Canvas is a yearly Fediverse event similar to Reddit’s Place - it’s a collaborative art project where any Fediverse user can place colored pixels on a shared canvas over a period of a few days. It has a dedicated community at !canvas@toast.ooo - the canvas itself is here.

This will be its third year; the first time, there were some minor furry drawings, and last year, we were a bit more organized, with a bit of collaboration between Pawb and Yiffit. The full canvas from last year can be seen here - we had a small spot carved out in the lower left corner, as well as a few scattered things all around.

I’d be great to actually start organized this year, and create something substantial together.

Anyone else interested in participating? Any thoughts on what we might make? Anyone with artistic skill want to sketch something out? If we can get a few ideas, maybe we vote on them prior to the event itself?

Edit: Template Here

  • green_copper@kbin.earth
    3·
    3 days ago

    My current proposal. I think we should also talk about the sizes of easier-to-scale elements. The Pawb logo is one of the smallest, but I scaled it that way as we currently already have quite the amount of pixels.

    • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialOPEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      That actually fits together pretty compactly. We could omit the boykisser, there’s been boykissers elsewhere on the canvas for the last two years, anyway, and it’s the only component that doesn’t fit in nicely.

        • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialOPEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          The right side will be in the middle on the final canvas (assuming it goes the same as last year, with the size doubling mid-way through). Not a bad thing necessarily but worth noting.

          As noted above, though, this is too large - we’ll never get this much space to ourselves and we’ll simply never finish it.

          This is a composite of the templates currently posted there - top right corner doesn’t work as we’d be competing with another group.

    • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Compacted a few things, removed boykisser, and swapped Omega and the paw to make it a bit more compact; this is the most compact layout I can find. Total outline is 216x180, though, which is way too large. We’ll never get that much space to ourselves, and we’ll never actually be able to finish it.

      • green_copper@kbin.earth
        1·
        3 days ago

        Hmmmm, yea the size is problematic. How should we decide on what to omit or try to shrink further (e621 has much potential)?

        Other possibility would be to assign priorities and when something couldn’t be finished, then it is what it is.

        • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialOPEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          Okay, new proposal: We trim some elements and omit others, leaving us with this:

          We put it at (0,390), with the understanding that we’re going behind (rather than over) the tree that’s going up right beside us; that will also help box it in.

          In the event that the canvas gets extended twice instead of only once (which will result in another 500 px below the initial square), we extend the two cut off pieces down into the new area, if we have time.

          Total area here is 176x110, which is still ambitious, but plausible.

          The other option is we design something that fits on the right edge of the canvas and plan to continue into the expanded area the first time it expands (which will probably happen, the second one is less likely.)

          (It’s not really about being able to place all of the pixels over the course of the event so much as it is being able to command presence of our area. If we’re working slowly and filling things in a little at a time, other art will move into the area we’d planned to draw in, but we can take advantage of the expanding canvas to solve for this.)

          The alternative is that we take all of the individual elements and place them around the canvas, and build them separately. We really do just have a collection of small things, so we could fit them in around other artworks rather than trying to capture an entire corner / area.

          • OmegaMouse@pawb.socialEnglish
            2·
            3 days ago

            Out of interest, will everyone be contributing to any/every piece of art here? I might adjust Omega’s eyes slightly on the final thing so they’re a bit more even :3

            • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialOPEnglish
              3·
              3 days ago

              That’s the intent, yeah - whatever we decide on, we just work on it as a group, via the template we’ll set up.

              Definitely feel free to make any adjustments you want!

              • OmegaMouse@pawb.socialEnglish
                2·
                3 days ago

                How’s this? I think it should be pixel perfect

                Though when I try and open the image and zoom in on my browser, it looks blurry. Unsure if that’s just a browser thing, or if it should be saved as another file type.

          • green_copper@kbin.earth
            1·
            3 days ago

            I really like your Idea to place it for possible convenient expansion. Expansion to the side is likely yes, but I think it looks better with the horizontal cut like it is now.

          • tblFlip@pawb.socialEnglish
            1·
            3 days ago

            i honestly really like the idea to turn this into a collection that is just placed wherever we can. there is no strong reason that we have to bunch everything up in one place. it actually makes things a lot easier. if we have more time than expected (those are “only” 10k pixels after all :P), we can always add more. running out of time? omit some of the later designs

              • tblFlip@pawb.socialEnglish
                2·
                3 days ago

                yeah, it is a lot easier to create a template once and be done with it. that said, i don’t think that making a template for a more scattered approach is the hard part. organizing and communicating to everyone what the latest revision of that template is would be

                with one big image (where everything is collected in one place) we would also have to quickly set a boundary around the entire design before anyone else starts to claim parts of it. focusing on one or two smaller designs instead could make the initial rush a good bit more survivable, while also allowing us to utilize space left in between other projects as the event progresses