Guide to the Wear and Appearance of Uniforms and Insignia 

Revision Date pc205.03.20 // by Order of the Ministry of Naval Logistics

“Re-issue of uniform standards document has been ordered to all Hegemony personnel in the Naraka Strategic District due to statistically significant increase in lapse of uniform discipline incidents.”

“Officers are directed to review implementation procedures described herein and are reminded that any deviation from standard uniform to be authorized in written waiver only by commanding officer rank O-6 or superior.”

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Ivaylo has been kind enough to grant permission to be used as a subject to show how I draw Starsector portraits – so now I shall show you how I draw Starsector portraits. Before we put pen to tablet, it is worth revisiting the stylistic standards and artistic goals in play.

Let’s pull up an image of some portraits to demonstrate principles.

Design Principles

First, the basics: These are painted in Photoshop on a black background at 512×512, resized down to 128×128 for the in-game art. This was not the case in early releases of Starsector – then, I drew portraits at-res. Going higher res allowed me to use a more painterly technique and otherwise focus more on just making the image rather than worrying about where individual pixels end up. I’ve historically been enthusiastic about small-scale painting, but if it holds back technique, it’s gotta go.

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