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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]  (Read 2211035 times)

MesoTroniK

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2895 on: January 01, 2014, 01:43:22 PM »

Kazi when doing portraits I find it helpful to reference the legend himself, Andrew Loomis.

LiquidStang

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2896 on: January 01, 2014, 02:04:06 PM »

It's a bit confusing, because it looks black in this light background (dark gray), and we did not really black outline, unless the vessel represents the right wing instead dark.

Why strong review?

It looks clean, the only case in which it is irrelevant. It gets a "fuzzed" during the game, as in all things, as the sprite rotation, so there is no sense of fear that the "right" will not see.

This means that I am very picky about, to the point where I clean up a lot of things, so it's not a fair judge.
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Sundog

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2897 on: January 01, 2014, 04:58:51 PM »

It seems there's a wee bit of contention concerning the armor texture of my little ships. Perhaps I should start a poll?  ::)

LiquidStang, I agree that anti-aliasing becomes a non issue when a sprite is shrunken and rotated by the game, but sometimes the game enlarges them too. When you zoom in on the refitting screen for example. It became very easy to spot some of the ugliness pointed out by kazi when I zoomed in on this sprite. He was just giving me his opinion and advice (which is what I'm here for), so I wouldn't worry about it.

@kazi:
1. What do you mean by highlights?
2. I completely agree about the anti-aliasing. I was just too lazy to do it right the first time  :-\. Will fix.
3. The panel lines are on their own layer, so I can change the contrast (via opacity) very easily. I chose to use high contrast in hopes of making the paneling visible during battles when the player is zoomed out all the way, but it only shows up as noise anyway. I'll experiment.
4. Airbrushing? Please don't make me open GIMP. It takes like an hour to load and uses half my RAM  :(. I'd kill for lighting effects like the Mayorate ships have, but I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to make it happen. I'll see what I can do though.

kazi

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2898 on: January 01, 2014, 05:58:55 PM »

@Mesotronik - That looks like an awesome book. You've given me an absurd amount of reading material lately though, haha...

@Sundog - Yeah I do everything in GIMP. Sure its a pain to load, but it really pays off once you get past the steep learning curve.
1. I mostly meant the white overlay that makes the metal armor shiny. They're expertly done, but slightly too bright. If you have those highlights in a layer by themselves, you can just turn down the layer opacity. You could alternatively do a levels adjustment so they aren't quite so bright.
2. & 3. Yeah it took me awhile to figure the brush trick out. If you turn down the line opacity or otherwise make them closer to the armor color, the fact that the lines were done with the pencil will barely be noticeable at all (you can probably avoid redoing them that way).
4. All of the lighting fx for my ships is just me airbrushing white (for highlights), black (for shadows), or colors (when the lighting on the ship illuminates nearby stuff) onto the sprite with the layer mode set to "soft light." The actual lights themselves are just done with the brush.


Worked on the portrait a bit more. There was an issue with the nose that made the whole face look crooked. Fixed now (mostly  :P).

Here's how it will look ingame:
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MesoTroniK

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2899 on: January 01, 2014, 08:25:07 PM »

The portrait is improving at a solid pace , nice job!

One minor thing is that if you are trying to replicate the vanilla style, they should have an outline on them. Beyond that it is just detail work that will come to you in time :)

mendonca

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2900 on: January 02, 2014, 05:47:28 AM »

@Sundog

Did you draw the lowlights / highlights on separate lowlight / highlight layers?

If so, the armor plating effect on the BRT was done in a very simple and similar way, as you appear to have done for that ship.

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In the BRT's case, the added complexity was achieved simply by copying the highlight / lowlight layers several times - and applying Paint.net filters (such as glow), changing some to overlay, changing some to lighten/darken, shifting hues, adding noise etc. Basically just from the simple lines, by copying the layers and overlaying them and faffing about with some of the values I felt like I improved the look with a minimum amount of work.

It wasn't done in any particular scientific way, just spending 20 minutes or so messing about with lots of copies of those two layers.
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"I'm doing it, I'm making them purple! No one can stop me!"

Magician

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2901 on: January 02, 2014, 07:16:04 AM »

kazi, try to not add colors, detailed shading before you have satisfying shape/linework. If shape, major lines are good, everything else will be better. Also try to rotate a bit your portrait, apply some lines to check if proportions are right, draw top-down, side views just to see if your decisions make sense in sense of 3d form.
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Erick Doe

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2902 on: January 02, 2014, 07:32:10 PM »

Two scrappy destroyers for TuP


Hermit


Wildebeest
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xenoargh

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2903 on: January 02, 2014, 07:35:36 PM »

Both of those are great designs :)  Could use a little more work on cast shadows from the taller parts, but the pixel-work is really tight and I'm loving the ramshackle feel :)
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Shellster

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2904 on: January 02, 2014, 08:15:46 PM »

Hi everyone, here are my first attempts at kitbashing:
Spoiler
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xenoargh

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2905 on: January 02, 2014, 09:23:10 PM »

I love the clean look of these, great job on your first sprites and welcome :) 

I feel these could use a warm color to create a stronger contrast; you might want to try toning the gray areas a little warmer and see how that feels. 

I also think these would also be improved by using some lighting to give it a better sense of scale. 

Other than that, I'd have to say that the first one is by far my favorite of the three, in terms of design, but that's just taste :)
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Shellster

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2906 on: January 03, 2014, 12:35:23 AM »

Thanks for the welcome and the useful tips  :), Ill try and apply what you said into my sprites.

I have to agree that the first one is also my favourite :)
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Erick Doe

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2907 on: January 03, 2014, 05:34:13 AM »

Another junkyard boat:


Platypus-class Frigate

Fast Missile Racks system
4x small missile
2x small ballistic
2x built-in single MRM
2x built-in MRM rack
« Last Edit: January 03, 2014, 07:22:52 AM by Erick Doe »
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HELMUT

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2908 on: January 03, 2014, 08:12:40 AM »

The two new TuP ships are very good Erick. The Hermit is probably one of the best scrappy ship of the mod.

Shellster, very impressive for a first try, i especially like the right one. But adding a second color in the scheme make it less monochrome i think.
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TheHappyFace

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Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]
« Reply #2909 on: January 04, 2014, 10:02:41 AM »

Don't forget to put pictures in spoilers
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