vicmarcal wrote:Impressive work!
Thanks!
justincase wrote:The ones on the left are XP's icons, because the ones on the right have smooth gradients, and XP used lower resolution icons than what's being shown (thus upon being blown up the gradients appear less smooth)
You're right! And I'm glad to know that's the most visible difference between them.
vicmarcal wrote:While the arrow icon could be perfectly used(because they really look different and because an arrow is an arrow), the My Computer one looks so similar that even having them placed together we can't spot the differences.
The reason for this is that I've spent about 15 minutes on the arrow and the rest of 3 days on the My Computer icon.
justincase wrote:So as not to have our methods questioned, it's probably better not to have identical (or almost identical) icons in ReactOS, I'm pretty sure we can get functionally identical icons without them being (almost) indistinguishable.
Well, we already have this, and it's called Tango.
Frontier wrote:We can't use those, they're clearly copies of copyright material.
The ones on the left are copies, the ones on the right are not. They were entirely created by me. Like ReactOS is not a copy of Windows. Please clarify your point.
vicmarcal wrote:
However that can fall into "they can create confusion" (Apple sued Samsung,etc,etc)
Something cool would be to get some "inspiration" in the gradients, soft colors, kind of lines, but giving it some changes.
For example:
- The bright LED instead being in the bottom it could be in the top corner.
- The base instead being a circle it could be a semi-circle.
- The screen could be Wide-screen instead the old format one.
- The two lines details could be one or placed upper or lower
- Etc
The idea of having an XP-alike icon is that the user knows the icon means "My Computer" but that if he confronts both icons he can say "oh! I thought they were the same but really they look so different."
So the problem is that
they can create confusion.
<fool_mode,_please_don't_take_seriously>
Well, in order to avoid confusion, wouldn't it be enough to put a large ReactOS logo to the default desktop wallpaper like oldman did here:
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=13352?
ReactOS already uses many portions of Windows design (window layouts, fonts, font sizes, translations, application names, 'classic theme' aka window style when themes is turned off). Gigaherz is making shell as similar to Windows' one at it's possible.
Is design the right place to show that ReactOS is not Windows? And if it is, why just icons sould be different?
</fool_mode,_please_don't_take_seriously>
Anyway, I can try to make some changes as you propose.
The next question is:
Are those [very similar to Windows]/[in Windows style, but different] icons needed

As I've made the two just for fun and as a proof-of-concept.
justincase wrote:I'd guess the best way (for one person on their own) to do this is to look at the icon they're basing their icon off of, make some notes about what makes it what it is (either mentally or physically/digitally) then make their new icon entirely by themselves (without looking at the 'original' again), then when done compare them, and if theirs isn't similar enough to be considered "functionally identical", note the issues with it, put away the 'original', and fix whatever issues they had with it (rinse & repeat till happy

).
Yep that's the right way of making completely independent iconset using style of another one. But as I'm not an artist or any sort of designer it would be difficult for me to get all those reflections, colors, shadows etc. right without any reference image. But if anybody else volunteers to do this...
