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[TheHappyFace]

@doom
well about the whole idea of this thread.
the idea is to show a ship which you think is finished. (colored, shaded, added detail etc.)
then fellow spriters can give a critical look upon it.
can point at things which look strange, unclear or could be edited to make the sprite look better.

ofcourse the second use of this thread is to ask questions about spriting and asking for help when it comes to desicions,
but this isnt what it is designed for.

take the first sprite ever posted on this thread by me as an example. i created it and liked it,
but then others pointed at things i could improve making me aware of mistakes i didnt see,
but not seeing doesnt mean not important. it makes the difference between a flat vector and a epic and handsome () ship.
flat is theoratical speaking not wrong ,but unconcious you dont like it as much as for example the vanilla ships.

[Romeo_One]

Still don't feel 100% sure about this.

Suggestions?

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[Pelly]

Still don't feel 100% sure about this.

Suggestions?

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I would say on the grey bits between the wings and the main body? Otherwise lovin it! (Little bit gay...)

[silentstormpt]

Ever thought adding a small "cam" like cockpits on the ships, as a Decorative weapon that has an antenna blinking

[Romeo_One]

I actually did thought about that, but I wanted to use that in some big asymetrical turrets. Lorewise they would need a dedicated fire control central.

Btw I think I will add position lights to all ships, just looks cool ^^

The ship above has animated missile bays and will recieve an animated radardish.
I would love to add animated drone bays too, but I have no clue how atm.

Still figuring out my compiler problem, since I seem to get it with every plugin
either I or anyone else created, which I find odd o.O.

[TheHappyFace]

maybe add the same thing xeno suggested to me.
make the plating lines have a lighter part,
so one dark line for the plating and next to it one light one for the lighting.
it gives the plate more detph.
->

[Romeo_One]

@TheHappyFace:

I tried that, but I did not really like the effect, had a high polished kinda look. Might have to tryout different shades though.

[theSONY]

Still don't feel 100% sure about this.

Suggestions?

Spoiler

[close]

well i looks fair enought but i dunno about light source ( top front of the ship ) like in almost every ship in the game, so the front of the ship shouldnt be shadowed so much

[Erick Doe]

Romeo_One is making a total conversion though. So his light source does not have to be the same as in vanilla starsector. As long as he stays consistant within his own conversion.

[Dr. Death[Lexx]]

General question considering the shading part and if people approve or disapprove on my own subjective thought as an improvement on the Serpentes cruiser. The problem was, that the shading was really kind-a off on some parts. Also not forgetting Starsectors ingame engine brightening all the sprites to some degree (that's how it looks at least on my machine), I thought about making the Serpentes generally a tad darker and add some shading here and there.

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Left one was the original Serpentes, the middle one is with "subjectively improved" shading. Asking if people find the latter better then the original. What else is there to improve, etc. The third Serpentes on the far right would be in my opinion considered final. If anyone else thinks different, shoot. I'll see what else can be done to improve it further.

1st - Barely any shading with a really light tone (first Serpentes from 20 pages ago).

2nd - Dark shaded Serpentes, got generally some changes on the sprite, improved (imho) details, some noise ration on the front and side wings.

3rd - Final (imho again) Serpentes Cruiser...It might be too much, the distinct dark/light shading giving it too much contrast would seem as an issue here...but that I guess depends on how one see's a certain sprite or ship and thinks when the individual looks at it.

So, what else can be done on this cruiser to further improve it?

@Romeo - I agree with SONY. If you're gonna add shading make sure that the levels and borders aren't too thick. The more levels of shading you add to a certain area, the more blurred it gets, obviously. Contrast is another factor to consider of course and outlining certain areas or like in Happy's example with his ship and the lightning for the lines...I don't find that too polished personally, also, don't forget that you have many filters available in gimp such as bump maps(gives you a nice depth sometimes), noise (if stuff doesn't have to look too polished) or what I sometimes use but that's pretty experimental are normal maps, then greyscale them, inverting the colors, deleting 50% of the grayscaled sprite...I mean you can pretty much try so many approaches to get something cool out of the ordinary.

@Erick - Love the sketch-art...***"want's moar of it"***

[Romeo_One]

@Dr.Death[Lexx]:

I appreciate the suggestion, however I want to point that, in case you did not read my explanation on that topic,  I do not aim
for anything even close to vanilla shading. I simply don't like it, for me its too muddy and crammed, I like "clean", "oldschool" pixelart, hence I go for a more simplistic way of shading.

Adding  blending shading, normal maps, noise and whatnot defeats the purpose of pixel sprites for me, might aswell go 3D. Thats like playing minecraft with 512x512 photorealistic textures and HRD rendering.

And since these ships won't ever exist in the same universe as the vanilla ones, the different ways of shading won't ever collide.

[Dr. Death[Lexx]]

Apologies cause I really didn't read your explanation. And sure, if that's what you're aiming for, old-school pixel art, then that's fine.

[silentstormpt]

The ship above has animated missile bays and will recieve an animated radardish.
I would love to add animated drone bays too, but I have no clue how atm.

Let me see if i can do that

[Romeo_One]

That would be awesome silentstormpt!


@Dr. Death[Lexx]:

No need to apologize ^^

[PerturbedPug]

Alright, so followed Romeo One's advice and looked at the tutorials. After some trial and error I think that the ship looks A LOT better. Tell me what you guys think.

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