Technical art questions and discussions

Started by Andail, Wed 25/05/2005 19:46:07

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zabnat

Since you are using Gimp this might not be much help, but Photoshop has this nice mesh distort which is probably pretty much the same as you described, but it has more control points. So it is suitable also for pillars etc. And you can control the blurriness a bit by setting the program to use different interpolation techniques. Nearest neighbour will give crisp but jagged look and others give variying amount of blurriness.

lostbuthappy

Thanks for your help guys. The Gimp's perspective tool also has some options to control the blurriness, I simply didn't see it. Doing stuff by hand that is even remotely repetitive is one of the three things I truly hate (you should have a look at my kitchen), but I guess I'll have to make an exception this time.
Disclamer: When I say I'm an artist I usually just mean that I can selectively apply filters to an image until it looks like a blurry version of Uranus.

Misj'

#82
I wrote this a while back, maybe it's useful to someone. It's my general approach to drawing backgrounds (and characters for non-animated media). Some additional steps or limitations occur when animation is taken into account.

Software used:
- Corel Painter X
- Adobe PhotoShop CS3
- (for animation (not part of this tutorial) I use Digicel Flipbook 5)
There are many other options, but I prefer these, so I bought them (fortunately I could get PhotoShop quite cheap via my work).



A part not mentioned was me trying different colours to figure out the best results for the character. This step is usually somewhere between the flats and the final shading (a little shading is often helpful to determine the final colour; and for animation I have a very limited shading, so colours are largely determined for the flats).





The right skin and clothing colours really help define a character. Of course in this piece I had a fantasy setting which meant that the skin-colour was a little more open to debate than in a more down-to-earth setting. To ensure that my Archivist isn't confused with for example Yoda, I decided that I should steer away from a green skin-colour.

So here's the final piece (next to the black-and-white ink-only version). I generally draw the art three times the final size. It's what I feel comfortable with.



Misj'

Ps. Another note: when inking for screen I use much thinner lines than when inking for print. This piece would have been intended for print.
Pps. I happen to like black outines...but it's easy to colour them.

Edit: Added a larger version of the ink-only version to compare it to the final rendered version, and the Pps.

Ghost

Now that is the sort of tutorial worth checking out! Thanks for sharing, Misj!

nihilyst

Just a quick overview on how I assembled some photos to a new image and further edited them to be the cover of an upcoming project of mine.
CLICK

I know it's not perfect at all, and to a professional it might look like shit, but I thought it might give some people an idea of how several pictures can be combined. Done in Photoshop.

If it would be useful to someone, I could try to go into a little more detail regarding the later steps, i.e. the adjustment of colours etc.

The text reads: 1: Assemble pictures; 2: Define lightsource and block in shadows; 3: Adjust brightness, contrast, colours, sharpness and hue.

Mr Flibble

Does anyone know of a graphica program where I could

1. Select all of a certain colour on a sprite
2. Adjust sliders for RBG values between 0-255
3. See that colour being changed on the sprite in real time?

I use Paintshop Pro but its previews come up in a window with only the current selection visible, so you can't see what you're actually doing on the sprite itself.
Ah! There is no emoticon for what I'm feeling!

zabnat

Well, in Photoshop you can select the color and adjust it accrodingly in RGB mode using the normal color adjustments. But what you want to do is to use paletted colorspace and adjust colors in palette. This you can do in Photoshop and Graphics Gale and probably in most of the drawing programs.

Celsius

Does anyone have advice on how to keep characters and backgrounds in consistent scale?  That is, not having a character too small for one background, and too big for another, or vice-versa for the backgrounds.  Besides just sticking an image of the character on the canvas while you're working, I mean.  Or is that the best way?

Oliwerko

Worked for me so far.

I usually draw a black rectangle representing the character's maximum dimensions in a separate layer and keep moving it around to check what needs re-scaling. (That of course doesn't mean I often end up with totally wrong scaling of the rooms, it takes practice).

Also, know what the dimensions are. For 320*240, the characters are usually around 20*60 or 30*70. Stick to the character dimension when drawing doors, and they can help you with the rest of the room.

Still, it takes practice as I said, mistakes will occur.

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens

Design your player character first always.  Once you have the character designed, decide whether or not you will have characters of varying height.  This is important because you may have a character taller than the player character at some point, so you'll want to determine the maximum height you intend to make a normal character and then design all entryways and furniture to match.

Wreck

Quick question regarding resolutions:

What sort of aspect ratio is recommended these days?

I am pondering having a play with ags in my spare time (never used it before), and before I start planning anything it occurred to me that although I will probably go with a fairly low res (640*480) kind of size, is that the right approach to take with monitors these days often being wide screen (my new one is). I don't want to go any higher as I am well aware of the time sink that would create for assets.

