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Why such a website
The SAA history
The guys behind the site
What to do if you want to contribute to the archive
Buttons and banners to use if you plan to link to this
site
:::: Why such a website ::::
This site was created by Hivebrain in the middle of 2003. He, like me, noticed
that the only sources of Sonic-related artworks in good quality were on
SEGA FTPs (usual video games websites offer bad-quality GIFs or JPEGs
most of the time). But they are provided for professionals or graphic
designers only, and are ways too large and too long to download for just
a "less professional" need. Add to that the limited 21 KB/s
bandwidth those FTPs intentionally offer (this is really slow, mainly
on a broadband connection) to discourage "ordinary" people to
download them. These are not optimal conditions to download artworks,
just to use them on a personal composition or Sonic-related item, or simply
have them in full quality. And we usually don't absolutely need full resolution
to use them. Also, he didn't want to offer a simple artwork gallery
we could only passively watch. But instead, offering artworks one could
do something decent with. It's in that order of idea that he decided
to open this site which the ambition was to offer full quality PNG versions
of our beloved and well-known artworks. About PNG, despite its qualities
(lossless compression, Truecolor possibility and transparency on an alpha
channel), this image format is still fighting to get some popularity on
the web. Such a website initiative had never been done before, and with
the growth of broadband connections, became more than welcome. That's
why SAA or SoAA was born. Since its creation, it helped and assisted a
lot of people, including me (lol, to create my odd wallpapers^^ ) and
still do. So I keep on thanking Hivebrain for such a brilliant idea, even
if at that time, I was doing nearly the same thing. But, I didn't have
the idea to create a website (instead, I was just planning to make a topic
on the Sonic-CuLT forum but, I quickly saw that I found better ^^).
::::
The strory of SAA (or SoAA) ^^ ::::
In the middle of 2003, on my side, I decided to gather all artworks
I could find on the web, restoring their original quality by cleaning
them in very smart and unique way and accessorily adding an alpha-transparency
to them. All that to offer them in full quality in PNG format. At the
beginning, I was just showing them on the French forum I usually go
to. But, as the same moment, on the Sonic-CuLT forum, Hivebrain (already
maintener of the excellent Sonicology
and the Sonic Box Art Archive), had a similar idea, but instead was
offering them on website, hosted by his college. Of course, I was completely
delighted by such an initiative and began to give "my" first
cleaned and optimized versions of the artworks I had. Unfortunately,
only limited webspace was offered and the website quickly filled too
much and "was eating too much bandwidth". This forced Hivebrain
to close his site. This indeed affected me but didn't make me stop
my activities. That's why I naturally asked Hivebrain to give me all
the contents of the site so that I can move it to a better place and
re-open it, thing he nicely accepted to do. This way now, the site lives
again and never stops enlarging! At the base, the website had to be
maintained by both of us. But, as I were the most active by far and
because of Hivebrain's college firewalls which prevented him to have
FTP accesses, I virtually became the only maintainer. Hivebrain finally
prefered contributing to the archive instead, probably in order to take
the time to do other activities (I'm feeling that my text is going a
bit too far, just point me out, Hivebrain, if I'm writing things that
you consider wrong or weird!!!). OK, I've just finished now for the
history, I just hope I wasn't too annoying :p.
:::: The guys behind
the site ::::
As I said previously:
Hivebrain (Sonic fan, really active
on the Sonic scene, as much artistically as in the emulation scene,
author of nice Genesis Sonic hacks, and maintaner of quality Sonic sites,
like Sonicology or the
Sonic box art archive). He created and maintained this site in its early
days. He's also famous for his brilliant Sonic games logo re-creations
(take this Sonic Art Archive logo as an example^^ ).
Dioxaz (the stupid guy who is typing
this text -- yes, I'm really tough with myself :(( -- also a Sonic fan,
not that active on the Sonic scene but made some -- completely out-of-date
-- hacking
discoveries into Sonic Advance, designed lots of cool
Sonic-related wallpapers in PNG format, composed a few cool
musics in XM format and maintainer of The
Leaf Forest Zone and the Sonic
Discovery Resource, his two main sites). He's currently doing his
best to keep the site alive by performing his usual optimization operations
on all the artworks he finds and also by trying to make the site look
more attractive than ever :p. He's also the current maintainer and editor
of this site.
:::: What to do if you
want to contribute to the archive ::::
You can help us maintaining the archive by offering your help. If you've
got some rare artworks you consider they should deserve a place here,
don't hesitate to mail to one of these address: dioxaz @ libertysurf.fr
(for my address) or leonwhite1 @ gmail.com (Hivebrain's one,
don't forget to remove the spaces if you want to mail us, this was just
a precaution I used to limit spam or abusive mailing ^^ !). As I'm the
most active, you should mail to my address preferently, but if you feel
that my mailbox is full, that there is a problem, that I'm absent or
not responding during a long period (it can happen, as I tend to really
lazy sometimes), you can try Hivebrain's one. He'll normally mail me
back the artworks when he's got the time. Anyway, a good solution to prevent one's mailbox to be full is to host artworks on one of your personal web accounts/sites if you've got one, and then link to them into your message. You may send/provide them as full
quality PNGs, even if they are scans and seem huge, this is highly preferable,
and will make cleaning easier (because, no compression or irreversible color subsampling artifacts :p). You may also want to clean them yourself
if you feel able to do that, this is even more welcome (espacially scans,
because the "color-printing" pattern of magazine scans is
really hard to remove :p). So, if you've got rare artworks, if they
are in acceptable quality (if you send me images found on the web, or
that you don't know the source, you can let them in JPEG if they were
already like this, you don't need to convert them to PNG, except if
you plan to clean yourself of course), if they are well kept (no scratching
or holes on the paper, if they are scans), if I already haven't got
the same artwork or if it's in higher resolution, just don't hesitate.
People like Rlan, Rika_chou, Ben2k9 and Adamis already did it, so why
don't you?
:::: Buttons and banners
to use if you plan to link to this site ::::
Small button, paletted PNG, 2.51 KB
Banner, Truecolor PNG, 20.5 KB
You'll notice that despite the use of
PNG, the images are relatively compact in file size (I also used PNGOut
to acheive the best compression I could, without harming quality). However,
If you feel they still are too huge to you, you might feel the need
to convert to banner to JPEG and the button to GIF. If you do so, please
don't select a too low quality setting. To give an order of idea, I
had to select a quality setting of 70 for the banner, under Image Ready
7 to reach a similar file size. So in my opinion, and considering the
nature of the image, converting the banner to JPEG (and/or the button
to GIF) is not a good idea (for the button, you cannot get a smaller
file size by using GIF format, without losing something in quality by
reducing the color-depth^^).
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