Daniel_Newton (Level 24)

Hi there, welcome to "Building a Better Wiki", a blog series originally started on Anime Vice where I aim to explore different aspects of our wiki database to find out how to best utilize them or improve upon them to make our wiki even more awesome.

The default/main images used on people and character pages are perhaps one of the most inconsistent aspects of the wiki. Some images are just the face, some are full body shots, some even have the person or character disappearing into the distance. This not only makes the pages inconsistent across the wiki, but also makes lists (user created lists or lists built into the wiki in various places) look bad because icons and thumbnails don't match. Depending on what image has been used, sometimes a character or person's face isn't even visible when that image becomes an icon.

So, to improve consistency, here are my suggested guidelines:

Cropping the Image

• Dimensions: 300 x 450 (position the face within the top 300 x 300 pixels)
• Format: PNG (the small icons look horrible in JPG format)
• Preferred Sources: high resolution photos, high quality screen captures
• Do Not Use: transparent PNG of GIF, vector trace, fan art, old pictures. Try to find the most recent picture of the person or character.

Uploading/Naming/Applying

1. Caption each image "Name (Profile Portrait)" e.g: "Emma Watson (Profile Portrait)" or "Jean-Luc Picard (Profile Portrait)"
2. Add each image to the appropriate profile portrait gallery page: Fictional Characters or Real People
3. On the person or character page, add a gallery called "Profile Portraits" and add the image there
4. View the image and click "Make Default Image" (if you don't see that option just ask someone here to do it)
5. Finally, post your profile portraits in this thread, that keeps the thread alive and encourages more to join in

Here are some examples using these guidelines:

As you can see, the images are consistent and translate well into icons which appear throughout the wiki. This format should work for 90% of the people and characters in our database, with the exceptions being things like monsters and other non-humanoid characters, for those we can just use 300 x 300 images.

While these guidelines aren't set-in-stone rules right now, I hope they make sense and very much encourage you to use them. It's already made a big difference over on Anime Vice, so myself and my fellow Screened moderators thought it would be a good idea to implement these guidelines here, too.

Tutorial

For those of you having trouble re-sizing and cropping images, here's a tutorial to hopefully make things a little easier. This tutorial uses Paint.NET, a free image editor for Windows (sorry Mac/Linux users) though if you use Adobe Photoshop this guide may still be helpful.

Click here to reveal tutorial.

Profile Portrait Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to create profile portraits and show you where to upload the images.

Tools

• Paint.NET (download for free here)

Materials

• Template Image (download here)
• Character/Person Image (for this tutorial I used this screen cap of Elesa)

Creating the Portrait

1. Launch Paint.NET and open the template image.
2. Drag and drop your character image onto the template, pick the Add layer option.
3. Go to the Layers box and move the image layer below the template layer.
4. Optional: Zoom Out to make re-sizing easier, especially with large images.
5. Go to Tools and select the Move Selected Pixels tool (the blue cursor icon).
   -- You should now see a black outline of your image, if you can't see it, move the image around or zoom out more.
6. Important: Hold down the Shift Key on your keyboard (this maintains the aspect ratio) and re-size the image by dragging the corner points. Move the image and re-size until the head is inside the top square section of the template.
   -- Generally you want to keep the head inside that square, the top of the head touching the top and the chin touching the bottom. Don't worry if some hair goes outside the template, focus on the face and head.
7. Hit the Enter Key on your keyboard when you're done.
8. Go to the Layers box. Delete the template layer.
9. Go to Image in the toolbar and select Canvas Size, change the width to 300 pixels and height to 450 pixels. Make sure the Anchor is Top Left.
   -- Your image should now be cropped to the correct size, if something went wrong, you can undo edits using the History box.
10. Done? Go to File, Save As, change the type to PNG and click Save. Leave settings on Auto-detect and click OK.

Well Done!

Ta-da! You should now have a nice new portrait image for a character or person page. If so, pat yourself on the back. If not... start again and read each step carefully.

~Thanks for reading, keep up the good wiki work!

Welcome to Featured Figures; a blog feature highlighting a handful of figures, my thoughts on them, the dents they'd leave in your wallet and maybe even links to sites you can buy them from. Let me know what you want to see from these blogs and I'll see what I can do.

After getting some good feedback across all the sites I'm keeping this blog feature going, now featuring figures spanning across anime, comics, movies and video games. Something for everyone.

This post is best viewed in blog format.

