Nice to see your Persona gallery grow! But I have 2 suggestions:

First, some of your personas have strange text colors, so I can't read it because text and background have the same color. Don't know what resolution you use, but on my FullHD monitor with maximized Firefox, Phraxis, Winterwood and Niflheim are unusable because of that.



Further, I experimented to create several non-official personas which are based on your artworks. After about 10 minutes I had 6 cool Personas, quite ready to be shared. What I want to say is: There is such a great potential in your pictures! You could create 30/40 in just one day!

So please feel encouraged to bring up some more, or give me the permission to publish them in your name ;-) :-P

i too would encourage some iGoogle themes

Phraxis the best of the bunch, by a looooooooooooooong shot. I've been using it since the day Personas were mentioned on here. I'd love to see a bigger assortment of them though, if at all possible!

Ryan,



I wasn't sure where to put this but every now and then I like to check the top rated pictures page just to see what other people like and I had a few suggestions. Firstly, I think it'd be nice if the rating were bigger or somehow placed so it was more immediately noticed, since it is how they are being ranked. Another suggestion, that could also be used for other image galleries is to include the image category near the name of the image (Day, Night, Planetscape, etc...) because when I'm browsing it's sometimes hard to figure out which category an image should fall under. A good example is 2008's "A New Dawn" and "Maya" which seem very similar yet fall into different categories...anyways, just an idea. LOVE your work!



- Doug

I like the DB-Personas, but i do not use them because they all change the status bar as well.



I think it would be much better if the status bar would be left as it is. There is too much text and small icons so any background picture adds only confusion.

I had never looked into personas until I saw it mentioned here, whereupon I tried them out and I have two thoughts.



Some of them, specifically the spark one need to be updated to work with the new rounded progress bar at the bottom of Firefox 3.5.1.



Since the area for personas is so limited I feel that it would be neat if you did some sort of panoramic landscape or spacescape across the top part.

Love the personas!



I don't think they quite do justice to your work, but they are still very cool.



Thanks Ryan!

I very much enjoy your personas, but when I was looking for them I happened across another one that, while you didn't post it, should be attributed to you. You can find it here http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/32403.

in case you haven't done anything about it yet, I found this webpage:



http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=xsb2YxMAAABMsunumW8wDpHTXFJtUbtjWMj6vob75xS36mXc24h6ww



which reveals her email to be cntrygrny@gmail.com



Hope that helps.

really excited for the new render

I absolutely love the personas you made and look forward to more of them if you decide to make more!

Hi,



first of all: i love your work.



Your personas are great and i would like to see more official personas.



Thx in advance



KillerBee

Well imitation is the highest form of flattery but this is just an example of theft of intellectual property. I sincerely hope that they were taken down and I look forward to some amazing Personas from you Ryan. Cheers from Sydney, Australia.

I know it's taking long or whatever but plz give us a taste I can't stand the suspense!



Member for like 4 years or so now I think lol



I <3 your work!



Thanks,



Chris :-)

I hear ya, Greg. That's what I thought, too. Her post was rather defensive. I considered joining the list so I could ask her, very politely, where she did find them since Ryan would surely want to know. I decided not to stir the pot, however.



OTOH, I have seen Ryan's work on other sites, often with the "digitalblasphemy.com" cropped off, so I guess it's possible she got them elsewhere. At any rate, most are down now thanks to Beowulf's very polite and effective post on the mozilla-labs-personas list. Last I looked, she hadn't removed the one made from Summerwood, but that one (last I looked) is attributed to Ryan and has a link to his site.



MaDonna's latest post, dated today: "I got on the Digital Blasphemy website yesterday to see if I could contact the author and check if the Personas I pulled were his original work and see if I could get permission from him to re-submit them, (showing I had his permission) since they were so popular. BUT I could not find an email contact address. I am hoping to contact him soon."

Per the quote in Jenanne's comment, MaDonna thinks everyone on the 'net is an idiot, apparently. Of course she got the images from here. Where else would she have gotten them?

Great work on the personas. Just creates another avenue for your great artwork. Keep rocking! :)

Seems she's taken down some of the personas after being called on it on the thread at http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla-labs-personas/topics?pli=1. If she didn't get the images from here, I wonder where she did get them?



MaDonna: "I have pulled several of my Personas because someone thought I had gotten the original (that I made the Persona from) from Digital Blasphemy, which I didn't. Apparently his/her work is posted on other web sites also. But I pulled them, so hope this doesn't disappoint the people that were using them. Thank you all."

First off love the personas! I started using them when they first came out but did not think about using DB stuff for it. More would be awesome!



Crack down on copy cats though. My wife browses through other websites and finds things very similar to yours. If you dont crack down now they will just continue to copy. May seem harsh but you put the work into all of this! :) keep up the good work!

