Gallery Character Seperation Opinions needed please!

[milestogo]

I have reached an issue with my gallery and I am looking for anyone's input. I currently own 23 DB/DBZ/GT cels and I have them all grouped into one section. I have about 6 or 7 cels on the way or I just haven't posted yet. With my Sailor Moon collection I have separated the gallery by season (the five seasons) and that has worked well. With Dragonball though I can't decide how to separate it. Should I go with Dragonball, Z, and GT and Movies. Four categories? Should I go by saga? Should I arrange by character? I also have about five pan cels some vertical some horizontal, should those go into their own section? How do you separate your galleries? Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated, thanks everyone for your input!


Milestogo

[Drac of the Sharp Smiles]

When I had a gallery, with shows that were subdivided onto different pages, I always attempted to choose a division that resulted in as many of the sub pages having as similar a number of images as possible. So, for example, let's pretend I have 20 cels from a given show. Let's pretend the cels come from the first five episodes and most show one of three different characters: GirlA, GuyB, and GirlC.

The first way I might consider dividing it is by episode. But let's say I look at it at see that ten of the cels are from Ep1, two are from Ep2, only one is from Ep3, five are from Ep4, and three are from Ep5. That would create pages with a huge variation in number of images. I might consider making a separate page for Ep1 and then a page for Ep2-5, but that still leaves ten images on each of the pages, which is smaller than 20, but how much I like that kind of depend how many images per page I was hoping to achieve.

The second way I might consider diving it is by character. So say I tally up and see I have five cels of GirlA, six cels of GuyB, five cels of GirlC, and the remaining four are ones that don't contain one of those three characters. That is a much more even division of the total number of images and achieves a much smaller number of images per page, so I would probably divide that way.

There's no reason that "pans" can't be considered a dividing point for the collection in this same way, if you have enough of them. For example, say you have 20 cels, six of which are pans and the remaining 14 cels have some way of dividing into three groups of five, five, and four. That puts the pans logically on their own page.

Ultimately, since there's no possible way to please everyone who visits your gallery, it depends on how YOU want to look at them. For me, it differed by show. Some shows, I preferred to see in order by character and some I jumped hoops to divide them up in a way they were displayed in order of appearance. I only once divided specifically by story arc. (Twelve Kingdoms, in case anyone is curious. ^_^) Personally, I find it interesting to see how people choose to display their galleries, since I feel that tells you a little bit about how the person thinks in regards to their collection.

Many Sharp Smiles,
--Drac

[milestogo]

Thanks Drac for your info, here is where I stand on my gallery right now. It makes so much sense to me to group my Sailor Moon section of my gallery by season. The problem with my Dragonball collection is I've never had enough of them to consider breaking them up. As it stands now here is a break down of what I currently have in house:
2 Movie Cels
1 Dragonball cel
13 DBZ Cels
7 GT Cels
by character breaks down like this:
8 Vegeta
10 Kuririn
2 Piccolo
1 Trunks
2 Pan-chan

I sorta like the breakdown by character but what does one do when you only own 1 or 2 pieces of a certain character and you don't really plan on getting any more of them. When you are browsing a gallery what breakdown is irritating? I know I get annoyed when its broken down unnecessarily, i.e.- 1 cel a page. Again any thoughts are welcome!

Milestogo

[Drac of the Sharp Smiles]

I sorta like the breakdown by character but what does one do when you only own 1 or 2 pieces of a certain character and you don't really plan on getting any more of them. When you are browsing a gallery what breakdown is irritating? I know I get annoyed when its broken down unnecessarily, i.e.- 1 cel a page. Again any thoughts are welcome!

I've seen people put up pages with just a single image. (Both when dividing by character and when dividing by episode.) I've also seen some people who like to divide by character and who make one of the pages an "everyone else" page once they have all their main favorite, or more numerous, characters covered. (So, taking your breakdown as an example, that might be a page for Vegeta, a page for Kuririn, and finally a page for "everyone else" that contains your Piccolo, Trunks, and Pan-chan cels.)

