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WB 1.3 Icons: What are your favorites?

Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2017 8:29 pm
by intric8
I posted about this on Twitter yesterday and the response has been overwhelming to say the least. But it just needs to to be said here, too: the icons designers came up with for WB 1.3 software are simply the best I've ever seen for any system. Period. They can be just so damned playful and creative - particularly the 2-frame animated variety.

So many times I've been introduced to icons to launch a program - either a game or some productivity software, it doesn't matter - and simply been blown away by the 2-frame animations some Workbench 1.3 icons were given. Last night, after installing Elvira II to my 2000's HDD I couldn't help but chuckle when I double clicked... her.
DDYhk7XVwAE7QX0.jpg
Default state

DDYhk7WU0AAYMom.jpg
On-click state.

One of my favorite productivity packages - Word Perfect Library - also featured 2-state animated icons
Check out a 10-second video of these icons I made on YouTube
Just so damned good!

What are some of your favorites?

Re: WB 1.3 Icons: What are your favorites?

Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2017 10:41 am
by intric8
The Lucasfilm/LucasArts icons were pure "icon porn" and simply exquisite, handily uploaded by @nic_mi on Twitter, which I've converted to GIF here.
iconp0rn.gif
Lucasfilm/LucasArts WB 1.3 icons in their prime.

Below are a few more of my personal favorites.
pirates.png
tools.png
wings.png

Re: WB 1.3 Icons: What are your favorites?

Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2017 11:21 am
by Shot97
What? GIF is a thing on this site?! How many wonderful opportunities have I missed out on by not knowing that...

Re: WB 1.3 Icons: What are your favorites?

Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2017 11:42 am
by intric8
@Shot oh no.... ;)

Let's just say they are ... for now. :P

If we can avoid memes, I think animated GIFs offer huge value here if they aren't gigantic, personally. If used with some taste. Reddit/Twitter it don't need to be. (fingers crossed)

Re: WB 1.3 Icons: What are your favorites?

Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2022 9:35 am
by intric8
This topic has kind of spread all over the place (my fault, because I love it so) into multiple threads and locations. (1, 2, 3)

But I wanted to submit another batch that are truly wonderful for your consideration. The OS 1.3 palette just brings these to life. And I plan on opening the "Saved Games" icon this weekend to take a close look at that brilliant ghost artwork being overlaid on top of the chest. I want to see how that was done.

Re: WB 1.3 Icons: What are your favorites?

Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2022 6:49 pm
by Gernot66
Great, yes as a former A2000 user which still holds an A500 (the A2000 i gifted to a friend but an A4000 still lurks around) and graphically more as just interested dude i sure played a lot with the possibilities of OS1.3 icons, especially the blue/orange palette can perform magic on a CRT monitor. But over the decades my icons got clearer and clearer less fancy but better to recognize.
What i missed back then was nearly everything since i live in a sort of outback in Switzerland (Kt. Glarus) or like some call it "the reservates". But well DPaintIV i had since my first A500 and this is still my preferred icon designer, it is still a good program to make pixel art. Animated icons... we have 2022 and Windoze has still not the simplest animated icons by default. Sure it isn't necessary but it's like you showed well a very nice thing to have and to play around with. You can call me an idiot but my set of OS1.3 icons has a bit of +OS2 look since i simply use a bevelled box around all icons... dammit all :). This i started back in the days when my A2000 was my preferred machine therefore i never liked Magic WB or whatsoever well - i like my own. All the years, mostly on an emulated miggy, i still worked on them.

Favorites...
Hard to tell not many of the standard icons, what i dislike much is the inconsistend size of the icons, if you have a drawer with different programs and each has a different size it simply looks shit to me, it's a pure chaos. Further some like the default drawer have a 3D look other are flat as a flatearthers head, not quite pleasing to me even if the icons are little artworks sometimes the inconsistent size destroys all imho.

Thus i started already back in the end '80s to give all a standard look especially size, it started with quite small icons
of the size 56x24, later oversized 96x48 and recently i'm up to change all or most to 80x40 which is also (near to) the maximum size the OS1.3 icon editor can handle (80x42 which would leave the exactly needed two pixels below for the icon text). 96x48 wouldn't be so bad if the icons wouldn't be spread so far apart when floated or reorganized. It is possible to hack the icons canvas size from 96 (0x60) to 95 (0x5F) which will lead to that they are placed one on one with no gap between and a slight moving of the text by one pixel to the left. Not bad but overall to large for OS1.3.

I hope you don't mind if i post a screenshot
nasowas.gif
Yes the folder is an adaption from Windoze but why not? i like it.

That's it so far, intentionally i liked to post a (some) script but i stumbled over your thread and thought "let's peep into it".

Yes it performs more as just displaying icons, visit "0x05A" (blue on blue in blue) for this, there i will post the the scripts mostly those which will do some magic with the workbench like color-cycling backdrops and other useless things. Actually this isn't a color cycle here i changed the palette for the backdrop and it will stay until you reload or load a different backdrop or color palette.
Backdrops are a nice thing to have but they can be a little disturbing that's why i have a 0x05A (as welll grey, marine, acid, amber and sepia) palette for them which still shows the backdrop but in a decent way. All my backdrops are in 4 times 0x05A and the to use palette is set dynamical this let's them appear in a neat way when you use WBPic (preferred) or SimGen, i prefere WBPic just because it shows no useless splash screen like SimGen otherwise SimGen would be slightly better since you can use tiles for the backdrop, but SimGen is due to the splash screen even somewhat slower in displaying the pictures. Further the use of a Program like SETCOLOR allows to have random selected palettes for a backdrop or as alread stated to color cycle in a simple manner (simple, ts you should see what it does under OS3.1). What one can't see is that wIconify is still running in the background, i just load it after loadwb and in this manner it won't detach the workbench screen but keeps for me the possibility of public screens under OS1.3, wIconsetter is disabled as well and the iconifying function is also disabled since it interferes with programs like DeliTracker (it doubles the settings window while one couldn't be closed afterwards). But the public screen is cool to have to open a CLI or Editor on a black and green screen in med-res or productivity mode.

Icons was the topic Gernötli :)
008.png
Semi-transparent palette

Icons which apper "en masse" aren't animated it is enough to invert the colors for them with the bevelled look they are "animated" enough.
009.png
Erm well the Pointer, sure it can be changed on the fly
010.png
Some oversized icons
012.png
What you can't see as well are the many SFX, there is nearly no action (except of opening a drawer, this i would like much) which is not accompained by SFX.

Re: WB 1.3 Icons: What are your favorites?

Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2022 1:32 am
by dalek
Oh wow - I can't begin to imagine how much work in to getting it all to look so good <3