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ComixBox Theme


Grila

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ComixBox Theme

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ComixBox v1.0.2
BigBox Theme
2/23/2017

Theme Description
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ComixBox is a theme based on old school comic book design. It relies heavily on having the proper artwork scraped for your systems and games including background fan art, screenshots, front cover images, etc. ComixBox also features some advanced animation techniques that have never been seen before in BigBox.
Separate views were made for the diferent video snap aspects available. Utilize the option "Remember Separate View for Each Platform" in BigBox Options - Views to get the best visual from the theme (to avoid blank space on the sides of your video snaps).
 
Theme Notes 
~~~~~~~~~~~
* Requires the fonts Bangers and Clementine, which are included in the root theme folder. Install them before running BigBox.

* The animations in the theme were ultimately just me experimenting with some stuff to try and bring something new to a BigBox theme. I thought they ended up pretty neat so I left them in. I do have a version without them that I'm planning on adding to the .ZIP file shortly.

* The theme was ultimately designed for 1920x1080 but was tested to be fully working at these resolutions as well:

  • 1280x720
  • 1366x768
  • 1600x900

 

Changelog 
~~~~~~~~~~~

v1.0.2 (2/23/2017):

  • Changed all the videos to use the background video object so they would stretch to fill their appropriate spaces
  • Forced platform and game background videos to "On" in the theme settings file to compensate for the above change

v1.0.1 (2/21/2017):

  • Added fade effect to the title section so the text doesn't appear until after the animation passes (applies to platform and game views 1, 2, and 3)
  • Added the transition selector codes back to the text views that was erroneously removed during development

v1.0.0 (2/20/2017):

  • Initial release

platform1.thumb.png.f488d1d94228ffb7d1e60e59498b3cd0.pngplatform2.thumb.png.70b4cd96aa23d18f1dee1b55fb34064a.pngplatform3.thumb.png.246479fda266a91279e140cacce29ac6.pngplatformtext.thumb.png.96301d1e51689dcf72ff92aec5946da7.pnggame1.thumb.png.2b10e8de1739b065d407d20410c6fe11.pnggame2.thumb.png.c5c8d59aef6c316a9f5dab6d67a0ce64.pnggame3.thumb.png.8d088405d190f1ff2412df873c31d38c.pnggametext.thumb.png.afe4992c4457bf77b196c0c5929bf39d.png


 

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Oh man Grila, I can't even.... you're such a talented workaholic! It’s unbelievable how you come up with a new polished theme almost every 1 or 2 weeks and with every one of them you break the boundaries of what I thought was possible with the theming engine even more.

Great job on this, it's looking really great!

 

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You have really raised the ball game with this theme hats off to you the overall look along with the animations are excellent, to get it to work on a 5.4 monitor all i had to do was resize all the animation pngs to the monitor size and the same  with 4 core items the system.jpg, textview_comicbook_frame.png, view1_comicbook_frame.png and the view2_comicbook_frame.png  A BIB BIG KUDOS for teaching us more theme goodness.

Edited by Maddoc1007
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I've went through the theme's files and xaml codes to study how it was implemented and all I can say is WOW! This is just next level sorcery I mean the guy didn't just insert a .gif animation and called it a day NO NO NO! He actually drew the animation FRAME BY FRAME in a .png file for each of the different animations with unique storyboard code for each and every frame now that's pure dedication... This theme has become one of my top three themes in Big Box and I would love to see this theme becoming a default theme in Big Box cause it deserves it.

Sir you've outdone yourself I have nothing but respect for your talent and dedication.

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Just now, SNAK3ATER said:

I've went through the theme's files and xaml codes to study how it was implemented and all I can say is WOW! This is just next level sorcery I mean the guy didn't just insert a .gif animation and called it a day NO NO NO! He actually drew the animation FRAME BY FRAME in a .png file for each of the different animations with unique storyboard code for each and every frame now that's pure dedication... This theme has become one of my top three themes in Big Box and I would love to see this theme becoming a default theme in Big Box cause it deserves it.

Sir you've outdone yourself I have nothing but respect for your talent and dedication.

:) Actually they are rendered in After Effects and exported as frames. My first attempt was to use .mp4 files with an alpha channel for the transparency, but the XAML MediaElement doesn't support transparency so I had to resort to frame animation.

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1 minute ago, Grila said:

:) Actually they are rendered in After Effects and exported as frames. My first attempt was to use .mp4 files with an alpha channel for the transparency, but the XAML MediaElement doesn't support transparency so I had to resort to frame animation.

Ah I see but I thought .mp4 videos didn't support Alpha channel for transparency? I was also researching the possibility of adding Alpha channel videos but from what i've found is that only .AVI and .MOV containers support alpha channel with transparencies videos.

Nonetheless, this is still an impressive work you produced and you've become a source of inspiration for all of us in theme making so thank you again for your excellent contributions to the community!  

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Just now, SNAK3ATER said:

Ah I see but I thought .mp4 videos didn't support Alpha channel for transparency? I was also researching the possibility of adding Alpha channel videos but from what i've found is that only .AVI and .MOV containers support alpha channel with transparencies videos.

Nonetheless, this is still an impressive work you produced and you've become a source of inspiration for all of us in theme making so thank you again for your excellent contributions to the community!  

Yes, that is correct and something I did not know until I started developing this one.

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ComixBox Changelog:

v1.0.1 (2/21/2017):
- Added fade effect to the title section so the text doesn't appear until after the animation passes (applies to platform and game views 1, 2, and 3).
- Added the transition selector codes back to the text views that was erroneously removed during development.

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ComixBox Changelog:

v1.0.2 (2/23/2017):
- Changed all the videos to use the background video object so they would stretch to fill their appropriate spaces
- Forced platform and game background videos to "On" in the theme settings file to compensate for the above change

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