Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ORMtnMan]

You are right. That would be a good spot for it, it look like some should be there and I had considered that.

Here is why I left it empty and shaped as it was:

Adding two more weapon slots (even small ones) would add too much firepower ability to this ship.
The missile systems I am envisioning for my faction have boxy launchers that would look strange in a circular area.
Flattening out the inner "wing" makes it look more awkward...

All this you would have known if you were omniscient 

I am absolutely open to suggestion on how to make that look a bit better, though. My creative capacity is easily tired.

[Ryxsen1421]

I would suggest to make the missile hardpoint to be built-in and "invisible" for the sake of beauty.

[TheBawkHawk]

You are right. That would be a good spot for it, it look like some should be there and I had considered that.

Here is why I left it empty and shaped as it was:

Adding two more weapon slots (even small ones) would add too much firepower ability to this ship.
The missile systems I am envisioning for my faction have boxy launchers that would look strange in a circular area.
Flattening out the inner "wing" makes it look more awkward...

All this you would have known if you were omniscient 

I am absolutely open to suggestion on how to make that look a bit better, though. My creative capacity is easily tired.

This might require a bit of work, but what about moving the medium slots to there, and have them hardpoints?
Or, have one central medium mount, and then put small hardpoints there.
And finally, if you don't want to potentially mess everything up, you could always just put some antennae or something there.

[maximilianyuen]

You are right. That would be a good spot for it, it look like some should be there and I had considered that.

Here is why I left it empty and shaped as it was:

Adding two more weapon slots (even small ones) would add too much firepower ability to this ship.
The missile systems I am envisioning for my faction have boxy launchers that would look strange in a circular area.
Flattening out the inner "wing" makes it look more awkward...

All this you would have known if you were omniscient 

I am absolutely open to suggestion on how to make that look a bit better, though. My creative capacity is easily tired.

I would suggest making it more solid and darker tone overall, now it's a little bit painterly
if possible can try doing what mendonca is doing and that would give a the ship a lot more vertical depth as well

[ORMtnMan]

I would suggest to make the missile hardpoint to be built-in and "invisible" for the sake of beauty.

HAH!

I think I can do that, Ryxsen

To TheBawkHawks point, I do like the second idea of the central medium turret, but looking at the cockpit positioning it would limit the turret coverage on the backward arc (for realism sake). This particular craft was intended for a light fleet defensive ship (I.E. point defense/anti-fighter).

Maybe I'll put in some pretty antennae or something and see how it goes...

maximilianyuen,
Seeing what Mendoca is doing, I need to revisit all of my ships...
but what do you mean by solid? (I get making it darker)

[Rocket]

Hey! Here is a sprite for a rocket boat that I made. This is a big first because I've never created anything resembling visual art before... unless you count the crappy ceramic plate I made many moons ago in grade 9 art class. I've also never put anything out into a mod community before.

I was inspired to do this by the game, of course, and particularly by Okim's Ironclads mod. I enjoy the Rostov-M missile boat in that mod, but always wished it had longer wings to be able to spray down a wider area with rockets. Something like the real life Russian Su-25 attack plane which forgoes beauty for having many ordnance pylons.

I used xenoargh's Speed-Painting Spacecraft guide... but it took an embarassingly long time... so long that I got sick of working on it before the oh-so-essential details phase of the operation and didn't add any beside roughening up the paint job a bit and the engine scorching.

Anyway, my favorite parts is how good the scorching on the engine exhausts looks. There is also scorching on the rocket pods and the hull near the lateral thrusters but it's really hard to see.

The bad part is, well, the rest is pretty plain.

I don't have hosting so sorry about the pics being attachments.

Anyway, I'm always blown away by the creativity and skill of all of you. This process was very illuminating- to discover how the simple the process is and yet how challenging it is to do it well.

Cheers.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[ORMtnMan]

First of all, Rocket, welcome to the board!

Being new (to posting) myself I know how daunting it can be to post your work, this is the best place to get critiques though.

To post pictures in text I use Photobucket to host the pictures, then I copy the picture link surrounded by

["spoiler"]
["/spolier"]

(remove the quotes to get the code to work.)

Now on to the critique (as much of one as I can give )

The colors on the main part of the craft make it look flat (something I struggle with most of the time) Perhaps some harder lines between the "fuselage" and the "wings" to make it look more like a vintage aircraft?

Also add some texture lines, which is what people in the forum refer to as "Greebles" I think. I have no idea why.

Second the body of the ship in front of the cockpit looks too wide (in my opinion)

I'll have to give it more thought to come up with more.

Now,

I recreated my original ship from scratch, trying to practice my own shading. It looks a bit color-pencil-y in some places, but I am not sure about what to do there...

Here is the WIP to show the process

Spoiler

[close]

Here is the finished (for now) product

Spoiler

[close]

Let me know what you all think of the new technique!

[Nanao-kun]

Here is the finished (for now) product

Spoiler

[close]

Let me know what you all think of the new technique!

It definetely feels like it has depth, but something about it is off. Feels kind of... raw? Wet? Not sure.

[ORMtnMan]

HAH!

I dried it off a bit for you, I think.

Spoiler

[close]

[Ryxsen1421]

HAH!

I dried it off a bit for you, I think.

Spoiler

[close]

Excellent work there! This ship is definitely more sexy with the depths you gave to her. Btw, I can hardly see any engines in there, are they somewhat blends along with your inner gribbles?

[ORMtnMan]

Well, thank you!

They do blend in a bit, I was opting for the Vent style engine because I didn't want to go so high tech... Also, this particular ship is not meant to be incredibly maneuverable, more like a fleet defense turtle.

I am open to suggestion on the engine visibility front.

I did some slight modification to my patrol craft. It doesn't look a whole heck of a lot different

Spoiler

[close]

[Rocket]

Thanks ORMtnMan.

Rather than rework it I just started a new one. Here is a first draft. Once again I haven't ventured into the details stage yet but I think this one looks a bit better just from a shading perspective.

Spoiler

[close]

[ORMtnMan]

Rocket,

I'm glad you stayed!

As for your second ship, the form is interesting. Are the red ports missile launchers. If they are, the diagonal facing will make for interesting launch visuals. Anyway, it still looks a bit flat... maybe a center parting line with shading might make it have a bit more depth. also, again I suggest greebles, like paneling, or lights, or exhaust ports etc.

I feel weird giving art advice while I am so green... but I hope it helps.

[Rocket]

Thanks very much for the encouragement.

I'm thinking that choosing dark grey for the base colour is really making it a lot harder to convey the shape because the black shading doesn't offer a whole lot more contrast. Imagine a capital A and think of the center part as the highest point and everything else is downhill away from the that. That is what I'm going for.

Yes, they are missile ports. There were too many casualties incurred when pilots of the previous model hit the maneuvering jets, ran over their own rockets and exploded  . This layout is a bit more practical for high speed drive-by rocket attacks.

Tomorrow I'll take a stab at the details and greebles. I'm thinking a fifth rocket exhaust and some sort of fuel distribution lines going from the back of the ship into the engines... or something like that. This is the daunting part because it takes more artistry that just spray painting geometric shapes

As for your own sprites, I don't really have much to offer just yet other than they look pretty good to me. I think I like the 'wet' version better... it looks dramatic!

[TheBawkHawk]

Well, I've done it, I think. I finally kitbashed something together out of a Conquest and a flight deck from the Vatican MKII, for some reason.

Spoiler

[close]

Since this is a broadside design, i figured it would be okay to leave the large and medium slots as is, since you can only have one side firing at the enemy.

Anyways, any and all criticism is much appreciated.