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[MShadowy]

Yeah, looking pretty good I think.  Nice work!

Anyway, sorta finished the dumpy hauler.  At least I don't it needs much more work if it needs any at all.

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[ORMtnMan]

Yeah, looking pretty good I think.  Nice work!

Anyway, sorta finished the dumpy hauler.  At least I don't it needs much more work if it needs any at all.

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Is pretty freaking sweet a good critique? I hope so because I have nothing else to add to that

[Nanao-kun]

Is that a fighter hangar at the back?

[MShadowy]

Is that a fighter hangar at the back?

Maybe.  I was thinking of having it just be a drone bay, but I'm kinda undecided.  Might make it a little too similar to the little Carrier/Drone frigate coming in the next version.

Alternatively I could avoid giving it drones of any kinda and add another actual weapon while giving it a flight deck.  Dunno yet.

[Harmful Mechanic]

@Soren: you're offended and upset, I apologise for that, I was intending to give you some advice to ensure you can produce high quality sprites inline with the styling used by SS and most everyone else.

Do. Don't. Whatever makes you happy. I have no vested interest or expectations. The only other suggestion I would make is not to presume that my post count has any meaning to me either.

Fair enough, and I apologize for misreading your tone. (And I'm totally fine with these being out of line with vanilla SS sprites - I think any renewed shot I take at emulating vanilla depth, shading, etc. should start from the ground up). No harm, no foul.

After some experimentation, I think this is the end of the line, unless I want to get into gradient meshes:

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That seems like an acceptable place to leave off for now and start coding/failing to code things. Plating, surface filth, detailed shading, etc. can wait.

[Okim]

@Soren: you're offended and upset, I apologise for that, I was intending to give you some advice to ensure you can produce high quality sprites inline with the styling used by SS and most everyone else.

Do. Don't. Whatever makes you happy. I have no vested interest or expectations. The only other suggestion I would make is not to presume that my post count has any meaning to me either.

Fair enough, and I apologize for misreading your tone. (And I'm totally fine with these being out of line with vanilla SS sprites - I think any renewed shot I take at emulating vanilla depth, shading, etc. should start from the ground up). No harm, no foul.

After some experimentation, I think this is the end of the line, unless I want to get into gradient meshes:

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That seems like an acceptable place to leave off for now and start coding/failing to code things. Plating, surface filth, detailed shading, etc. can wait.

Looking awesome. I like how this style differs from anything present here.

With that skill you might want to start a total conversion mod. This way no one will ever compare your art style to vanilla and complain how different it is. Everyone will just adore your work

[Okim]

I will say from experience getting sprites close to vanilla (without kitbashing) is really hard. A good chunk of the great quality mods on this site would be considered "not close to vanilla" if you really get down to it. That said, those are some awesome sprites. they don't fit with vanilla and they don't have to.

Debido wasn't being antagonistic (or crazy). He was just giving helpful (in his view) opinions which is the point of this thread. .

Debido helped me out immensely when I started, because it was my intention to get my sprites close to vanilla. As close as I can at least.

EDIT:

I'm sorry I should not have added to the tangent (that has nothing to do with sprite critiques).

To get it back on track, I lightened up the Aegis (which I keep working on because I can't get it perfect   )

Now I think it looks less black heavy and busy.

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To be honest - I like this http://s42.photobucket.com/user/ranma567001ORMtnMan/media/AegisV2_zpsb17d9a30.png.html version much more than the latest one. The new one has too much detail and looks too much blurred to me.

[ValkyriaL]

I have to say that even if these sprites aren't vanilla friendly, they sure have quality matched only by our top tier modders, the obvious lack of weapons creeps me out, im just that kind of a person, but i would download, and play, a mod, that had these ships in it.

Plating, surface filth, detailed shading, etc. can wait.

these things are important for immersion, i'm not sure if you should wait with it, that is your choice of course, i don't know how large these ships are, because i have nothing "telling" me their size. that freighter is not far from capital size in terms of pixels, but it might as well be a destroyer for all i know. plating in particular is very important, that alone can give you a good sense of scale.

[Okim]

Yeah, looking pretty good I think.  Nice work!

Anyway, sorta finished the dumpy hauler.  At least I don't it needs much more work if it needs any at all.

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I got used to your 2 colour scheme and due to this I can`t accept the new yellow colour addition. Otherwise this ship looks perfect and suits both roles (a carrier or a drone ship) quite well. Especially these two huge green blobs on port/starboard.

Reminds me of a bullfrog some way (a huge fat beast that has both 'terrifyingly calm' and 'extremely durable' looks).

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[Tartiflette]

That seems like an acceptable place to leave off for now and start coding/failing to code things. Plating, surface filth, detailed shading, etc. can wait.

I really like those ships. Their design feel "right", grounded and efficient. Though if you intend to leave them like that, I'd have two remarks:

While they look good, well they don't fit vanilla. I know you don't care much, and that's fine. However you are making a mod, that implies people playing it. If your mod don't fit in the base game, people may be reluctant to play it, and that could be very frustrating. It might be fine for now, if you are only making this for fun or as an exercise, but when you will have sunk hundreds hours of work making a whole faction, you probably will want to see people enjoying it.

Also, I'd suggest to at least completely finish one of the ships. Because maybe you will find out it take a LOT of time to get to the result you want in Photoshop: after all, you talked about blockade runner, armored ships... This is not what they look like right now, and it might take quite some work to get there. Or maybe you will decide to change their size depending of the greebling you want, and you will have to replace all ships mounts, bounds and engines in all ships files. (hint, you don't want that!)

Other than that, this is a great start, and I'm eager to see the result when you are finished.

[Sabaton]

 The nose of the bullfrog ship looks like it could easily fit a medium weapon, but then you'd have just a fancier hound.

[xenoargh]

@Soren:  Love the sprites   Would like to see the shadows rendered more accurately to the light source (that's one of the primary reasons they aren't feeling "vanilla"- the lighting's not quite right) but the overall approach is quite lovely and that's pretty straightforward to address.  Since you're rendering them out from Illustrator, you might want to consider using the workflow I outlined for going from large-scale to final scales; if nothing else, it might help considerably when building the shadows up, which is an area that gets a little slow if you do it at final scales.

[maximilianyuen]

Yeah, looking pretty good I think.  Nice work!

Anyway, sorta finished the dumpy hauler.  At least I don't it needs much more work if it needs any at all.

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sorry but my impression  

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[xlandar]

next ship! this one is a small speedy scout ship. (WIP still).

[kazi]

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Think frigate with heavy armor. The light circles/squares are preliminary hardpoint locations.

I think the nose might be very slightly too long.

*edit: added a top view. The back half obviously needs more work before things are finished.