When Pixels Go Bad
posted in General, Writing tips |This is a screenshot from Everquest 2. As you can see, someone did a half assed job of finishing the Djinn. I was going to post this and just say “Hey look at the funny thing we saw in EQ tonight, ” just like a post saying “Hey, look at this link.” It’s a copout. And — what gives? You want people to read your weblog, but you just give them a link and send them on the way away from your site?
I could use this to discuss how computer graphics are made; you can see the vertices of the polygons that make up this image, they just don’t have any surfaces. Probably someone just didn’t finish that. How’s that working for them?
But you know, we can figure out what it’s supposed to be. And probably that’s what the artist / programmer thought. “I’ll just rough this in- they know what I mean.” This is kind of scary- because I’ve actually thought that as I come close to finishing a project. “I’ll just leave this like this- the user will know what I intend.” I don’t realize that the user sees something like this– sure I know what the artist meant but, cmon pal, why didn’t we finish the job?
So, here’s a tip. Finish your jobs. Don’t offer half-assed copouts that look like “hey, here’s a link. Go check them out.” Talk about what it means to you, why you’re showing it, and what we can learn.
And yes, I admit that I’m a pretty bad example of not saying “hey go look at this.” 