Chie Satonaka, Figma (Max Factory)

Strike a pose, Chie

It's my understanding that there are possibly a few Chie fans out there, so here's one for you guys; the Chie Figma by Max Factory.

Chie comes with a variety of different faces and accessories you can swap around to your liking. She's also posable, so other than changing her outfit you can pretty much get her looking exactly how you want. She comes with a standard face, a shouting face and even a Shadow Chie face. Accessories include glasses, joke nose glasses and a swoosh effect piece to attach to her leg for some kicking action. Looks like a nice figure with a lot of options.

As a side note, if you dig some good cosplay there are a couple of different Chie sets in the cosplay thread.

Chie can be pre-ordered for $46.79 (approx £30.41) on YesAsia

Samus Aran, Figma (Max Factory)

Don't mess with this chick

Since several people mentioned in the previous blog that they prefer a fully suited-up Samus over Zero Suit Samus, here's another figma by Max Factory of just that; Power Suit Samus from Metroid: Other M.

Like the Chie figure, Samus comes with several bits and pieces to customize her with. Included is a Morph Ball, two different beam effects (single and double-shot), an opened canon tip (as if she's firing missiles) and a few different hands; open, closed and thumbs-up.

As you can tell from the images this figure is very posable, equipped with a figma stand to keep her up so you can recreate just about any of the well-known poses Samus has done over the years.

Samus can be pre-ordered for $55 (approx £35) on Hobbyfan

Iron Man Mark VII, ARTFX Statue, 1/6 scale (Kotobukiya)

Iron Man: Destroyer of Concrete

Taking the bad-ass award this week is the Avengers Iron Man Mark VII ARTFX Statue by Kotobukiya. Tony's on the seventh version of his Iron Man suit already? Dude works fast.

No articulation or custom pieces here folks, this is just one solid, shiny, high quality statue. I think it's actually kind of harder to get figures like this and Samus wrong in a lot of ways. Faces are hard to get right, especially real faces. Robot-suits like these are more mathematical - make everything the correct shape and size and you're set. Even so, this thing looks amazing. The ripped-up concrete beneath Tony's feet here really completes the package. Makes Iron Man look super-heavy and powerful.

Oh, his chest and eyes also light up, as if the damn thing wasn't cool enough already.

Here's a question: who wins in a fight between Samus and Iron Man? I like Samus as much as anyone else, but I think I'd have to give that one to Iron Man. Maybe they should put him in the next Super Smash Bros. game...

Iron Man can be pre-ordered for $130 (approx £82) on Amazon

Natsu Dragneel, HQF, 1/8 scale (Tsume)

Even in anime, few dudes can pull off pink hair

My love for Fairy Tail is no secret. I like to think of it as Bleach and Naruto's cheeky little brother that runs around causing mayhem, it's a fun show to watch with a ton of likeable characters. I was pleasantly surprised to see some good Fairy Tail figures coming out, starting with this Natsu Dragneel HQF (High Quality Figure) by Tsume.

As a Fire Dragon Slayer, the plastic fire engulfing Natsu's hand is a great touch, it could have been a solid red or orange colour, but the mixture of orange and yellow and the red tips make it look really nice. The hair and attention to detail on the scarf look particularly good too.

The detail on the eyes and teeth is something I haven't seen much of before. It looks like someone drew the face with a fine marker pen or something. I usually prefer the sort of stuck-on pre-printed eyes you see on a lot of anime figures over painted ones, but it works pretty well here I think.

Natsu can be pre-ordered for €79.90 (approx $105 or £66) on tsume-art

Yoko Littner, 1/8 scale, Bounty Hunter Ver. (Alter)

The holster is the most practical thing on her

The last featured figure this week is the Yoko Littner "Bounty Hunter" figure by Alter. I haven't watched much Gurren Lagann so I don't know if Yoko actually dons this outfit at some point in the anime, but it's a cool figure regardless.

Yoko, being as popular as she is, has been rendered in plastic many times, but this figure is definitely up there as one of the best. Judging be the huge burn-holes in her overcoat she's been having a rough time, though other than a few bandages around her right hand her body is relatively unscathed. Yoko's enemies need some target practice.

Strangely enough the thing that jumps out at me most is Yoko's gun holster. They really nailed the leather look with that, the fake stitching looks great and the strap around her leg is a nice little detail that could have been left out, but wasn't. The sizes of the guns seems a little off though. The pistol looks huge and Yoko's trusty sniper rifle looks a little smaller than usual (it usually looks considerably bigger than her). Maybe it's just too big on other figures, either way these are small complaints in the grand scheme of things.

