Picture story text- style and location

[Gepetto]

I would not want anyone to feel that where they place their captions in any way 'diminishes' their story or the time and energy they have expended in their creation. I would continue reading these stories even if the text ran up the sides, but we are creatures of habit and some things come more automatically to us than others (but we are also able to adapt quite readily when the need arises).

I am hoping the comments in this thread are taken as just a technical discussion of possibilities and not a judgement on the right or wrong way to do something that should be a 'labor of love' and not a graded assignment.

Everyone obviously puts a lot of time and thought into these projects and it is like looking into another person's workshop, very interesting to see how they perceive and work on things even if our perceptions and tools differ. The end results speak for themselves.



Gepetto

[Rasputin]

Yes my intent is only to find what the majority finds easiest to read and understand . I am not looking for criticism on anything other than where and what type of text . I enjoy everybody's stories and was really just wanting to adapt my layout . I do not read magazines or comic books so i have no idea what and how they are laid out as an industry standard . I hope to  someday be able to learn speech bubbles but for now i am limited to conventional text.

Tim W sorry my mistake i meant Little Jo you are far ahead of my abilities and i appreciate your comments but like many others i am "computer illiterate"

[Tim_w]

Tim W sorry my mistake i meant Little Jo you are far ahead of my abilities and i appreciate your comments but like many others i am "computer illiterate"

Hello Rasputin ,

No problem . I was going to say my skills with the computer aren't that far ahead of your own, and then i saw your correction

Tim 

[Little Jo]

I got the impression that I can read in the last posts a slight flavour of "disharmony" or "displeasure" or maybe only a misunderstanding about my contribution to this thread. Just to prevent any discussions in the wrong direction, I retract my comment from above. I didn't want to start any negative public judgement on other's work, how they present it, or about their computer abilities -- or even any further discussion about that. I'm far from this.

I thought comments on "Picture story text-style and location" are welcome and so I just wanted to share my personal general thoughts about photo stories; and because these are my thoughts for sure these do not have any objective universally validity, just a personal point of view. I totally agree with you Tim_w: there is no wrong way, just personal tastes. Also suggesting posting photo stories to the gallery instead to a thread was only a suggestion/idea (I've also posted in the past photo stories regularly to threads so this spontaneaous idea was no criticism).
In case I have offend sensibilities of anybody, made somebody "force" to have justify himself/herself about his/her work respective how he/she presents it, or make somebody feel that I judged his/her work as not valuable, negative, not laborious, or worse, I'm sorry for this and appoligze for. That was not my intention of posting here.

I only can agree that making a photo story is a lot of work to elaborate all the details, think out storylines, create setups, customize equipment/items, select and arrange photos, ... and finally post all the stuff for publication.

p.s.: Just preventative and before reacting on specific words or missleading sentence contstructions: I'm not a native English speaker ...  you can judge me on my German but not on my English

[Tim_w]

(For me it's quite "exhausting" to read photo stories where photos' content only differ slightly and you have to read a large paragraph of text below or on top of the photo to understand the picture -- in my eyes this is less a photo story but more a -- for sure also a good -- general story with illustrative photos where the text stands in the foreground; making a photo story I try to avoid this)

Hello Little Jo ,

No harm done and no offence taken . I think the only thing i 'misunderstood' was the paragraph that you wrote above. The reason i took a slight displeasure was that you had used small text to allmost hide what you were saying or to highlight you were not comfortable in saying it. That's the impression i got from the text size you used anyway, i guess it gave off a similar reaction to people using capitals for shouting. I don't know if that's just my reaction alone or that i am probably reading too much into it. Suffice to say it was the text size that caused a slight 'annoyance' for me. I guess the other thing that needs to be taken into account is that myself, Bill and firechief have been the only ones to post extensive photo story's of late. I guess you can't blame me for thinking that it was partly aimed at me
As i have said no offence has been taken and their is no damage done. At the end of the day we are all friends here, with the same passion for Playmobil wether that is modern theme's or historic themes like Romans.

Kindest Regards  Tim 

[Little Jo]

that you had used small text to allmost hide what you were saying or to highlight you were not comfortable in saying it.

Ah, ok, misunderstanding: I'm not using small size text for hiding something or naming things I'm not comfortable with, neither in business nor here. Instead, I use small font size in a footnote manner (typically footnotes in books are also printed in smaller font size): for remarks, additions, or comments to the main post, which only provide background/additional information and also can be omitted reading (like with footnotes).  If this leads to misinterpretation I'll not use it anymore.