The "1 cel page" isn't something to fear when making a gallery. I've never been a huge fan of separate pages with only one image on them, but I've seen it done well before and I would be hard pressed to say it annoyed me. ^_^ If you had an entire gallery of 1-cel-pages.... THEN I'd probably bail from click exhaustion. (*LOL*) That's not where you seem to be going, though. ^_^

Remember, one thing to ask yourself is: "Approximately how many images am I trying to achieve for each page?" Browse some other galleries and see/experience what other people have done. If you find a gallery that you feel just has way too much on each page, note how many images they're showing per page. You now know you want fewer than that. ^_^

Layout is another thing you want to consider. You might have 10 cels of Kuririn, but maybe they're not 10 images that you feel all belong on the same page.

I love thinking about organization. ^_^ My husband has given up trying to figure out why it takes me upwards of 3-4 HOURS to put a couple cels into my books. It's because everything has to be in a certain order. (*LOL*)

--Drac ^_^

[90sKid]

As a fellow DBZ collector, I have to say that my personal preference when dividing my gallery sections is to separate them by show, and then by character. (That's my favorite way to get to my cels because I'll know where I want to look right away by character instead of trying to remember which show/saga/category it happens to be in, even if it just takes an extra second of remembering the show or clicking my gallery links). Also I feel like when most people come to my gallery, no matter what, they'll always start browsing through the categories that contain their favorite characters first. (I know I always try to sniff out and find the Goku cels first in a Dragonball gallery..... regardless of categorization haha.) And having one cel in a category or seeing that in someone else's gallery doesn't bother me at all. (As evidenced by my Piccolo, Yamcha, Tien etc. pages. =P)

I do happen to have a few non-single-character related gallery titles, but with a show like DBZ I figured adding in a "Fight" scene section along with the standard "Pairs" and "Groups" section that people add when they divide by characters wouldn't be so bad. I mean....it's DBZ haha. Had to throw in a fight section

This is just my personal preference. For me it seems to be the quickest and easiest way to pinpoint a single cel for both me and the viewer. Plus it's simply my favorite way of looking at the category. Gotta love getting bombarded with dozens of cel images of your favorite character haha. (Not to say I don't love the galleries that group them by the entire show, or by sagas. They look just as nice, especially saga separation. Very fun to see the show's scenes in order through cel art!)

[sensei]

Being a storyteller, I tend to group items in order of episodes and in sequence. That lets me bring some lesser items into focus by showing how they lead up to or frame more eyeworthy items. But really there are no rules: even for galleries that I have organized by narrative, some will get hit on a lot and others rarely. I'd say work out a system that works for you and makes you feel that cels that you think are your best ones are easy to find and appreciate. If a one-item gallery does this, then more power to you.

[bulleta]

Whatever you're leaning towards is the right answer, there's no right or wrong here. Some visitors will prefer by series, some by character. You can't please everyone. My own Dragonball collection is sorted both ways, by character and by series - which is then broken down into Sagas, Movies, OVAs, TV Specials and in one case - a video game. Cels in my categories always display in the order they were purchased by default, because I like to remember the order I bought things in. But I'm particularly anal about over-organizing them. I also have a lot more control over my gallery than Rubberslug users have over theirs, so my solution may not work for you.

I always leaned towards character galleries myself, because I'm usually only interested in seeing say... Trunks. But then you have problems when you get a cel of him with another character that you also have a section for. Unless you want to upload it twice (then you'd have multiple item view counts for the same item - and inaccurate item counts), you'll need a "groups" or "multiple characters" section. Then I always wondered if people visiting my Trunks section would know that there were more cels of him in the group section. It worried me.

I don't like excessive sections with a small number of cels, either, but I also don't like large sections where some separation would really help break it up. But if it's not my gallery, there's not a whole heck of a lot I can do about it!