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[King Alfonzo]

I tried my hand at portraits for disposable nameless AI baddies.
Its good practice and am thus inclined to churn out a production line of such disposable automated simulacrum left over from when tech was more abundant!

Pretty cool - getting a weird juxtapositional Oddworld vibe. Visually they fit in with the vanilla portaits, and they're finely detailed. Good job!

I really want to see alien lifeforms in Starsector. I have discussed my spriting attempts with Tartiflette, who helped me get closer to the game's art style. This is the first improved piece:

Welcome!

It's a pretty good ship shape, however the shading seems a bit too flat at the front and the back. If you add more shading at the front and back, you'd get a more 3D image of the ship that doesn't distrub the eye.

I'm not sure how to animate the fleshy bits at realistic speed without being too hard to notice. As Tartiflette noted, a vein 1m+ in diameter shouldn't be making very fast movements. This is my earlier animation test on the old sprite:

Spoiler

[close]

An idea you could do is simply animate liquid moving through the vein (with bubbles or different coloured bits), or do what they do in Dead Space, and have the image completely still until there's a sudden 'jolt' of animation where the flesh 'twitches' once or twice, before it goes back to static. It'd be much easier to make the animation smoother and more visually appealing.

[Kaucukovnik]

Thanks for the suggestions, a pulsating animation will be more tedious to make, but it will be easier to remain precise than my wobbly displacement method. I'm not sure I can convincingly depict liquid moving through.

And now for something completely different:

WIP Biomechanoid ships - Despair class destroyer and Baphomet class command cruiser.

[CrazyDave]

I can't be the only one that thinks that looks like a guy squatting...

[Kaucukovnik]

Specifically it's the Devil, hence the name. I'm heavily borrowing from H.R.Giger here.

Edit: I know, it kinda looks like batman, but curvy horns were just stupid on a spaceship while these can easily be antennas.

[HELMUT]

AbeOfArabia, that's pretty good work here. If you're as good at making ship sprites as you are with portraits, then i'm clearly looking forward your future work.


Kaucukovnik, i think you nailed the disturbing shape for the Baphomet, your previous "bio-potato" was a bit bland by comparison. I have a few things to say about it though.



The first one is yours, the second one have increased contrast (with a little bit of sharpening too) to make it closer to vanilla in my opinion (the "naked" Aurora was the closest thing to your ship i found). Also felt like trying to see what a version with some more greeble could looks like on the third. I feel the "shoulder blades" and bridge needed a little more something. Probably went a bit overboard with the head and legs though.

Another thing, you should try to avoid the pitch black outlines around the sprite though, as it looks weird compared to vanilla. Very dark brown would looks better in this case.

Also, some guy once made a very sweet looking bio-ship. Not quite the same as what you're currently doing, but it might give you some ideas :



Anyway, i hope you'll deliver some more weird stuff like your Baphomet.

[Kaucukovnik]

I love what you did with the arms and hangars, can I keep that as it is?
More greeblies are being added, I'll try to go for more rounded look, but similar style to your example.

The bio-ship from the last picture is absolutely gorgeous. Something like that is far beyond my abilities.

And...no antialiasing, hard edges only, right?

[HELMUT]

And...no antialiasing, hard edges only, right?

It depends, i saw some spriters using anti-aliasing while some other hard edges. In both cases, it's not really noticeable in game. I'd say anti-aliased sprites tends to looks nicer on the forum though.

And yeah, feel free to keep the parts you need for your sprite.

[Tartiflette]

Vanilla ships are very much anti-aliased. There is only FlashFrozen that manages to get away with very sharp sprites (and near black outlines on top ><) due to his otherwise incredible designs, and even then the edges are still anti-aliased. That is in part dictated by how the game's engine manages transparency: it already adds a tiny black outline when interpolating the transparency of a sprite's borders. If you have sharp black outlines the effect gets very noticeable.

[King Alfonzo]

WIP Biomechanoid ships - Despair class destroyer and Baphomet class command cruiser.

Going for the H. R. Giger look? Because if you are, you are a god. I've been waiting for something genuinely creepy, alien and disturbing in this game. Brilliant work!

[Kaucukovnik]

I'm so glad to see words like "creepy" and "disturbing" used for description. And yeah, I've gone through all Giger art I have before touching a single pixel. Actually, the destroyer is basically stolen:

Spoiler

[close]

Current state of Baphomet:


I'll keep the "naked ass" appearance, I think it makes him all the more disturbing.

Here is a potential ship system:

Spoiler

Doubles large turret's rate of fire while keeping flux cost, disables all other weapons and flight decks. (is that possible?)

[close]

Edit: By the way, have you seen Giger's paintings/airbrushes in person? They appear three-dimensional, with layers of alien glyphs going under surfaces that usually appear solid on reproductions. I have never noticed this much difference when seeing the real thing vs reproduction.

[MesoTroniK]

One thing that bugs me about your ships Kaucukovnik is that vanilla turret mounts don't really fit in my opinion, and so custom ones would be desirable.

[King Alfonzo]

Edit: By the way, have you seen Giger's paintings/airbrushes in person? They appear three-dimensional, with layers of alien glyphs going under surfaces that usually appear solid on reproductions. I have never noticed this much difference when seeing the real thing vs reproduction.

Unfortunately I haven't had the blessing. I live in Australia, where we get eaither tours of 'the grand masters' or group tours of unknown, underground, deeply post-modernist or Dada-ist artists. Seems everytime I go to the National Gallery there's more grafitti in there than traditional art.

[AbeOfArabia]

<< Your fleet is approached by an ancient patrol force, puzzling your sensor technicians as they assured you it appeared to be derelict moments earlier. The ancient fleet hails you using archaic protocols and requests a comm channel. An eerie sight fills the comm screen...>>
Implant AI-419:

"Protocol One: Link To Pilot...
Potential Pilots Identified;
Surrender is Optional--"

<< The link abruptly terminates... in the background, a bridge officer retches onto his console >>

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Kaucukovnik]

The skull has very convincing metallic shine. Looking forward to sport this face in game.

[King Alfonzo]

This is actually amazing. Very nice, gentle glow, very Rembrant.