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[Tecrys]

Yes, working on this right now. First I improved the shading quite a lot by hand but I can't really decide on a colour scheme.
Right now I'm stuck with greyscale:

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For colours I thought of something like bone , maybe some fleshy colours here and there. How about a bright, colourful pattern, tiger stripes or something like that?
It's difficult with this one before I had my colours and just played around with saturation and lightning, now I play with lighting but I don't know what colours would fit ...

@Pelhams: Is that a good Anime? Do you know Tengen Toppa Gurran Lagan?
PS: Those pictures are quite inspirational, I like the white/blood red contrast a lot ...
Edit: Yehaa! I leveled up! I'm a Lieutenant now! Cool beans

[xenoargh]

I'd really suggest making a few layers and doing each color in one of them and playing around with the hues to get it them feeling right before merging them and doing final edging and all that. 

For color... maybe do bone, with some fleshy reds, oranges, etc., maybe some greens, but quite subtle in most areas, avoiding huge contrast shifts?  I feel like this guy is so delicate that major hue / contrast shifts are likely to make it harder to read; a subtle approach may be more fruitful   Just my $0.02, ofc; whatever you feel works is great and I think it'll end up really cool

If using PS or GIMP, use the Overlay layer blending function over your grayscale, it'll give you a pretty solid platform for building final hues; usually I do that, then merge with the gray (always keep a copy of that for oops, ofc), then saturate a bit, then desaturate in places that need it.

[Bjørn_in_the_Sector]

Have a look at tyranid Bio-ships. You could use a certain colour as a bony or chitinous carapace (armour) over a differently covered exoskeleton. Or if you're more into the machine/bio integration, have a look at some of SPAZ's zombie ships.

[Tecrys]

Okay, I'll try what you wrote, Xeno.

Bjørn_in_the_Sector: I love Tyranids, used to play them when I was younger. SPAZ is a cool game, quite similar to SS but less refined I feel.
I'd really love to give this one some animal-like pattern. Some snakes and crokodiles have such patterns, let's see if I can catch that feel somehow.
Or cheeta's pattern ...
I'll have a smoke and a cup of coffee to think over that.

[Bjørn_in_the_Sector]

all I can see now is a leopard-print thong around the ships' central hub. -.- Thank you, sir.

[Tecrys]

I've been trying that layer technique for a few hours now and I got myself some inspiration from Starship Troopers.
Here's today's work:

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I'ts not finished and I'm not sure yet if I'm even happy with it. I put it in the ship editor to see how it looks: I was quite surprised how nice it looked but this has nothing to do with pixel art ...
Any advice how to get this looking more vanilla, at least from a pixel art view?

Edit: I just made a little different version with less light reflex on top of the ship which I find much better looking

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[Gotcha!]

Hmm, it seems to look very fragile...

[Tecrys]

Its supposed to be fragile, its role is fast recoinassence, scouting, chasing and dog fighting similar craft hence the 2 small weapon mounts facing straight forward with a minimal turning angle.
Imagine a hound with less cargo space and armor but superior velocity and maneuverability.
What about the sprite? You think its well done or do you have any suggestions?

[xenoargh]

I think it's way too dark, personally; it's lost a lot of details with the colors on it.  I'll give it a quick go; kinda busy today but I can squeeze in a 10-minute overpaint

[xenoargh]

OK, did a quickie. 

Basically, I raised the contrast on the grayscale using Curves to deepen the shadows a bit, set up a layer for color using the bottom layer as a mask and did a fast paintover with a few pixel touches here and there.  Looks good on darkness, but on lighter backgrounds it would need some additional work on aliasing the outer bits a little more.

[Tecrys]

Wow!
Now as I see your edited one I think I know what I did wrong.
I really wanted to get that colour scheme from those bugs in Statship Troopers and that black made it very dark.
Thanks for the explanaition on how you did that. I think I can improve on that.
Thank you a lot!

[theSONY]

it's nice ship Tecris

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but the shape is just TOO diverse & StarSector don't like ships with TOO MANY bounds polygon
there was an special topic about that but can't find it
PS: the sharper ver. is better

[Sabaton]

 I like the coloring xeno did more than that would be rainbow before, cleaner and easier to distinguish.
Edit: As for the polygons, you could get away with not binding the extremities, less of a headache.  

[Tecrys]

I don't think that the bounds polygon would be too complex, I've readt the thread about it. It should fit nicely into something like an oktagon or so. Would be silly to make the polygon fit to the whole shape.
Otherwise I totally agree, my paintjob was crappy. I'll kep in mind for future ships not to male them too delicat.
Thanks for the feedback.

[xenoargh]

A lot of the little bits don't need to be covered by bounds; I wouldn't worry about it very much.  Bounds complexity only really matters if you're being ridiculous; we had some people early on who were trying to make exact bounds for every little bump and greeble