This is Baynut here, listening to Pokemon on the TV while I write this, and if you don't want to believe me then I say pooey. Pooey! Moving on...
I just finished reading Sonner's article on the recent change in Akbar's Face Mall. It was all right, but then I got to the end, where I found, quoth City Hall: "Having people's faces in the mall looked awesome, and I miss them too, but we had to take them down for a good reason. You see, using this same way for putting faces up, you can even put up images from outside of Whyville. And I'm sure you can understand why we can't have that. That could lead to all sorts of copyright, even safety, issues! We'll try to come up with some way that will allow only Whyville images and not outside ones. Until then, we'll just have to make do without for a while. Sorry!"
This got me thinking: why can we only use faces made on Whyville? Assuming we have permission from the artist, what would really be wrong with using (appropriate) pictures on the web? We'd have the web-artist send a letter to Whyville confirming that they gave us permission to use that specific picture, and voila, City Hall would allow us to use their picture!
And we could even (still with permission) cut different pieces off different pictures and put a face together that way! Of course, we wouldn't need permission if we drew the part ourselves, and this would work out really well, because some people have art programs like Paintshop Pro superior to Whyville's own. (No offense, but I think I'm speaking for almost everyone when I say that it's really hard to draw on!) They could make really excellent parts on those programs!
Anyway, Whyville could, with our help, make a section of the site to host our creations after we get all the copyrights and such straightened out ahead of time. Once we download the picture we could use it as our personal face! Not that this would be free; each personal face would be 100 clams apiece, Whyville can change the price if it's more convenient, and if they're nice enough to post my article, let alone go through with what it says!
This could be hard work, but with support from Whyvillians and just a bit of elbow grease, we could pull this thing through, don't you think? As soon as I get on Whyville, I'm going to make a petition about this, and I'm counting on you guys/gals out there reading this in the waiting room (where I'm pretty sure you are!) to sign it, please?
This is Baynut, being attacked by a rabid tomato, signing off...
Note from City Hall: An interesting idea, Baynut, but can you imagine how many people would have to work to set all this up, and keep it running? And how about the lawyers, who would have to spend a lot of time reading those letters from people claiming to be the artists? How much do you think they'd charge to clear up copyright issues? Akbar's Face Mall already sees a fair bit of controversy over citizens re-drawing other designers' parts and claiming ownership. Think about how much bigger those debates would become if it were simpler to submit any art that someone got their hands and a scanner on.
In addition, I'm sure all designers know how long it takes Akbar to okay face parts -- picture how much more time it would take him if he had to make sure that no one in the entire world had already drawn that face part! I shudder to think...
That said, though, if enough citizens really want this, we might be able to arrange something. But it would certainly be time-consuming and expensive, more so than anything else we've ever done, I imagine.
Finally, the fact is that Whyville is not a "realistic" looking town. That's not the idea, as Akbar and our company's artistic director can tell you. We're cartoony on purpose. We like our vibrant colors and the big and curvy lines. Akbar will not usually reject realistic artwork, but we don't want our town to become like those other "realistic 3-D" chat sites out there. We like being unique... which I'm certain that you and that rabid tomato chasing you can appreciate! :-)
City Hall