Would 640*480 distort horribly on such a screen? or when ags puts the thing into full screen does it maintain aspect ratio and 'block out' the borders, so perhaps something like 640*400 would work better (if that is even a valid resolution).

Any advice apreciated, thanks in advance.

Snarky

OK, let's leave off whether ProgZ's initial post was reasonable and temperate, and consider the use of green as a completent to pink skin color in art.

Then we could point out that pale skin often does look slightly green, especially in the transition from light to shade (you can see it in the original photo under the eyes, or by her cheek bone), and that painters have often used green shades to emphasize this effect, either subtly (1 - also has some good references joel might want to have a look at in general, 2, 3) or not-so-subtly (1, 2, 3).

Perhaps the attempt in Mad's and joelphilippage's edits isn't entirely successful, and you could argue that having abandoned the CGA-style palette of the first version, a lower saturation might work better. But as experimentation go, it strikes me as pretty tame, and an attempt to implement quite valid techniques.

Andail

#92
Your point is quite valid, but let's take into account a couple of facts:
1. Virtually all colours can be found in portraits by famous artists, if you look hard enough. A painting which seems to depict a perfectly natural skin colour can turn out all blue when compared to another portrait, painted in a different light. Finding the right colour is seldom about identifying a native pigment - it's always a combination of light reflections and refractions.
2. However, saying "why can't I have green in my portrait when Cezanne can (or whoever)?" is a bit like saying "why can't I paint a perfectly square face when Picasso can?" Because you don't have a valid reason to do so, you just claim it's your right to, and expect that it will somehow magically be appealing.
3. This particular piece looked better without the green. Why? Because the green parts weren't applied in a way that made sense. They didn't improve the face. They didn't accentuate anything.
4. Does this mean it's always wrong to add green in your portraits? Hell no. Look at any recent pixelated portrait by Helm - like this one:

Lots of green. But there is a method to it. It's not like he just threw green pixels at the canvas and hoped for the best. This scene called for the green. It made sense here.
Or why not this one:

Lots of weirds shapes and colours, but Helm had a reason to make it that way, an agenda. It doesn't mean anyone can add lots of purple triangles to their portrait and hope for success.
Why not?
For the same reason you shouldn't begin practising writing by mimicing Finnegan's Wake. It's just no use. Start simple. When you know the basics, start pushing the boundaries. When you can control basic perspective, move on to have a go at DOTT graphics. Etc, etc.

Mr Flibble

When I was in 3rd year my art teacher said my portrait needed some green in it, which she liberally applied. After she left I sat back in shock because she'd really badly ruined it, and everyone agreed.
Ah! There is no emoticon for what I'm feeling!

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens

I'm moving this into Tech Art Q&D where it belongs.

.M.M.

Hi, I need music for my game - I'd like to make this game on my own, but I lack any experience with creating music. Can you suggest me an easy-to-use program? Also, I've got another problem - my game takes place on Wild West, so I need country music, and as I was searching for some program suitable for me, I realised that propably no one thought somebody would  try to use these programmes for creating country music.

Gabarts

I have MUSIC suggestion for who like composing Midi style Music:

-If you use Logic 8 on Mac Osx, like me, with a mute keyboard controller you can see that pulling something out from the internal DSL Music Device (quicktime synth) is very hard.

-I've found a very good GM soundfont ---> FluidR3 GM.Sf2    search it on google

Basically if you don't have a Midi masterkeyboard recording with DSL Apple device is hard. You can load FluidR3 samplers with ESX24 and is lot easier.

Lasca

Hey everybody!

I'm working on a tower room and would really likes some tips in how to make it work perspectivly. I think I've got a grip on one point and two point perspective generally, but i'm not really sure how to work it in a room with no corners. Anyways, any tips are welcome!

/Lasca

tinyhippo

Hey there!

So, we've started working on game art recently, but we've ran into a problem while drawing character's face. It's really hard to draw an expressive face in 320x240. Here's the model and a sketch for the character:
[imgzoom]http://s20.postimg.org/4sr9xxuwt/image.png[/imgzoom]
[imgzoom]http://s20.postimg.org/4vb5krykd/image.jpg[/imgzoom]

Can anyone suggest how we can draw a proper face? Anything will be appreciated, thanks.

HanaIndiana

Hmm the last post here was in 2013, so there's a chance I'm in the wrong place...

I'm interested in creating music for my games. I'm guessing there are small keyboards (aka piano) I can plug into my PC/laptop/what have you, and record music using different software. MIDI keyboards perhaps? Does anyone have suggestions for a simple keyboard setup?

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