AuthorTopic: GR#115 - Space Ships - Topdown  (Read 27544 times)

Offline Szyu

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #30 on: July 22, 2012, 12:40:39 pm
First thank both of you for your edits. Pistachio's Edit looks awesome... I can see my own design in it and I really like it.
Grimsanes Edit of my new ship was first a little bit confusing... I didnt really see the changes despite on the brighter colors. But then i noticed a lot of them while zooming in. They give it a more obvious depth and metallc material... but I think i have to learn a lot more than now if i want to succeed in working those things out more naturally.

So one little question... is there a trick to completely avoid banding?

And no, i won't mind if anyone makes an edit of one of my designs... I should have added C&C to the topic... But in the beginning i didnt know the meaning of it. So i have to admit, I dont know the meaing of WiP...

Offline Grimsane

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #31 on: July 22, 2012, 01:46:54 pm
well I slapped together a crude diagram, and the general rule to avoid it is to make sure lines don't line up in rows like in some of these red examples


not the best elaboration but hopefully helpful to some degree, also if you look closely at the rings at the helm of the ship in my edit you'll see the dither that's one way to eliminate banding, and also always keep in mind in some circumstances banding can be better and is the most effective approach to some clusters and becoming obsessed with getting rid of every little part won't necessarily be better, likely just waste your time, just concentrate on the larger instances of it and avoid stepping like in the diagonal lines amongst the red tinted examples

*Edit: also here is another method try avoid banding, to layer clusters on top of each other in a more organic fashion,

it's not completely polished, and it's at half the resolution of your big battle cruiser, but that was to further emphasis the effect, and to make it quicker to pixel, it's not the most beginner friendly approach but it is quite effective, and worth trying to see if you can pull it off, I added the lines much further into the process after layering in the bulk of the detail, but by all means it can be done from lineart first
« Last Edit: July 25, 2012, 08:54:11 am by Grimsane »

Offline Szyu

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #32 on: August 02, 2012, 01:20:39 pm
Sorry for let you guys wait, but i didnt really have enough time to make something new. But now I tried again what I learned with a new ship. I liked the shape, but it seems that i have a lot of trouble with it. So here is what ive got so far.
I like the style i used for the "wings" but i really have some kind of trouble with doing the same for the red marked areas. Should i just go on with the same way or do i have to care for anything?


@Grimsane:
This method seems to be very sparkling, but i dont know if it would look so cool with colors instead of grayscale. And knowing my current skill level, i can tell that i am not able to do something like  this :D

Offline Szyu

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #33 on: August 04, 2012, 05:35:32 pm
I tried it myself and I must admit... I am really really satisfied with the result:


So what do you guys think about it? I adopted the colorset of pistachio (hope you dont mind) and tried to copy his style of the red-gray balancing

I am currently working on another ship for improving my skills... I let you know if I a have decent preview

Offline Grimsane

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #34 on: August 05, 2012, 11:13:26 am
I find the find some of the shading quite illogical to be honest


particularly the wings, if you are trying to make it read like fins coming up at the viewer at the back I don't think it's not working so well, and the overall shape isn't that appealing it doesn't flow very well the you should try working more on the silhouette before detailing, tried blackening it and it doesn't read anything like the shading, this is a rough depiction of the kinda thing it reads as silhouette wise, it seems like the most haphazard looking design out of all your posts, your other's being quite decent and balanced and having more solid foundations.



if you want to keep the general design I'd recommend re-adjusting the proportions and silhouette

Offline jams0988

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #35 on: August 06, 2012, 11:31:34 pm
Hahah, I actually like this last ship! And Grimsane, I'm pretty sure the point of the ship was for it to read like some kind of evil squid/sea creature, hence all the fins and the red color. Your edit is cool, though, taking the silhouette literally. Biological spaceships are pretty neat! It could crap out evil little babies that swarm the enemy ship, a la Star Control. =)

All these ships are still reading as really flat to me, though. I'd probably shade the ships as if the light was coming from directly above, like someone already said earlier. Shade things so that the planes facing straight up are the brightest, with things turned away shaded darker. Maybe add some atmospheric shading to parts of the ship that are further away, too, to further keep away from the paper cutout look.

It's tough, because having the lightsource directly behind the viewer is the worst way to show depth possible, but there's not much other choice if you want to be able to rotate your sprites...you should make the rocket behind the ship light up the ship, too, along with the lasers that fire from the front. That'd be an easy way to further push the depth of your ships.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2012, 11:39:50 pm by jams0988 »

Offline Szyu

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #36 on: August 07, 2012, 08:29:17 pm
@grimsane:
the shape was intended to look like this. I used this as a reference in a more extreme way.
Reference

But i must admit the shading was failed. I tried to use the same technique as with the other ones, but as you can see.. it didnt work quite well. and to be honest, i dont like the tentacle ship^^" sure it looks very well shaded, but i prefer my version of shape, though it was really hard to shade because of the big areas.

@jams:
the ships dont have to look too 3-dimensional. This level of flatness is a characteristic trait of  the game to make it look more suitable for the gameplay ;) and yeah its really tough to shade with the lightsource behind the viewer... and the fact that im a newby doesnt make it easier :D

Offline deadlock

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #37 on: August 11, 2012, 02:39:40 pm
Nice comments crimsane, also learning a lot even if it isn't my topic  ;D

Offline Grimsane

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #38 on: August 11, 2012, 06:53:47 pm
never got around to replying  :blind: wasn't even really reading yours as a trilobite besides slight general shape, my interpretation was close to your reference without concious intention so I guess that  and well I'm sure you could make a more compelling silhouette based on the source inspiration, you could use more or less organic angles to reinforce a either organic or more mechanical construction, some rough examples



one approach is to do each side independant of each other, very assymetrical but following a similar design, then doing 2 mirrored versions, this means you are conceptualizing designs far more rapidly, and sometimes you can combine parts from both sides, and it is a good tool for exploration.

I think the major issue I have with your latest is not so much the silhouette as it doesn't read too bad but the placement of the cockpit and detailing looks rather unbalanced to me, that and yeah the shading falls rather flat, also i might add your large one prior to this had 3 areas that could potentially read as seperate cockpits/bridges, which you could conceivably break apart into 3 separate ships, using some wing commander vessels for reference would probably be productive way at studying cockpit placement and balance, because for the most part they did a rather good job at that.



already seems like one of your ships looks very much like this

Offline Szyu

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Re: Space Ships

Reply #39 on: August 11, 2012, 08:54:05 pm
First i have to say, the star wars ship was originally my reference for the hunter ship. But then i decided to reconsider and so i came up with the spider shape.
The bad shadowing and detailing of my last one is because i thought "hey til now you have improved a lot. Now your ships seems to be very small, lets make a veeery huge one".. Now this is the problem. I didnt really thought about where and how to place the details anymore, but I mainly wanted to create something big.. dont ask me why. Today I realized it isnt the size of a ship that makes it look great and even the gameplay can be very confusing with such big ships. So now i will try to stay small to first enhance my skills until i am ready to grow in size.

The fact that my last silhouette didnt really look exactly like my reference was on purpose. I first had something like you posted (of course not as good), but then i wanted to go ahead to create something own into this silhouette. And like i already said, i was really satisfied. My ships must not look organic. But your suggestion with asymetric ships... i think i will give it a shot