have missed any, I hope to catch up as time allows and apologize for my lapse.

Elite Artist?
OK, this is subjective and I am sure I missed people, but this is the initial shake down run so please forgive me if I missed some obvious choices. Again, this is for people who have participated and posted great images here and have a depth of great work. If you only show up and post great pieces in the gallery, but don't post or participate in the forums, chances are you won't get recognition here.

This category has to really mean something and be difficult to receive and to date people who are active here and have a great reputation off site as well have gotten this badge. There are members who I know have a great body of work that they just can't show to the public, due to confidentiality, but have shown me, that I have not awarded the badge to. We need to see the work here, it only seems fair.

Any More?
We want input on the matter. I only see members getting one or two badges, but would really like to revamp the 'Awards' icons which I will cover next. Basically what titles do you think are best? Perhaps being called a 'Fanatic' of any type isn't your idea of a reward! LOL

Give us your thoughts on the matter as well as ideas on improving the site, keep in mind for the most part I do all the items that aren't posting, so time is a factor, but we would love to know what you think would make the site more interesting and bring you back more often. Of course we know 'Free Stuff' is a biggy, as time allows I convert donated models and upload them to the main sites resources and Paulo created and uploaded a ton of sky backgrounds, but as usual I can only do so much, so ideas that don't cause Russell to give up all of his sleep to keep you coming back are preferred

Award System!
This is a system I have had in place for a while and try to award challenge and contest winners their awards at least, I am not that good at keeping up. Part of that is because I don't think they are as well received or noticed, I could be wrong. What I have been trying to do for a while and just haven't had the time or energy and that is to create new graphics to bring them up to date and really pop!

We are going to ask that if you are so inclined and up for the challenge that you help resurrect this early challenge to create more current digital trophies for which we could adjust the awards for. Specifically we think we need to provide something legible to award for Spotlight Artist, Forum Spotlight, Gallery Spotlight, etc. that we could provide larger versions of to the member to use in their own digital trophy case.

Gifs with a transparent background are best so that they work with any future color schemes but for the sake of convenience and image quality the background color to match currently is #EFEBE8 (RGB 239, 235, 232). If we could get source images in layered PhotoShop (PSD) or TIF we could always modify them in the future.

Currently our sizes are as follows:

Badges are 100 pixels wide x 35 pixels tall

Awards are from 20 pixels wide x 50 pixels tall and down, I think we want to keep the height where it is and perhaps limit our width to the height for a maximum of 50 pixels wide x 50 pixels tall so that we could perhaps have some text that is legible, up to designers discretion, a larger version will be made available so winners can display at least the trophies on their own websites if they want.

We are asking you to help us create some cool graphics for the award system that you would want by your name and in your post here in our forums. To be honest a way to 'Pimp My Profile' so to speak, or as I like to call it 'Pimp Me Out!', and hopefully make people proud to participate here and help make our site more successful.

The new version of our forum software, vBulletin has a bunch of features that I added to our site (some of which I have de-activated due to spammers, etc. which should be safe to use in the integrated versions) or planned to, most importantly a new user customizable profile and social networking. Once version 3.7 goes gold, we will update the site and implement the new awards system and hopefully new graphics that you will provide.

So if you are up to the challenge please show us your ideas in our Digital Trophy Challenge - Hope to see you there!

[TheAllusionist]

Bump!!!! Yes I can do that! LOL

[neha]

Cool feature!! I noticed the new thing next to my pic the day before and was thinking of asking you about it...but before I got down to write to you, you posted this

BTW I hear you say each person can get about 2 of them...where's my second one??

On a serious note, I think this will be a good attraction to encourage people participate better in the forum.

[TheAllusionist]

I thought I better run the "3DA Babe!" award by you before posting it! LOL Just like every woman I know, always wanting more.................................

[neha]

Originally Posted by TheAllusionist

I thought I better run the "3DA Babe!" award by you before posting it! LOL Just like every woman I know, always wanting more.................................

Well I am known more for my brains...but I'll accept the "babe" tag if it makes you happy...........

[TheAllusionist]

I got what I wanted, I will leave the 'Babe' thing alone now, before I get myself in trouble! LOL

[d.sign]

First of all, I want to thank you Russell for this tittle...
Second, I like the appearance of it... very cool graphic...
Third, this is good way toward getting people to post more work and participate, while getting to feel good about their work...
Also I would suggest another category to award single image quality, similar to image of the week or something like that... I know that this is not tied to participation, but I think this would still give us some good points in the 3d world... I just think that if you give yourself a right to judge and award single images (like I think you could here), that will bring specific respect and credibility to the site... Of course, this calls for a sharp criteria and I know that is not in essence of your philosophy here... but just an idea...

[TheAllusionist]

It was actually Branko that lit a fire under my 'arse' to create this As for single image, if we get some decent new award/trophy images, the Forum Spotlight and Gallery Spotlight trophies could do that. I basically challenged membrs to come up with some graphics for that and we could then make sure to award them.

Glad you like them

[neil]

Great thinking Russell. Very cool feature indeed. Very very impressive. Thank you very much.