A mascot
I saw some people talking about a mascot so I decided to start a thread about it. With a name like haiku I think the most obvious mascot would be the panda. Haiku is japanese so it fits perfectly, not only that its a very cute animal :).
I saw some people talking about a mascot so I decided to start a thread about it. With a name like haiku I think the most obvious mascot would be the panda. Haiku is japanese so it fits perfectly, not only that its a very cute animal :).
Comments
A mascot
Pandas are found only in southwestern China, along the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau.
Animals figure importantly in the culture of Japan. Chinese classical literature is the source of many of the beliefs embraced by the Japanese about various animals. The Japanese adopted such traditional animal symbols as cranes (for happiness and longevity) :D and turtles (for a faithful return) :D .
Then there is the ancient Chinese calendar system, in which 1 animal (rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, cock, dog, and boar) represents each subcycle of 12 years.
2004 is the year of the monkey. "If you are born in the Year of the Monkey, you are very intelligent, well-liked by everyone, and will have success in any field you choose. Lucky old you!" :D
Perhaps the answer is the Japanese Macaque. The paper sculptures at the URL below look kinda cute!
http://www.yamaha-motor.co.jp/global/entertainment/papercraft/animal/jap...
A mascot
Why not a autumn leaf as the mascot?
Far more concise than an animal or an abstract living form :D
How about a Humming Bird
How about a humming bird?
There lightweight fast and speedy
I can flap they're wings hundreds of times per second
I think a hummingbird would make a excellant mascot
Its four in the morning
Sorry about the poor english above
(Yes it is my native language ;)
what I meant to say was
that the hummingbird can flap its wings
hundreds of times per second
and people like them
and plus it would be cool
to do a set of animated hummingbird cursors
A mascot
I tend to agree I think the leaf is a pretty damn good logo / mascot :D
Re: A mascot
hm maybe a dragon ? :)
its a strong, fast and have a magic power hehe :)
to defeat other os :D
Re: How about a Humming Bird
A humming bird is alreade the mascot of a software company.
A mascot is a must..
A mascot is a must..
i think a leaf would do fine..
Humming bird is also a good choice (or some kind of a colorful bird)
:P Hey ! how about some kind of a cute little colorful fish..?
Please.. no Dragons anyway..
A mascot
Yeah, a ratoxtigerrabbitdragonsnakehorsesheepmonkeycockdogandboar! Would fit perfectly onto a boot screen. :P
A mascot
well openbsd has a fish, ximian a monkey, who has a bird ? i think it's a cool idea
A mascot
You need to get your marketing right. Yellow leaves are dead leaves! Make it a gold plated leaf... :lol:
Mascot
Hummingbird sounds good, how about making the Hummingbird from Origami?
Here is a link where they have some samples:
http://www.paperfolding.com/diagrams/
Lou G.
A mascot
How about a tree.
Re: Mascot
More people seems to agree with the Humming bird..
But dont make it a Hummingbird from Origami :cry:
I think it should be very colorful and Cartoonish.. :wink:
I suggest those with creative minds to submitt their versions of HummingBird.. (or may be any new idea of a mascot)
Mascot
For any german speaker it must be obvious which should be the mascot for Haiku...
Introducing the "Haikuh":
:lol: :? :roll: :wink:
A mascot
that's just a load of bullshark dude :lol:
A mascot
You're absolutely right. Bullsh...whatever...
But I still think that "sharkcow" is kind of a funny name for an operating system. On the other hand, it's definitely more inspired than a name that designates things you put into holes in a wall: "windows", "doors", "curtains", etc... And it's better than being so thrifty to give the OS just one letter: "OS X", "OS Y", "OS Z", ...
I'm sorry if I keep pointing out negative points, but I'm afraid the current logo and a colourful bird as a mascot don't go too well together either: the red, green and yellow leaves look quite like feathers to me and next to a colourful bird that certainly evokes a plucked bird... It may represent the current state of the BeOS community, but I really hope we can find a better picture for its future!!!
A mascot
An ideal animal mascot to go with Haiku might be a 'Walking Stick' (aka 'Stick Insect').
This very docile and strictly vegetarian insect (that has never caused any pests) seems to me to be a good subject for graphic artists, looking almost abstract by itself already.
Re: Mascot
HAHAHAHA I also understand it as a dutchie :lol: :lol:
A mascot
We need an official poll on the Haiku frontpage! :P
A mascot
I always thought that this was mascot!
it is not pretty? for me always he will be! 8) :D :D 8)
A mascot
I don't like mascots as an OS logo, i preffer an abstract logo or an object. The cirlce of leaves is great!