So this was only a small note inbetween with a personal point of view. No offend, as I said: I retract it; just forget it.

[Gepetto]

I knew you did not mean to cause any disharmony Little Jo and I hope this misunderstanding will not keep you from posting your opinions in these matters in the future. I value your artistic and technical expertise in any language.



Gepetto

[Timotheos]

Hey Ras

I like speech bubbles, done up in power point. 
As for caption text for a photo-story without speech bubbles, I recommend that you keep the text short and place the text beneath the photo, so that the reader must pass his eyes over the photo to reach the text.  When I read a photo-story, my primary interest are the photos.  If the text runs too heavy, I skim or skip the text.

If you get rid of the photos, and the story still makes sense (ie. it reads like a prose short story), there is probably too much text...*

* Do I need to add the disclaimers that this is my own opinion?

-Tim

[Tim_w]

Hello Everyone ,

It seems as though everyone has different ways of making photo stories and in my humble opinion none of these are wrong. There are going to be people who like it done one way and those who like it done another, you can't please everyone all the time. What i can say for certain is that photo stories done in any way take a lot of time to complete.

Hello Tim,

I have noticed your way with words in several past discussions .
Now to the matter at hand. I will quote what I originally said because I think it said it all to be honest. Unfortunately I am going to go back on that seeing as a few people have shared their opinion's and constructive criticism's on the photo story's that have been posted of late . The thread was originally intended to discuss text placement and to a lesser extent picture size. Rasputin has even gone as far as saying this himself and I know he didn't intend for it to turn out like this.  It seems as though some people can't help but digress even futher into the realms of what they feel is the right way and the wrong way to do a photo story. It is clear that some of this is being aimed at my latest batch of story's. I allways try to be diplomatic and give credit where credit is due but when no one else bothers why should I ?

Speech Bubbles and Large Pictures:

Personally I am not a fan of speech bubbles in photo story's. I think adding a great big speech bubble coming out of a Klicky's mouth not only distracts the eye it spoils a very cleverly put together picture. When I look at a story with speech bubbles my eye is drawn away from the klicky and the background to the speech bubble. I end up not looking at any of the fine detail in the pictures and simply find myself reading the text. It works in comic book's and such like but not photo story's. Add to that pictures so big they mess up the forum page layout so bad that it compensates by adding a scroll bar and you have a recipe for disaster. In the end I usually see the one half of a picture that the forum has struggled to fit into the screen and leave the thread. I don't even take the time to skim through down to the bottom. I have a 17" monitor and it still can't cope with it. The rule of thumb is 640 x 480 repeat it to yourself over and over again and you won't fail .

Small Pictures:

I have noticed that some people use the forum to host their pictures straight off their computer (like I used to). Because the forum is hosting the picture and that takes up valuable space the pictures are displayed a lot smaller than normal. Infact a hell of a lot smaller than some of the 17" monsters that are posted here. I find people tend to skim half of these small pictures not even bothering to click on them and that is such a shame. I allways click on every small picture there is so i can view it in its larger form. The people who have added them deserve that for keeping them large enough to view without messing up my computer screen. They also deserve it for taking the time to add them for us to look at and share.

Paragraphs of Text:

I don't mind pictures with paragraphs of text, infact i really like it. It demonstrates to me that the person who is creating it is passionate about what they are doing. If i am interested in a subject i will quite happily spend hours reading it. If i am not interested in a topic i will still read it out of respect for what the person has done. It gives me an idea of their aspect of the hobby and what they get out of it. It shows me they have taken time to sit down and work things out, plan how things go together.

And Finally:

I think people are loosing sight of what actually makes this forum what it is. Without people providing content, whatever that may be and however it is presented this forum would be nothing. When Playmoboard split into two separate forums back in 2005 Playmofriends took with it some of the best and most active people in the Playmobil hobby. It is here they carried on this work and made the forum what it is today. If you don't like my work then don't even bother looking at my threads. If i want criticism constructive or otherwise I will ask for it .

Tim 
No Disclaimer Required

[Sylvia]

I like all Playmo-stories. Can't say that I prefer one style of captioning over another.

I think it's great that different members have different styles of presenting things - it's usually a true reflection of their personalities which adds to the whole photo-story experience.

Being short of time, however, I have to admit that I sometimes skim text if there is a real lot of it and just try to read the stuff that is the most relevant to the storyline. Very naughty of me, I know.