73 replies to this topic

[LuisDantas]

This should probably be decided in a case by case basis, and it could be a good idea to (provisionally?) keep the round shield images under alternate filenames so that each individual usage can be freely chosen between the escutcheon and round versions.

That way, each use can emphasize the round shape or the words as convenient without much of a drawback for other pages.  An obvious example is that the Dornish Houses templace really could use a round coat of arms for House Martell, even if it is not up to the quality of the current escutcheon version.

It is only a couple dozen new images (and on the short end of file size at that) so I don't think it is too much of a resource expense to keep them along with the previous versions.

We already have a few redundant coats of arms if I am not mistaken.  It is not a big deal, and it opens up the options.

The words banners are a nice touch, of course, as would supporters and the like also be.  But they aren't always even possible, since we don't know of the motto of every house that has a known coat of arms.  Sometimes it will be worth keeping them, sometimes it will not.

[Scafloc]

I know that the Dornish use buckler shields but I don't remember that they use the buckler shield for their coat of arms. And if we know the words I prefer a coat of arms that includes them.

And last even if the quality is the same, which I do not think it is, I prefer coat of arms (or other pictures or text) that was made by users from our own wiki above copied pieces. Let me be clear about this for a lot of edits AND coat of arms I am (heavily) inspired by the what La guarde de Nuit has done. And sometimes when I did not think we could do better I copied things. But it is better for the over all quality of the wiki to give things your own twist. Using copies you get the same quality, by doing thing (coat of arms of articles) yourself you may be able to improve it.

[Ser Ash the Red]

They used round shields. The two most authoritative web pages on what Dornish arms should look  like, the heraldry site on Westeros and George R. R. Martin's home page, show them as being round. As does the French wiki were I got the arms I posted uses round arms.

Ash the Red aka ASHaber

[Crackclaw]

As someone who created a number of the COAs I personally don't like the use of the words on or under the shield. I don't think it looks right and it's hard to do consistently.

As for the shape, if it's canonical. fine. But a couple of the arms (eg. Vaith) are going to be difficult to do in a round format.

And I think some of the ones that have bene used (like Yronwood) are not as good as the ones that were already there, despite the shape.

[Scafloc]

Ser Ash the Red, on 12 November 2011 - 05:30 PM, said:

They used round shields. The two most authoritative web pages on what Dornish arms should look  like, the heraldry site on Westeros and George R. R. Martin's home page, show them as being round. As does the French wiki were I got the arms I posted uses round arms.

Ash the Red aka ASHaber

The round shields (buckler) that the Dornish use are described as their normal shields; shields to fight with. Can you show me where it says that they are being used as coat of arms?
As for the shields that are used on Westeros, that is non canonical. Besides, according to the general page focus is on style, rather then accuracy:

Quote

It should be noted that, rather than striving for a perfectly accurate way of rendering these banners, we've decided to go for a somewhat 'fancier' style, which might be how they would be painted onto some document, though hardly how they would be represented on a shield.

The buckler shield of House Jordayne is less bright and with less contrast then escutcheon. I really think the escutcheon looks better. And again I like to state that in general it is better to create new material (maybe using exising models) then to copy existing pieces.

[LuisDantas]

Actually, Scafloc, the two links you gave in the previous post bring much the same (escutcheon-shaped) image, at least at this very moment.  I even tried reloading (via F5).

But I see what you mean.  The two images can be checked at the File History page, although the size difference will be masked:

http://awoiaf.wester...PNG#filehistory

[img]http://awoiaf.wester...rdayne.PNG[/img]

[img]http://awoiaf.wester...rdayne.PNG[/img]

I still feel that it is worth keeping two sets of images.  Even if the round dornish coats of arms are not canonical (and, barring explicit word from GRRM, I feel that the Westeros Heraldry section using round CoA's is as close to canonical as one could possibly get), they are still a welcome addition that may be used on occasion to remind people of that interesting peculiarity of Dorne.  No reason not to keep them.

If anything, some of them will in fact work better as automatic templates for the 50-pixel thumbnails that are used in the character pages (less detail often means better-looking thumbnails, and the overall shape survives better than the details anyway).

Consider also that one of the many significant differences between real world blazons and computer avatar images is that blazons did and will have different implementations being used at the same time by various people, with varying degrees of detail, color brightness, contrast and the like.  In a way it is thematically fitting to have some variety and even a slight inconsistency in presentation.  So I'm not sure this is not a solution disguised as a problem after all.

Edited by LuisDantas, 12 November 2011 - 09:38 PM.

[Scafloc]

LuisDantas, on 12 November 2011 - 09:31 PM, said:

Actually, Scafloc, the two links you gave in the previous post bring much the same (escutcheon-shaped) image, at least at this very moment.  I even tried reloading (via F5).

That is weird. If I click the links I get the two different images.
Edit: and now booth the escutcheon !?

I like the idea of using different images for the different purposes. I prefer the inclusion of the words in the coat of arms but when that image is used as a thumb it does not work. Too much detail like you said. La Guarde de Nuit also has separate images for thumbs.
As for the images on the articles of the houses: decide on a case by case basis? My suggestion is still that if the quality is the same then the self made version should take precedence over the copied ones.
For house Martell, house Yronwood, house Jordayne house Dayne and House Allyrion I prefer the escutcheon version. For house Gargalen I am less certain, though if we go for the buckler version we should display it in less pixels. House Vaith uses currently the escutcheonbut I think the version on La guarde de Nuit is better.