A mascot
that file doesn't appear to exist.
A mascot
He meant http://haiku-os.org/images/icons/icon16.ico
and for some reason the [img][/img] tags aren't working here - maybe they're turned off?
A mascot
How about a Tanuki. It is cute, cuddly and definitely Japanese(provided we want to stick with a Japanese-esque theme). Not quite a panda, but certainly more fun.
A mascot
It might be because its a .ico file.. generally they aren't displayed in browsers as graphics
A mascot
Now that we have the right link...
I like that little icon too. As a mascot, well... maybe. You could have a penguin covered in a pile of leaves, or a Windows logo covered in a pile of leaves, or a Mac face covered in a pile of leaves...
Oh, I see, no mascot. Well, that works too. :)
Kev
A mascot
ico = windows icon, which aren't really graphics
luckily enough for most of us, our browser will handle it even if we aren't in windows, and display it in the address bar
A mascot
Is that setup to be the favicon, because it doesn't show up as a favicon in any of my browsers.
A mascot
Scratch that, it works in IE, just not right away.. Doesn't seem to work in firefox at all though.
A mascot
it works every once-in-a-while for me in firefox... I'm not really sure why... but yes, it is set up to be the favicon
A mascot
It works for me in ff for the hopepage. It would be nice if it could be done for the forums too!
Favicon
Not on every page - it is in the front page's source, but not in the forum-pages for example.
However there's also a related bug in Firefox in that it often does not store the image as the bookmark's icon, but only displays it in the address bar.
Hope they fix that for 1.0...
As for the icon and mascot - I would also strongly encourage an abstract approach that resembles or elaborates on the logo, like the icon, which is nice - it's really more mature and "advanced" and would symbolise the individuality and originality of Haiku much better than some mundane image of whatever.
Just my 0.2,
Hugh
Racoon? Dog? Tanuki!
Yes! What better than the notorius racoondog... (did anyone else catch the leaf reference here, or was it just me?)
Re: Mascot
(deleted)
This is japanese......
http://www.imperialdoughnut.fsnet.co.uk/dl/wall/domokun.jpg
A mascot
How about a beautiful fairy sitting on a leaf with a giant golden fork?
1. Beautiful ... because isn't that what Haiku is?
2. Fairy ... lightweight, fast, nimble : all things you want from an OS.
3. You seem to like leaves
4. Fork ... well, it's not a code fork, but it's going to be a feature fork.
5. Gold ... or any colour that isn't red, because FreeBSD/Darwin use red.
A mascot
What are they then? They always used to be noncompressed bitmaps.
A mascot
.ico's are actually strange formats (but generally supported by many graphics programs) - a single .ico file can actually contain all sorts of images in different sizes and color depths... for instance, when downloading .ico graphics from the internet, many artists provide 16x16, 24x24, 32x32, 48x48, 64x64, 72x72, 96x96, and 128x128 pixel versions of their icon, and then they may provide various bitdepths for each one of those (4 bit, 8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit, and 32 bit are common) - there's also no guarantee that each of the different sizes and bitdepths are even the same graphic, they can be completely different if desired by the author...
all of this allows your operating system to use the proper sized graphic depending on the chosen icon-size for file listings, toolbars, etc. If an ico files doesn't contain an image of the proper size and depth, the next closest size is scaled and/or dithered (this process is slower and usually ugly) to make it fit.
This is why SVG is becoming popular for icons - no need to support multiple icon sizes to suit the OS and user's desires, literally one-size-fits-all :)
It needs to be an animal
Why leaves, man that's as dead as our competitors want Haiku to be. It definetly needs to be an animal, how else can you make cute mascots to put in your room or to give to your children.
I mean Tux is cute and when you see Tux you think of Linux, if Tux was a leaf you could only use it to wipe your *ss with.
I think that racoon is cool, it's small lightweight, smart fast and cute creature if now a talented designer would come up with design.
A mascot
As may be, but afaik they are still always uncompressed bitmaps. You can have a bitmap of arbitary size; doesn't stop it being a bitmap.
Windows scales/stretches the bitmap to a specific size but that's not changing the file format.
If you create a *.bmp in any image editor, convert it to the system pallet (not-optimised 256 colour), save it and rename it to *.ico ... you will get a little icon... it will probably look ugly because their are specific rules for transparency and alpha-channel.
A mascot
I got it, a puffer fish! :)
Haiku is a type of (Japanese?) poem, but in the examples I have seen it is used in relation to death, grief, or respect...
