geek questions

[juldea]

Will someone please explain to me, with examples hopefully, what cel(l?) shading is?

Also: My only problem so far with gmail is that it automatically groups all LJ comment notifications with the same subject (i.e., "Reply to your post") into one conversation. I'm not used to this and I'm constantly afraid I'm deleting mails without reading and responding to them. Does anyone have a suggestion for another way to do it?

Comments

Gmail grouping

[new-brunette.livejournal.com]

It's a pain, isn't it? I think if you click on a conversation with unread messages, it automatically "opens" all of the unread ones, so you should be able to read down the list, working your way through.

Please can you report it to Gmail as a suggestion/comment? I've done this too, as have a few friends: I hope that if more LJ users do this, they'll be more likely to sort the problem out.

Re: Gmail grouping

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I open it like that and work through it, but I worry about getting a new email while I'm reading, having it append to the 'conversation' but not seeing it, and deleting the thing when I think I'm done!

I'll report it. Good idea. :)

[descant.livejournal.com]

I just leave the message/thread there in my Inbox since Gmail updates the thread just like a message board does. When you click on the updated email, then you are immediately send to the first new message in the thread. It works for me.

Re: Gmail grouping

[baronbrian.livejournal.com]

I'll report as well. I'm not overly fond of the way that works either.

[jmspencer.livejournal.com]

Yeah. With 1 GB, there's no need to delete anyway. I sent a comment, but since it groups by subject, and all those e-mails have the same subject, it probably won't do much good. WHen you go back out to your inbox, the same mail will be at the top and highlighted as unread again if there are new messages at the bottom of the conversation.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

...there's no need to delete...

Yeah, but there's no need to save either, and I like to keep my mailbox clean.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Cel shading is what you think of as "traditional" animation (cartoons, older Disney). It comes from the word "celluloid", which is what old cels were made out of -- paint on celluloid, used to make up each frame of animation.

Nowadays, it's taken to mean that style of computer graphics where the basis is 3d, but the look is that of cel animation; about 5 years ago someone invented technology that took normal polygonal 3d art and rendered it as cartoony cels in real-time, and a lot of designers liked the effect.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cel_animation for lots more info.

[mr-teem.livejournal.com]

Cell shading as in Excel where you apply a highlighting pattern to a group of related cells, like column headings, or alternate color bars or cell shading (or cel shading) as in Paint/Illustrator which is an illustration technique that uses sharp blocks of color instead of smooth gradients to make highlights, typically found in anime?

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Um, cel shading as in, "This video game uses cel shading."

I understand Excel, duh. ;)

[jmspencer.livejournal.com]

Ahh... That's why I use the archive and label function. Every LJ comment gets a label that says that, and then archived. Then, when something new is added to it, it comes back to the inbox.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Games you may have seen that have cel shading:
Zelda: Windwaker
XIII
Jet Set Radio
Auto Modellista

[mr-teem.livejournal.com]

Just being encyclopaedic.

[karlean7.livejournal.com]

Cel shading is a pretty recent video game trend designed basically to look like a fully animated 3-D cartoon. Following Jet Grind Radio, which was the first game I can think of that had it, a LOT of games used it. The biggest benefit is that it looks really good, while not being terribly hard to do, at least compared to being as realistic as possible. The flaw is that it's so highly stylized that it loses a lot of its appeal after a while, so games have started veering away from it.

Sorry to be confusing. I don't talk about video games a lot these days, and I forgot that some of the cel-shading controversy might have mostly passed over other people's heads. A popular example of this can be found in Penny Arcade's news posts (Scroll down, look for "Celda").