Ryan,



I like the personas.



If you decided to do more of them, I wouldn't complain! :)



And good luck stopping Madonna or whatever her name is!

Ryan, They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery. You have a large volume of work worth imitating!



With respect to the copyright issues on the Personas site, I recommend posting to their forums: http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla-labs-personas/topics



A post was started there called "Be very careful with copyrighted designs." and several offending images were pointed out in a friendly manor and have already been taken down by the submitting member.



You have a lot of respectable work here and I am proud to be a member.

Thank you!

If you want to put the fear of God into her, you could always post an announcement on the free gallery asking plagiarists to kindly ask you permission before taking your work for themselves.



It's good that she's giving you credit, but that's like asking for forgiveness instead of permission.

Perhaps one way of combating MaDonna the Plagiarist is to steal her thunder by putting up personas of the same images she's used, with a link to your site and a copyright notice. She's obviously not going to stop on her own, and the fact that she's changing the persona names means she's trying to avoid being Googled -- she knows what she's doing is wrong.



I notice that she's using the images and photos of other artists, too. I recognize some of them from National Geographic's POD and photographers from Flikr.

This one, "Glimmering" is from Glimeren (no credit given - and in fact, they've put their own 'watermark' in the top right corner of it).





http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/11165

Great idea you've had there. Now my firefox looks just as good as my desktop.



I would think this could attract more people to DB as well.

I'd never heard about Personas either, and now I've got Phraxis gracing my browser. Thanks!

"Morning Shade" looks like it could be one of yours, too, and "Field of Dreams" sure looks like part of widescreen "Red and Gold."



It's too bad that Firefox doesn't have a "comments" area like iGoogle does. If it did, we could comment on her blatant plagiarism. It might discourage her to know she's busted.

They should at least have memberships or support you in some way... Granted I leeched off of the free gallery for quite a while before I because a lifer but You might want to see if it is worth your while. You don't want to get into an expensive legal battle, it'd probably be easier to use your images to out-do their personas...like they'd have a chance! ha!



She's a busy one. I saw a few from other wallpaper sites, they look pretty good but here are some of yours that jumped out at me. There were some forest, beach, aurora, and space ones that were hard to tell. By the end I was expecting to see a giant blue glowing mushroom! lol (*nudge nudge*)





"Forest" which is Verdure

http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/147



"Island Sunset Corner" and "Island sunset are Tropic of Cancer 2001

http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/29016



http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/27928



"Bird and Floral Corner" Is Floral with... I guess a bird that looks a heck of a lot like a cartoon angle. Doesn't match at all lol.

http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/26606



"Floating Leaf" is Haiku like someone else said

http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/26669



"Deer Drinking" is Idyll

http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/3600



I'm pretty sure "Early Morning" is one of yours but it's hard to tell which a cropped Idyll?

http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/2931



Those are the one that aren't credited to you, but at least she didn't put her name on them like she did some of the others.



Then there is the fire fly's one that was already mentioned that she did give you credit for.

before you go all "I'm okay with this", remember that whatever you do sets a precedent! I love the ones you've put out so far. however, several other of MaDonna's 'works' seem quite similar to your works, esp. Springwood/similar images and Song of the Sky, and aren't credited- you might want to try placing a few of the images atop your own, and see if they match up, because I doubt that the only one I see credited is the only one.



As an example: "Floating leaf" (http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/26669) is your new version of 'haiku', and isn't credited. Crack down, you have the authority to.

I think it be awasome as well if you tryed a IGoogle theme or two as well. I look every now and then to see if you have made any yet.

Just another idea for you to try if you want =) but like I said, I 2nd that idea

Hey Ryan,

Never knew of the Personas until I read here..much like everyone else. Hopefully, the work used elsewhere is at least credited to you. ( i know when I saw some images elsewhere the watermark for Digital Blasphemy was still there, but I don't know the legality stuff to it)) I remember when I worked at Wal-Mart someone tried to pass off the Singularity image as his work but I laughed at him because his cropping of the image didn't take out the watermark(plus it was my background at the time). Needless to say I didn't let him have it. Shredded it in front of him. Hopefully these moochers give credit where it id due.



I like these personas and would like you to keep doing them but it's definitely up to you on that one. Keep up the great work

I've seen your work cropping up all over place Ryan, I reckon you should come down hard on whoever it is. Granted they've given you a link but their still riding on your success.

In reference to the poster below who mentioned gazebo....I think an updated version of gazebo would look fantastic.

Hi Ryan - Just my 2 cents. I think it's terrible for this designer to use your work without asking - bottom line, it's wrong. I can appreciate that he/she now has linked to your site, but still, as another poster said, if you give these people an inch, they'll take a mile. This person needs to be reprimanded for what is tantamount to stealing your work (without asking, modifying your images and distributing them widely). I don't know what sort of "punishment" would be appropriate, but I would encourage you (I'm sorry if this is out of line) to put your foot down and say 'no'.



