Goals
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This section describes the Flame artistic motif. This section may be useful for anyone interested in reproducing the Flame artistic motif, or in creating new artistic motifs for The CentOS Project corporate visual identity.

Description
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The Flame artistic motif was built using the flame filter of Gimp 2.2 in CentOS 5.5.

The flame filter of Gimp can produce stunning, randomly generated fractal patterns. The flame filter of Gimp gives us a great oportunity to reduce the time used to produce new artistic motifs, because of its ``randomly generated'' nature. Once the artistic motif be created, it is propagated through all visual manifestations of CentOS Project corporate visual identity using the centos-art.sh script (see Directories trunk Scripts) inside the CentOS Artwork Repository.

To set the time intervals between each new visual style production, we could reuse the CentOS distribution major release schema.  I.e., we could produce a new visual style, every two years, based on a new ``randomly generated'' flame pattern, and publish the whole corporate visual identity (i.e., distribution stuff, promotion stuff, websites stuff, etc.) with the new major release of CentOS distribution all together at once.

Producing a new visual style is not one day's task. Once we have defined the artistic motif, we need to propagate it through all visual manifestations of The CentOS Project corporate visual identity. When we say that we could produce one new visual style every two years we really mean: to work two years long in order to propagate a new visual style to all visual manifestations of The CentOS Project corporate visual identity.

Obviously, in order to propagate one visual style to all different visual manifestations of The CentOS Project corporate visual identity, we need first to know which the visual manifestations are.  To define which visual manifestations are inside The CentOS Project corporate visual identity is one of the goals the CentOS Artwork Repository and this documentation manual are both aimed to satisfy.

Once we define which the visual manifestation are, it is possible to define how to produce them, and this way, organize the automation process. Such automation process is one of the goals of centos-art.sh script.

With the combination of both CentOS Artwork Repository and centos-art.sh scripts we define work lines where translators, programmers, and graphic designers work together to distribute and reduce the amount of time employed to produce The CentOS Project monolithic corporate identity.

From a monolithic corporate visual identity point of view, notice that we are producing a new visual style for the same theme (i.e., Flame). It would be another flame design but still a flame design. This idea is very important to be aware of, because we are somehow ``refreshing'' the theme, not changing it at all.

This way, as we are ``refreshing'' the theme, we still keep oursleves inside the monolithic conception we are trying to be attached to (i.e., one unique name, and one unique visual style for all visual manifestations).

Producing artistic motifs is a creative process that may consume long time, specially for people without experienced knowledge on graphic design land. Using ``randomly generated'' conception to produce artistic motifs could be, practically, a way for anyone to follow in order to produce maintainable artistic motifs in few steps.

Due to the ``randomly generated'' nature of Flame filter, we find that Flame pattern is not always the same when we use Flame filter interface.

Using the same pattern design for each visual manifestation is essential in order to maintain the visual connection among all visual manifestations inside the same theme.  Occasionally, we may introduce pattern variations in opacity, size, or even position but never change the pattern design itself, nor the color information used by images considered part of the same theme.

     Important When we design background images, which are considered part of the same theme, it is essential to use the same design pattern always. This is what makes theme images to be visually connected among themeselves, and so, the reason we use to define the word ``theme'' as: a set of images visually connected among themeselves.

In order for us to reproduce the same flame pattern always, Flame filter interface provides the Save and Open options. The Save option brings up a file save dialog that allows you to save the current Flame settings for the plug-in, so that you can recreate them later.  The Open option brings up a file selector that allows you to open a previously saved Flame settings file.

The Flame settings we used in our example are saved in the file named 800x600.xcf-flame.def, inside the Backgrounds/Xcf directory structure.

See also
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  * --- Removed(xref:Directories trunk Identity Images Themes Motifs) ---.

  * See Directories trunk Identity Images Themes.

  * See Directories trunk Identity.

  * See Directories trunk.