Started work on a little freight hauling frigate, the Ashnan class, today. Probably a vaguely similar hauling profile to a hound, though not as fast and likely slightly less combat capable.
Spoiler
At 200% zoom.
A dumpy little utility ship.
I also started work on trying to sketch other small utility craft in anticipation of the coming update but those sketches turned out pretty bad.
That's an appealing little tortoise; It might be interesting to give it a single slot, or even none, and make it rely on drones for protection.
Damn I like these little ships; nicely designed.
Why thank you. Still not there, but I'm optimistic. I might have to go in and pull some gradient meshes to get enough depth.
I'm hoping to avoid actual pixel-pushery where possible; not because I don't agree that more depth and detail is needed, but because I want to speed the process of making new sprites up as much as possible, and because it's fun to make Illustrator do the tedious work for me. Right now I have Pixel Preview turned on and I'm experimenting with antennae and streaks of grime and dirt on the hull.
It'll take a nice long time, but hopefully the end result will be more interesting for it.
Let me put it this way, if David Baumgart, a professional digital artist for games, the original author, knew from experience that using illustrator to speed up the process would work - he would. But he doesn't.
And if I were aiming for perfect fidelity to a histogram of the vanilla sprites, that would be of
catastrophic importance to me. But I'm not, so it isn't. What gave you the idea that I was? (Also, I'm a different sort of professional, not an amateur. Feel free to make detailed demands! I'll invoice you). I'll grant you that I'm not at the point of an acceptable match with vanilla yet, but I don't imagine I'm far off, either. A wee bit more depth, a splash of color in the highlights and shadows, more and better greebly bits.
I'm just predicting that your ships are going to look somewhat jarringly different from vanilla, and that is not a good thing for any gameplay experience.
Again, if the goal were to perfectly replicate existing work, I'd be picking a different method. Obviously! I have a Wacom tablet right here, and I've seen the relevant blog posts. But I'm curious whether it's possible to get
reasonably close, to the point where it's not obvious to a casual observer, using nothing but vector artwork. (And given the stable of tools I haven't used yet, I'd say the chances are good).
Look, I can tell from your post count that this matters to you. And ultimately, you're going to be disappointed, because there's always going to be a gap between what you think my goals ought to be, and what my goals actually are. It's very likely that I will decide they're good enough at a point that drives you crazy, and you're welcome to never play the nonexistent mod that I haven't made yet that doesn't use them on that basis. Everybody wins.