The ingenuity behind the face factory is remarkable. The very idea that citizens contribute to the website through designing the very faces that we appear as is astounding . . . even more so when you look at the tools that the factory actually offers. As an avid long time designer, I have come to note some things I think would be better changed. A lot of people have a hard time using the controls of the face factory and I personally believe that it would not be too hard to adjust the levels of ease and ad a few new features to the face factory.
As you all know, the reason the face factory controls are so limited is to not only push our artistic skills but to ensure that we do not upload images that are not ours. Of course with the advance in technology creating such wonderful products as a Wacom tablet (whether it's a lowly Graphire or the top of the Intous line) and the tablet screen available on many notebooks or even separately as your tablet, that allow the freedom of movement from a stylus onto the screen creating magnificently shaded and detailed parts. Of course even without a stylus one can create wonderful parts by using the zoom in tool and a great attention to detail.
My ideas for improvement in the face factory are not necessarily anything grand. Merely, I beg of Akbar to consider adding a few new tools. The first tool I would like to see would be a second palette tool, and the second an ellipse. The dual palette would make it so one could toggle back and forth between two colours they are using with ease. I know there is a pick tool for that but, when you are zoomed in the pick tool just seems to cease all functions. I treat each piece as a painting and I put out the swatches of colours I use down the side so I can easily pick them, but the zooming out and back in process does become a drag after a couple goes. The other huge drag of designing hair is making that blasted face outline. It is never perfectly round or even no matter how hard you try unless you go in and pixel it one pixel at a time. Urgh . . . we need something to make making head openings a little easier. Nothing too fancy, just some helpful tools to streamline the hair designing process.
Of course, these tools would prove useful in other aspects of designing. They would allow users to make eyes that have even pupils, to add textures and patterns to shirts and accessories (like even polka dots) and to create rounded shoulders. The toggle tool will be useful for anyone who is detailing a section of a part zoomed right in, provided it works on the zoomed levels. I know that all of these things are basically just short cuts for making things we can do by hand, things that take a little extra time and care, however isn't that what everything in life is like? We invent things to streamline processes and to make it just that little bit easier.
Another suggestion I have is for the idea of templates. If you could predesign a template and have it approved by Akbar, theoretically you would never have a part rejected again for being wrong. You could use that template to draw all the future parts. In fact, everyone could share these, I thought maybe that if there was a storehouse of all the templates, then other designers could pay a few clams to rent a template and use it to start their part. Akbar and Designers alike could profit off of this. It wouldn't be that hard, I mean all in all these things take time and resources and Whyville has never really been a place with an abundance of either of those things but. Yes. I think in the coming times this should be all possible.
My last suggestion is in regards to the restocking procedure. I have well over 300 parts and I keep about 200 of those stocked on a regular basis, it is really hard sometimes to go through page after page looking for something that needs restocking. I suggest that it should be possible for you to click the store tab and as you update your store, there should be a "restock x of all parts listed in this store" and x can be the variable where you put how many to restock of each part. Of course sometimes you don't want to restock everything in a store, and so in the manage existing parts tab you should be able to switch between part numbered pages and indexed pages for your stores, just for an ease of finding things.
That is all I have to say. I hope that the City Workers will consider it and that Whyvillians will agree that these are valuable ideas.
-BP
i feel like the music sounds better with you