Edited by Scafloc, 13 November 2011 - 05:32 AM.

[Ran]

For what it's worth, the reason we have round shields on Westeros is because we originally did them as heaters... and George told us he'd like to have them round, as that'd be a more appropriate depiction of coats of arms for Dorne. He indicated that many of the designs were specifically intended for display on a circular arm. It seems only natural to suppose that septons in Dorne (if not elsewhere) would depict Dornish arms with that in mind.

So, I'd certainly say that there's nothing wrong with the depiction of Dornish arms using round shields, and so far as George indicates, it may even be canonical. Certainly, there is no evidence that it isn't canonical, so George's remarks should be enough to incline us towards round.

That said, I don't have an issue with having both images around, since I suppose there'd be septons north of Dorne who might just use their standard heater shield for depicting Dornish arms.

[Crackclaw]

Armorial shield shapes of course changed across Europe according to time and local fashions. Most of the Dornish ones work fine as circles because they involve a single picture on a solid background. The only time you get into problems with circles is when you're trying to apply geometry that is designed for the heater shape, like piles, cantons and so forth, or is you're trying to designate locations of charges by 'point'.

[Crackclaw]

I think the circular House Allyrion image that was just added is another one that is really inferior to the the original escutcheon version.

[Scafloc]

I agree. There is no general consensus what to do but if I reread everything above nobody objected to decide about on a case by case basis.

So if nobody comes up with arguments against using the escutcheon of the Allyrion house before tomorrow  12:00 PM (GMT) then I am replacing the buckler version with the escutcheon.

[Ran]

It'd be weird to have different shield types for different houses in Dorne -- it might naturally lead some people to wonder if there's some canonical reason for this, when in fact it's just that it's felt that one looks better than the other.

So I'd vote to keep the current Allyrion shield, and hopefully someone will be prompted to create a replacement at some point that improves on it. We should strive for some consistency, even if it means we have to compromise on the artistic merits of the shield.

[mor2]

As a constancy whore, for sometime I was wondering about the shape of the COA, from what I seen we have a few 4 types.

• BarEmmon.png
  
• Cafferen.png
  
• Drumm.png
  
• Hayford.PNG
  
• Blackmont.png

Other than the Dornish round shields that are being discussed , are the rest of the shapes are intentional e.g. canonical, some heraldy rule I dont understand or just a products of different editing software people sed over time? (also we have few unused COA like File:Her_joffrey.gif, which I dont where they would fit.  see more Category:Coat_of_arms_images )

[Scafloc]

This is nice example why too much focus on consistency is not beneficial for the wiki in the long term.
Two users of the wiki told me in the past that they wanted to make a coat of arms for a house that did not have one at that time. They wondered if it mattered if the shape would be slightly different from some of the ones that were used at that time. If I had told them that the current shape (that I used myself) was holy and no deviation was allowed they probably would not have made the coat of arms.

If we want to the wiki to grow and to increase the quality some differentiation and experimenting should be allowed. So if a different approach is better in quality we should allow it instead of keeping the lesser quality and hoping that someone will improve it.

[mor2]

I agree consistency for the sake of consistency is stupid, obviously that something inconsistent is ~always better than consistent nothing   and experimentation/initiative/BEing BOLD is something very much desired... Still IMO in the end consistency is very important, if only so that people would discuss which 'approach is better' and work toward the same goal(if possible).

on topic of which approach is the better for COA, I have no opinion.

[Ran]

Would it be helpful if we created easily-available templates that people could import into their graphics program of choice? It seems to me the easiest way to be consistent and to be helpful towards others.

[Scafloc]

Ran, the new version of the Dornish shields were copied. Not custom made. And I don't think I am the only one who finds a number of them of less quality then the one that they replaced.

[Ran]

How is that an objection to agreeing to a couple of templates and generating shields from them? In particular, the Dornish template is dead simple: a circle of a standard size. The matter of the house words could be dealt with by selecting some reasonably-common font (or a suitable and easily-found free font) and instructions concerning font size, weight, kerning, etc.

To go further, my suggestion is that the escutcheon that everyone favors for non-Dornish arms should be developed into a template and made available to others, and then a suitable template should be made for the Dornish arms, and someone or someones can take on the task of generating new shields to replace the interim shields that are in place.

[Crackclaw]

The shield shapes being slightly different is (well at least for the ones I did) a product of the different heraldry software. I still haven't found a single heraldry program that does everything. So I have had to use different ones for different divisions, ordinaries, charges, marshalling etc. Some of them (eg. Blazons) do not even allow export of the file. So in those cases I had to resort to screen captures, converted to BMP in Paint, then into PNG for editing in other drawing software. The problem is exacerbated in Westeros heraldry by the number of unusual charges, so you have to go looking for other stuff and lay it on top of the shield....blah blah blah. So the reason House Hayford is a slightly different shape to House Fenn is that they were done in different software.

Stretching these different shapes over a standard template may distort the marshalling.

[Crackclaw]

Scafloc, on 16 November 2011 - 11:30 AM, said:

Two users of the wiki told me in the past that they wanted to make a coat of arms for a house that did not have one at that time. They wondered if it mattered if the shape would be slightly different from some of the ones that were used at that time. If I had told them that the current shape (that I used myself) was holy and no deviation was allowed they probably would not have made the coat of arms.

I was one of these and you're right. If you had gone Nazi on me I would have just made no contribution.