@max thanks for that. I've spent time doing analysis of David Baumgarts work, but there are other guys here who can give better art advice. Anyway as for your ship It's hard to know where to start with that freighter. Don't get me wrong it's unique and interesting enough, it deviates hugely from vanilla yet it doesn't. I could make some comments about the light source not giving enough light to the forward part of the ship, but it's not that far off. Style wise it could be considered closer to black rock maybe?
I'd have to get the ship in game next to similar ships to get a better determination. There is going to be some potential issues with the collision radius and damage deco...but art wise I'd have to get it in game next to similar ships to really comment. The animation and movement of nearly the entire ship is just....nothing like it in vanilla so I don't really have a frame of reference.
One thing I might suggest is having a greater range of colours of the cargo containers. This would be fairly time consuming, and a part of me is not convinced it is not a whole solution either. I think it needs more regular elements like gantries, girders, cranes, pipes, lights, antenna, black and yellow hazard stripes, a bridge, command and control, living areas, electrical generator looking thing.
Have a look at the SCY ships by Tartiflette. He does lots of smaller animations and effects on a ship. I've seen sometimes 50+ smaller individual animations. Sometimes each only have 2-3 frames, however lots of little movements gives a feeling of greater complexity and seems more natural and vanilla.
I sure I'll come up,with some better words for it later, for the moment it's in the too hard basket. I just noticed ORMtnMan comments about it being a waste of energy to keep them spinning? I assume form following function it is some kind of precious cargo that must maintain a from of gravitational force and grav plates are a waste of energy compared to just spinning something.
thanks a lot for the comment, agree with most of them except for the bridge part. to me a visible bridge is just telling your enemy where to shoot at. for the same realistic thing (for my personal taste anyway) i love to add reverse thruster to my ship as well, just they don't work well in game so give up on that.
anyway to fit the comment and for a more conventional approach here's the 2nd version:
texture is not done yet but more or less should look like this instead of the previous one.
armored is added back for A: game damage fx don't do well if the outside is animated. B: it's military hull, not civil.
Inner tube (not quite visible topdown) is expanded. the top half would be a giant hanger/flightdeck and possibly mini factory for defence drone production, lower part is engineering and all.
drone defence is worth that much space used for giving it's size and armor, when it's at gun range the outcome is pretty obvious. would be quite a number of missile and fighter point defence for sure.
Outer spinning tube would of course be the living quarter and cargo hold.
main engine is at the middle outer rim which I believe that position and layout would offer the best control of this mess.
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Topic: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed] (Read 2234125 times)