Yoko is listed at $105 (approx £66) on Hobbyfan but is currently sold out.

What do you think of the selection this week? Would Iron Man beat Samus in a fight? Already ordered a Chie figure of your own?

— Daniel Newton is a moderator for Anime Vice and Screened. Follow him on twitter: @Daniel_Newton and @AnimeVicers

Other posts: • Dragon Ball Z Kinect Game Announced • Featured Figures #01 • Oreimo Season 2 Announced!

Note: After writing this for Anime Vice and then posting it to Comic Vine as well, I thought I may as well post it here too. Should be interesting to see how much/how little interest there is. Best viewed in blog form. Original post here.

Welcome to Featured Figures; a blog feature highlighting a handful of figures, my thoughts on them, the dents they'd leave in your wallet and maybe even links to sites you can buy them from. Let me know what you want to see from these blogs and I'll see what I can do.

Son Goku SSJ, 1/8th scale, Clear Hair Ver. (Medicos Entertainment)

Screaming, as usual

This is easily one of the most bad-ass Dragon Ball Z figures I've seen, and boy has there been a lot of DBZ figures over the years. Not only does this Goku figure have really great looking clothes--all the folds and highlights look really great--but look at that hair. Dude has glass hair, well... I imagine it's really semi-transparent plastic, but it certainly looks the part.

This is version 2 of the figure, with the original featuring boring not-awesome hair, so clearly this is the version to get. The equally awesome Super Saiyan aura around Goku's feet is also a great touch.

What do you think? Is glass hair cool or weird?

Goku is listed at ¥9,200 on Amazon Japan (approx $112 or £71) and $117 on Hobbyfan but currently out of stock.

Samus Aran, 1/8th scale, Zero Suit ver. (Max Factory)

Sleek Samus

I have a weird relationship with Metroid games. I acknowledge that they're great, in fact I think very highly of them, but I don't think I've ever finished any of them. Particularly whenever I take a crack at Metroid Prime, I just don't get on with it, not really sure why. Maybe I'll finish one eventually, in the meantime I'll just admire gorgeous figure renditions of Samus like this Metroid: Other M figure from Max Factory. If it's too hard to tell Samus is a woman with her power suit on, there's certainly no question when she takes it off.

I love how sleek this figure looks, I don't know if Samus normally looks as tall as she does here, but I guess I haven't played Other M so maybe one of you knows better than me. There's some nice detail on the gun, and the Metroid looks great too.

Samus can be pre-ordered for $103 on Hobbyfan (approx £65) or $130 on J-List (approx £82)

Kobato Hasegawa & Maria Takayama, 1/7th scale (Max Factory)

Super cute

Okay, I haven't watched Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai yet, but these figures are adorable. These are sold as two separate figures, but as you can tell they obviously go together, which is a classic trick to get twice as much of your hard-earned money from you.

I literally can't find fault with either of these figures. They're cute, the hair looks good (while not quite as glassy-looking as Goku's hair, it's similar) and their outfits look especially great. I appreciate it when sculptors put in extra effort to make the clothes look separate from the figure, you know, like actual clothes. Like the "Zero Suit" Samus is wearing, these playboy-style catgirl outfits are super glossy.

These figures can be pre-ordered for $88 each on Hobbyfan (approx £55) or $105 each on J-List (approx £66)

Chifusa Manyuu, 1/4th scale (A+)

Skimpy Samurai

For those with more risqué tastes we have Chifusa Manyuu from Manyuu Hikenchou. The biggest figure in this selection at 1/4th scale making it more of a statue than a figurine. Chifusa comes with a katana and completely removable attire that already barely covers her expanding bust (in the show, the figure itself doesn't expand... that would be weird).

I'm not really sure why her hair is so blue, I'm pretty sure it was black in the anime, but I like how... soft she looks. That probably sounds weird, but it's easy for figures to look very solid since they're made of plastic, and this doesn't. If you're looking for something a little lighter on clothing and bigger in size, this may be the figure for you. With that sword it would probably make a pretty good letter-opener too I guess.

Chifusa can be pre-ordered for $210 on Hobbyfan (approx £132) with extra shipping fees.

What do you think of these figures? Ready to order one? Or are you like me, preferring to appreciate them from afar instead?

— Daniel Newton is a moderator for Anime Vice and Screened. Follow him on twitter: @Daniel_Newton and @AnimeVicers

Other posts: • Oreimo Season 2 Announced!