Artists needed for grub menu background

anticapitalista · posted: 2008-11-08 23:58

As title says.
The one in antiX-M7.5 was wonderful, but antiX-M8 has gone green!
Therefore we need a grub menu that goes well with the default slim and fluxbox/icewm wallpaper.

I'd like it to have the mean and lean 'logo' and the bottom part will need to be 2 lines otherwise the boot options don't show up.

Here is the wallpaper

impuwat · posted: 2008-11-09 17:59

You know I'm always game.

I just finished a draft of a possible icewm theme that closely matches my eco-green fluxbox style. I used the antiX buttons because I'm addicted to them and they seem so....antiX. They seem to work well with anything and look more intrinsic or natural to a title bar than some buttons. Like they just kind of morphed out of the bar. Anyway if the general consensus is the antiX buttons look better/cooler I will re-do the fluxbox style with the antix buttons so both the fluxbox and icewm themes mimic each other.

Here is the screenshot showing a rolled up window and the active and inactive windows. Give me some feedback.

impuwat · posted: 2008-11-09 20:02

Failed to mention in the last post that I will experiment with some different colors for the buttons and post the results for feedback. Probably a green that blends into the title bar. I like the dark gray in the inactive windows...not sure about the lighter gray of the buttons in the active window.

Probably should have moved this discussion to it's own thread under graphics. Will do that with future versions.

anticapitalista · posted: 2008-11-09 20:45

Excellent work!

You made the last grub/menu background. Could you make the next one, a green theme that will go wotth the green wallpaper? Similar in size, keep the 'mean and lean' logo, but there needs to be a 2 line space at the bottom so people can see the boot options (the last one had 1 line)

TIA

anticapitalista

impuwat · posted: 2008-11-10 18:58

I'm not sure what you mean about the"two line space". I'm assuming hold the text box...in the old instance the gray box....back a little. So it's not as high. Which I'm assuming, would allow grub to place two lines at the bottom for boot options.

When I created the last grub background I used a grid and made the gray text box exactly the same size as the old mepis grub background.

Am I assuming correctly?

anticapitalista · 10 Nov 2008, 19:36 #6 2008-11-10 19:36

Sort of. here is the new grub menu background on Mepis 8.

impuwat · posted: 2008-11-10 19:45

That helps! Could you pm me a copy of the original?

Thanks.

m_pav · posted: 2008-11-10 21:57

You can get it for yourself if you have AntiX or Mepis on your system

Copy the following into a blank txt file, save it, make it executable and run it.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash

# Make a folder in your home called work 
mkdir work

# Copy  /boot/grub/message to ~/work
cp /boot/grub/message ~/work

# Change to directory test
cd work

# Extract the archive 'message'
cpio -i < message

# Delete the copy of the original message archive
rm ./message

The file you need is named back.jpg and it needs to be saved with no jpg compression.
When finished, you can repack the message file with the following

Code: Select all

cpio -o < name-list > message

Can you please forward me a copy of the finished product, or at least the graphic as I have a job to do for the next release too.

p c p a v n z @ g m a i l (dot) c o m

Thanks

Mike P

impuwat · posted: 2008-11-11 03:44

I've been an antiX user since Spartacus but the current version I'm using is 7.5...I think....and the grub menu background on my system is the last one I did. Anti emailed me the new one so I'm good to go. The text boxes at the bottom are new and I can work off those dimensions.

You sound like you have experience....you should come up with a grub menu background draft as well. I'm not the grub menu guy because I'm good......just willing __{{emoticon}}__

m_pav · posted: 2008-11-11 09:28

Yeah, I'm more than willing too, but I'm red/green colorblind so I can't mix colors properly. I can work with GIMP quite well, editing an already existing image, but I can't pick a fresh color or choose a complimentary mix of colors, the color wheel is essentially mostly blue and gold to me, red looks like khaki brown and green is like a dirty yellow.

[--diversion--]
Take any photo and open it with imagej available from
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImageJ"
linktext was:"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImageJ"
====================================
, select Plugins, then Vischeck Panel, then Deuteronope and it will reproduce a simulated result of what I (and about 9% of all males) see from the image you had open.
[/--diversion--]
If I have the background colors pre-selected, even if it's a blend, I can do almost as well as any pro, even removing stuff from a flat image and repairing the blend. I'll still give it a go though.

Mike P

impuwat · posted: 2008-11-11 18:50

Need some help.

I created a nice new grub background....just the background art, not the text boxes, logo's etc. I wanted to test it in real-life operation. I know from my last experience that the grub menu background gets inflated so I take that into consideration when making the image.

I placed it in my test file and made sure it was listed in nameslist. I then tried to re-pack the message file. I got this error:

cpio: File message grew, 179200 new bytes not copied 1003 blocks

I tried several times to no avail. I then placed the original grub menu background file into test....so everything was the way it was...and tried to re-pack the message file. I got the same response.

I had eliminated the original message. I retrieved it and placed it back in /boot/grub. I then tried to extract it to test and keep getting told message doesn't exist.

I don't remember having this much trouble before unpacking and packing message. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong? BTW here is a screenshot of the draft background I'm trying to use. Give me a little feedback on it as well. I tried to use colors from the wallpaper. Again this is close but not a true representation of the actual image. Uploading jpeg's on this forum messes them up a little.

anticapitalista · posted: 2008-11-11 19:37

Hey, looking wonderful!

I sent you an email with the message file with that backgroung you designed and all the extras for the new grub menu. It compressed fine on my box.

impuwat · posted: 2008-11-11 19:42

Thanks Anti but just discovered what I was doing wrong. The message inside message was causing problems. Had to do some renaming of message several times off and on to get everything re-packed.

impuwat · posted: 2008-11-11 19:46

Also Anti I just emailed you the original jpeg. It doesn't have the funky concentric rings the image on the forum displays. Not sure where those popped in but one of those upload quirky things. Try the original and let me know what you think.

anticapitalista · posted: 2008-11-11 20:45

Looking good so far.
How about keeping the same style as in M7.5 and with the same test 'mean and lean'?