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[AxleMC131]

So I've been tearing my hair out this afternoon trying to come up with some more cool ship design concepts for another (later) mod after the one I'm currently working on - which, between you and me, I sadly now have little hope for... Think I made a bad theme choice. Ah well; that's not what I'm here to talk about.

I'm here to mention a new concept I'm working on, based entirely on a plastic scrap-built model "naval ship" (as in, slightly Steampunk 1800's style) I have sitting in front of me right now. It's about an inch long and I made it years ago when I toyed with building model spacecraft from plasticard and such. I thought it would make a great starting point for combining a little of my own Steampunk into a Starsector mod, and created a sprite from it. The details on the process are inside the spoiler:

Spoiler

I reached this point really quite quickly. The actual model has guns on it, and I decided to place the Starsector weapon mounts in approximately the same place. It's clearly a gunboat of some kind, a small, slow, armoured vessel with a heavy weapons payload.



Colouring was hard. The green here is based on the actual model, which is a light off-green and gunmetal grey, with some silver and bronze highlights. Sadly, it looks rubbish for a spaceship version of the sprite, and I didn't even bother texturing it beyond flat colours.



What we need is to focus on the fact that it's a very naval-looking vessel. Almost piratey... And what colour are pirates?

Red!



Now THAT's more like it!

(By the way, I later noticed that the greebly bit in the middle of the sprite looks almost like an upside-down skull. Absolutely not intentional, but definitely keeping it!)

[close]

So, what do people think as a new starting concept? I'm thinking about making some more ships to the same style, but I wanted to show off a little of my working process right away because I'm actually really quite happy with how the final sprite turned out, and I actually did the texturing with a different method to how I usually do, with respectable results. All feedback appreciated!

[Tartiflette]

If I may I have two advices for you if you want to match vanilla sprites:

- Do not use sharp black outlines.

 David use neither as his sprites aren't as much pixel art rather than extremely detailed paintings. Unless you are very confident in your skills, this is really an habit to break from to get good results. Having an underlying sketch is useful, but then you should isolate the diferent parts with broad strokes rather than going for the details directly (as I suggested, you can precede that by making a quick kitbash). Then adjust the lighting to the new volume and finish by the details. It will give you more sensible results in term of volume and flow. Also, anti aliasing!

- Add some texture.

 The lack of noise in the hull detract from the impression of scale, material and age of the ship. You could use some real world texture in your underlying layers to add that subtle visual noise that sell the ship. I would advise against using computer generated noise for that. (on the other hand I'm usually forcing a little color noise in my brush that I have control over to avoid painting flat areas). Additionally, the hull shouldn't be of a solid color: material react differently in highlights and shadow and the color should reflect that.

I wrote several tutorial in the forum for various things, I would point you to at least take a look at the paintjob one in my Toybox for more info.

[edit] also this stuff belong to the modding section, not general

[AxleMC131]

Alright, thanks for the tips!

[edit] also this stuff belong to the modding section, not general

Ah, darn. I was hoping it would be alright here because I was more asking what people thought of the THEME than the sprite itself. XD

[Wyvern]

Steampunk in space is a great theme!

(Says a person who backed the Sunless Skies kickstarter.)

That said, to truly do it right, you'd want to do a complete total conversion mod, removing the base game's factions and ships and weapons, and substituting your own entire world.  This is, of course, an awful lot of work.  On the flip side, it would be awesome.

[AxleMC131]

That said, to truly do it right, you'd want to do a complete total conversion mod, removing the base game's factions and ships and weapons, and substituting your own entire world.  This is, of course, an awful lot of work.  On the flip side, it would be awesome.

Oh god, I'm nowhere near experienced or patient enough for that. XD Steampunk was more just a pointer.

[takezoh70]

it would be really great to see the game in steampunk version. Steampunk designs bring a real plus to this kind of universe. It makes futuristic universe very old genre the old republic in star wars. Actually I don't see much equivalent in a retro space opera style. Of course it's a lot of work.

[AxleMC131]

it would be really great to see the game in steampunk version. Steampunk designs bring a real plus to this kind of universe. It makes futuristic universe very old genre the old republic in star wars. Actually I don't see much equivalent in a retro space opera style. Of course it's a lot of work.

Hehe, you never know maybe one day I'll give a proper steampunk TC (or at least ship pack) a go.

Kind of refreshing to have someone necro this post. It's a slap in the face showing what my spriting was like over two years. Goodness how practise changes things.