There is a famous Haiku about a puffer fish... well, about eating a puffer fish. This is popular because they are poisonous and eating them is "playing with death".
So I think the Haiku maskot should be a puffer fish, which sometimes looks cute ... Puffer fish are dangerous to prey and dangerous to predators!!
Maybe a yellow Puffer Fish, because yellow was the colour of BeOS.
However, I still think the fork would be good because of Zeta. Zeta is the closed source continuation of BeOS (Zeta 1.x = BeOS R6) ... and presumably once Haiku 1.x is complete, it will not continue to copy Zeta... resulting in a fork!
Much like BSD is a fork of UNIX... and today FreeBSD has almost nothing in common with SCO UnixWare (despite both coming from AT&T UNIX).
Sooo.... what do people think of a Cartoon-like Yellow Puffer Fish, holding a Black Fork? :D
A mascot
Note: Fish in these photes are not puffed up though
Spotted Yellow Puffer...
Yellow Puffer...
A mascot
Also, Microsoft really likes fish... they always add fish images or screensavers to their OS.
Ussually a shoal of peaceful fish, following a leader (Bill Gates?)
But Haiku (the killer puffer fish) can invade and take over! ;)
A mascot
Well, to end this discussion, why not a pool, with all these options (including a small image) in the front page? As with what happened when choosing the name, this could be very effective. Maybe the "Creative Design" and "Website" team could came with an idea or two (creating a squeme to accept submiting samples, image sizes and format).
My suggestion for the image standard:
Vector-type graphics (er... SVG? Obviosly, please, NO bitmapped stuff, this can be generated later, we all know that).
If somebody is thinking in a "living form", you could push it further and request a 3D model (hmm... sounds nice to me, but in which format?)
Base size for viewing: (I couldn't think in a historical value through all those years being a BeOS user)
Folks, I know that a visual identity is indeed necessary but it's not mandatory at a first sight. We all have a lot to accomplish first, so then we all could enjoy what this mascot represents and all the work behind it.
I know I'm not the one to came bossing around with this since I'm just another unknown, non expressive, non representative user, but it's just what I'm thinking right now.
I don't have time to breath the last weeks so I'm contributing with ideas and maybe building some documentation.
And I reaffirm: between the commercial option and Haiku, all my bets are on Haiku.
Time is the most precious resource to waste. You will know it when every project you want finished don't have a single contribution of you, as with what happened to me and BeRDP: not even a single line in 3 years; all the credit goes to Sikosis.
Doca
An ashamed user.
A mascot
http://www.openbsd.org/
hey look, there's a pufferfish all puffed up =P
As of yet, the admin team has no official stance on the idea of a mascot. Once we can all agree on weather or not we want a mascot, we may end up doing something like this.
A mascot
So, to review:
-- Raccoon? (Tanooki... As long as we avoid making it look like Meeko from "Disney's Pocahontas")
-- Pufferfish? (Potentially conflicts with current FreeBSD campaign for the latest release, 3.5)
-- Hummingbird? (Potentially conflicts with a Seagate campaign for their Momentus notebook HDD's, although their use of hummingbirds are bitmapped, and not iconized as a vector graphic.)
My suggesstion? Keep it distinct.
The Grey Heron, or as it's called in Japanese, Ao-Sagi, is keeping with the implied theme of Asian/Pacific wildlife and indigenous to Northern Japan. The bird is diminuitive, agile, and is a waterfoul, which could easily incorporate the autumn leaves already in the Haiku logo.
Here's a photo... The feather tuft at the back of the head caught my eye first as a photographer myself: this bird is distinct enough to be cartoonized like Tux or the BSD Devil, or formalized like most business graphics of animals. It's also far away from the hummingbird we've all exausted as an option.
Grey Heron (This photo is copyrighted, otherwise, I'd have added it to this post.)
http://www.fsinet.or.jp/~bird/bird/photo/heron/aosagi.html
Heck, even the pose looks usable in the possible making of this graphic. If this sounds like something to go with, please reply, or if a different animal still screams to you "HAIKU ME!", tell us about it. Otherwise, I'll take this photo and play with Adobe Illustrator and see what I can come up with for y'all.
Re: A mascot
Sorry, but I realy think that a mascot is only bullshit.
Haiku logo is perfect.
A mascot
While I think that the Haiku logo is gorgeous in it's simplistic elegance I do like the idea of a Mascot. It's more hands on and tends to fit into various images/graphics in a way that an alphanumeric logo doesn't.
As for my vote: I love the idea of an origami hummingbird.
A mascot
I'd vote for a raccoon if it looked like this:
