Lemojis!

[WillLem]

Hi site maintainers,

I've designed a few emojis to add to the board if you like them.

All best,

WillLem

[grams88]

Hi WillLem, you sure have contributed a lot already WillLem, it will be interesting seeing the new Emojis, see what Namida thinks of it.

[Simon]

Yes, several good ones! (forehead) and (cat) are very important to have.

I'll merge them when I find time these weeks. Other admins might have more time.

Critique on (rolling eyes), (excited), and (cute): These are hard to distinguish from some existing smileys, and from each other. I encourage hyperbole, the smiley should have one feature that overwhelms the picture, usually large eyes or large mouth. Can you improve these?

For fair comparison: The existing smileys are much worse, many are impossible to distinguish without squinting. Also lots of redundancy, we need one smiley with surprised googly eyes, not 3. The reason that we still have 3 is that pepole complain about every healthy purge, and we've have no strong mind to withstand that complaining. Also so many Lix smileys that we all merged without proper weeding. Lots of existing stuff should eventually move to the [more...] link of the post editor.

I've even run database analyses to see what can be cut. The problem is that everything gets used over time, makes outright culls hard. But we certainly must improve here. The post editor is agonizingly slow to load, to present us with confiserie exclusiv, such as the marquee button.

-- Simon

[namida]

Sounds like you've put far more thought into this than I likely ever have or will - I'll leave it to you to make the call on these, then. I have no objection to adding more if they're useful / good.

[WillLem]

Any advance with this?

[ccexplore]

Sorry for the delay, it seems like no other admin has interested in doing this, and I'm very rusty on how to make it happen.  But I've finally added them today, you will see them in the 3rd row after the gold/silver/bronze talismans.

If you want to tweak the graphics, just send me updated GIF files with same filenames and I'll upload them to our server to replace the current version of file.

[WillLem]

A couple more lemojis - :shrug: and :geek:

Note: :shrug: is animated; I've also included a static, non-animated version

[Silken Healer]

People are allowed to just make lemojis for the forum without being a mod or like applying to be an artist? I didn't know that, maybe I should have a go at making some.

Anyway this is my feedback on them:

:shrug: - The static version kind of just look like lumps on the side of the lem, but I feel the animated version you can tell what it's supposed to be due to the movement.

:geek: - Because the emojis are normally small and a small icon on the message, the glasses kind of blend into the outline and it looks more like a if anything. unfortunatley I'm not really a fan of this one.

[607]

Designing emoticons is fun, but I've always felt like the Lemmings case is made a lot harder by them not having a mouth... There's only so much you can tell by someone's eyes!

[WillLem]

People are allowed to just make lemojis for the forum without being a mod or like applying to be an artist?

It's a free forum, you're allowed to do as you wish unless you're in violation of site rules/guidelines. Making lemojis for the site is, as I understand it, just as welcome as creating levels for one of the clone engines.

I didn't know that, maybe I should have a go at making some.

Go ahead!

Thanks for taking the time to give some feedback. I agree with what you've said about :geek:, the glasses do kind of just blend into the outline. A simple way around this is to change the colour of the frames; I tried a few different colours and settled on orange, see what you think.

As for :shrug:, at this point I'd probably only want the animated version to be included with the regular set, if at all. I agree that the static one is a bit unclear.

Designing emoticons is fun, but I've always felt like the Lemmings case is made a lot harder by them not having a mouth... There's only so much you can tell by someone's eyes!

Therein lies the challenge! There are many ways to push the limits of the format to make them more expressive:

Something as simple as adding two spots of colour to the cheeks for Embarrassed and Cute is enough to convey their meaning fairly well
Huh? adds a question mark to convey confusion and/or inquisitiveness
Crylaugh adds teardrops to the regular Laugh lemoji , presenting a more expressive laugh
Forehead slap adds a hand to the forehead to show exasperation, frustration, embarrassment, sarcasm, etc - the facepalm has always been a very versatile emoji
Lemcat blends feline features into the regular lemming face - this one's inspired by the cat face emoji
Sleep adds zzz's, of course

Most of these additions are based on regular emojis that can be found on various platforms, so most people are likely to be familiar with them and get what's going on.

The challenge for the designer is to continue to play around with the format to see what's possible.

[Silken Healer]

People are allowed to just make lemojis for the forum without being a mod or like applying to be an artist?

It's a free forum, you're allowed to do as you wish unless you're in violation of site rules/guidelines. Making lemojis for the site is, as I understand it, just as welcome as creating levels for one of the clone engines.

Where I was thinking was though, if you make a lemmings engine that's entirely by yourself. But someone has to upload the emojis to the site. Though in your example if someone made an engine for Lemmings and it got enough support it might had a board made about it so I see your point.

People are allowed to just make lemojis for the forum without being a mod or like applying to be an artist?

Thanks for taking the time to give some feedback. I agree with what you've said about :geek:, the glasses do kind of just blend into the outline. A simple way around this is to change the colour of the frames; I tried a few different colours and settled on orange, see what you think.

Np! And my new feedback is the orange glasses don't really fit the geek emoji imo. You don't commonly see orange glasses irl and it looks more like just an acssesory. I do prefer it to the first one though.

As for :shrug:, at this point I'd probably only want the animated version to be included with the regular set, if at all. I agree that the static one is a bit unclear.

and yeah, I'd be fine with :shrug: being added if it was animated.

also sorry if the quotes look mucked up I think I did it wrong

[Silken Healer]

Is there any updates on whether :shrug: and :geek: will ever be added?

[WillLem]

Is there any updates on whether :shrug: and :geek: will ever be added?

I've added a poll. If enough people show interest, could these be added please?

Quick links to the lemojis:

Link 1 - original versions of both
Link 2 - direct download for "orange glasses" variant of :geek: (downloads as a .gif)

[Silken Healer]

Is there any updates on whether :shrug: and :geek: will ever be added?

I've added a poll. If enough people show interest, could these be added please?

I don't get why they can't just be added now. Any emojis are good by default as they give more ways to express yourself. It's not like making a board for a new engine where you have to consider e.g. required audience etc. it's just a picture of a lemming

Still I suppose I'll vote

[WillLem]

I don't get why they can't just be added now

The poll is more to get an idea of whether people are interested. If they are, I imagine the request has more weight than if it's just me asking to have my lemojis added.

Thanks for showing support! That's how things happen