Forum idea

[spla5hmummy]

Just had this idea now so may not have thought it through entirely but couldn't wait see what you guys think. The idea is this:

Create a new forum under Painting and Modeling called 'The Bestiary' or something along those lines.

Inside it create a thread for each unit in the vampire codex.

Inside each thread everyone who wants to can post a picture of that particular unit in their army.

The point: Whenever someone wants to work on a particular unit in their army, they just go that that thread and instantly get a load of pretty pictures to look at to get ideas from. They don't have to do a search and sift through loads of various threads where people are leaving comments and whatnot.

It would kind of be a huge version of that section in the back of our codex that shows all the different models painted, except we'd have different manufacturers and scratchbuilds.

There'd have to be guidelines I guess. I'd personally lean towards encouraging people to not leave comments on other people's models in these threads. We may also want to put a limit on how many photos each person can put in. (Don't know if that's really necessary except to stop people from having to scroll through 15 pics of the same model to get onto something different.) We'd probably want to specify that models should be fully painted and based as well. Not much point in WIPs being in there.

So erm...good idea or rubbish? :grin:

 

[Kindred Bloodslear]

A couple weeks back, I was looking for pix of Grave Guard with Great Weapons, since I don't have the new ones and all of the shots I could Google were with HW + Shield. Needless to say it took me a while before I even found a half-decent picture...

That said, it's a great idea!

It could be more like the painting section (as opposed to just a display) by allowing the posters to list the paints & the steps they used to on their models. That way, not only are you getting exposure to the models, but also paint jobs, and if you like one - "borrow" it! I know that would border on the "painting/modeling" forum, but it would keep things condensed.

Some other alternatives include creating it as a subforum of "Painting and Modeling > Painting & Modeling" and creating a stickied thread where people can post their units - the trick would be organizing them by unit type (perhaps a volunteer mod updating a locked thread?).

In keeping with the undead theme, we could call it "The Mortuary" or "The Morgue" (Bestiary, while logical, doesn't sound...dead enough ).

Great idea! :grin:

 

[Josef]

only thing i could see going wrong with that is that we kinda already have something like that in the way of a plog and this might get turned into just another plog section...but it is a good concept.

 

[Arion]

A nice idea, but it should have been in the suggestions thread...

 

[spla5hmummy]

There's a suggestions thread? Oops... Can a moderator move it please?

This won't replace plogs. A plog is a personal area where you can display your entire army, explain your ideas and get the comments of your peers. This will only be pictures and will have everyone's in, not just those of one person. The grouping by unit is an important difference too.

 

[The Dark Sheep]

Awesomome idea. I vote "YES" on this one.

 

[Genesis84]

Great idea!

I've just started out with VC (miniatures inbound through mail) and is going to do all these searches in a weeks time or so.

 

[robh]

I think this is a good idea and should be adopted.

My VC army is pretty much finished but knowing the difficulty I had finding images of some figures/variants a bestiary would have been a great help.

Need to make sure it also covers character and troop types from past versions of the lists not just the current one. (Bloodlines!)

 

[Skorne]

Yes, please. Excellent idea!

 

[Genesis84]

I would also like to see that all pictures are of the exact same resolution. Could be annoying when people are posting too large or too small pictures. I'd also like to see that you cannot write too much text along with it. Perhaps a single boldface comment under each picture, combined with a link to your painting-log where people could post comments to your pictures.

If not anyone else volunteers for getting this up and going, I guess I could do it. I'm still a skeleton, but if anyone dears to give me administrator-privledges, then I could start creating threads & subforums right away.

 

[LongFang]

Great idea! i vote yes too.

 

[SethDrallitoc]

Get's my vote!

 

[spla5hmummy]

I would also like to see that all pictures are of the exact same resolution. Could be annoying when people are posting too large or too small pictures. I'd also like to see that you cannot write too much text along with it.

I think it's a bit much to ask everyone to make their pictures a specific size. We should certainly consider asking people to keep them within a certain size range to prevent them running off the page or being indistinct.

I would like to see no text at all but a link to a painting blog is certainly reasonable. People will want to go and see where non GW models came from and find out how the model was painted. The Plog is definitely the place for that.