Also, just as an FYI, I have also seen your work on several Web pages specifically dedicated to wallpapers and themes for Apple's iPhone. People love your art, but it's still incredibly crass of them to disseminate your work without permission.

I really like your skins for Firefox Personas. I think you should keep doing them. If I could request gazebo (that's still my favorite image) for Personas, I would.



I hope you get that person to stop using your art. I really don't think that's right.

I didn't even know about Personas until your post. Now I'm set up with the Containment one you put up. Thanks for the tip!

I love your personas. Thank you for making those. I like those better than a lot of the other ones on the firefox site.

Perhaps some iGoogle themes as well? With the number of people using iGoogle as their home pages, I bet your themes would generate good site traffic, too. They're quick and easy to create. Check out http://tinyurl.com/my5ytw.



They also have a special artist section where your work would shine: http://tinyurl.com/lz46nz. Just a thought.



Oh, and I found someone who "borrowed" one of your images to make a iGoogle theme without giving you credit. They also did a lousy job of it. Can be found at http://tinyurl.com/kkmrje.

Actually, scratch that. The white on grey in the status bar doesn't appear to be anything to do with the DB personas, just the way Personas are implemented. I'll have a poke about and see if I can fix that.

I like where the Personas are starting and would love to see more. For my part, a space theme would be awesome.



That said, I think there's an element of needing to choose carefully as I'm getting some white text on light grey (in the status bar) which is somewhat difficult to read.

It's cool that you are making official DB Personas, they look great!



And about MaDonna, if he is giving you credit and linking back to the site, I wouldn't worry about it. But I tracked down his Google Groups profile anyway.

http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=xsb2YxMAAABMsunumW8wDpHTXFJtUbtjWMj6vob75xS36mXc24h6ww

Yes, keep them coming. There are a lack of really good ones and these 3 are great.

I really like the personas! So glad you are doing them!

I love the personas!! Keep them coming!!

According to the "How to Create Personas"...



http://personas.services.mozilla.com/demo_create



...it states in step 1:



"never use artwork/logos/photography that you do not have the legal rights to use - you will have to prove you have the rights if the content is questioned"



Go sick 'em, Ryan.

Ok sorry about the double post, but I just wanted to say that the Indian Summer one looks pretty good. I guess everything turned white while it was loading and I did not hover long enough to see what it would actually look like.



Sorry for the misinformation!!!!





The MaDonna Person that has obviously taken quite a few DB images has zero class. They did not even pick images that look good on a browser (at least not mine). They must have been going for volume not quality in how they were created because he/she has a lot of personas!

I like the personas. I like the Containment persona but the Indian summer one is too light and I cannot see the Menu Bar Icons (at least I can't when I hover over it to see what it will look like on my current persona).



I would love to see more. I can't think of the name at the moment but the one with the different color liquids in the glass jars? That one might be cool.

I have heard the first time about personas today because of you, and it's really cool. I'd like to see more themes from you, maybe some brighter ones?

Never bothered to try them out until i saw the post. Pretty cool, I'd definitely be interested in seeing a few more.

I too just found out about these today. These are pretty cool. I DID have to switch back from my favorite theme (Noia) to be able to see my menu bar text (File, Edit, View, etc...) but WELL worth it!

I'm thrilled to hear you're making some Digital Blasphemy Personas! I've been using Personas for some time, and once considered sending you an email suggesting some DB ones, but never got around to it. The ones you put up so far are awesome, and I'm looking forward to more!

I just found out about Firefox Personas today because of your post. It's a pretty cool feature, thanks for posting the sample ones from Digitalblasphemy.

I love them. I currently have The Spark running as a persona, and it looks great. Would love to see more!

Even though I never saw the imposter's, I'm thrilled to see real DB personas! This becomes a great reason (among a couple of others) for me to really start using them.



Now I apologize in advance for being OT for this thread, but since I'm here... I just got a Palm Pre. It rocks, by the way!!! I'm assuming mobile resolutions for it are the same as the iPhone. If so, can we label as such?

Ryan, because of you im hooked on personas...



its the greatest thing since firefox came out, and the three that you have up have me waiting for more, i have your gallery bookmarked already.



please do more of these beautiful thing. i absolutly love the thing

Congratulations, plagiarism victim! You're among good company - the keenest indicator that you're doing something original and popular is that people are ripping you off.



They'll probably do little besides take down the offending articles, and they may go so far as to ban the user, but honestly, any other course of action is going to be an ineffective one. You can't give these sorts of people an inch. If they think they can get away with it, it's not going to stop.