[CC][WIP] 3D "Victory" Text

[nessx007]

This is the "Victory" sprite that appears when you win a match. Not sure why I decided to make my life difficult with lots of perspective text for our game, but alas, here we are!



Only worked on this for one session and trying to decided what it needs/what to do next. I also need to make one for "Defeat" (angled down instead of up) and wanted to make sure I have an overall style that works before moving forward. Any comments appreciated!

edit: also wasn't sure about having the "plaque" behind it or just the text floating on it's own, any thoughts?

[MysteryMeat]

This looks super good, I don't think there's anything here you need to change! The plaque really ties it together as a victory thing, I'd have it swoop up from the bottom or explode into view on the backs of particle effects.

[eishiya]

The left and right edges and the Y have some banding, it's especially blocky on the right side. Don't line up the different colours like that, it creates the impression of fat pixels and looks blocky. If you stagger the different colours to keep them from aligning, it'll look smoother.

Have you considered adding a subtle reflection of the letters on the gold plate? That could make it look shinier.

[nessx007]

The tips are much appreciated guys!

@eishiya thanks for catching the edges of the Y, I'll get to cleaning that up next (definitely inconsistent with the other letters too). And a subtle reflection might be pretty cool yeah!

[nessx007]

::Update!::

I think im about settled on this as finalized, just added a bit of detail to the gold plate (I really like chunky dithering for some reason, but if it looks too weird let me know lol), fixed some edges/shadows, and added the reflection. But now I'm undecided on how much/what color the reflection should be. Here's my current options:

Subtle green/gold mix reflection (might not stand out enough?):


Gold tint reflection (more accurate to how gold actually reflects?):


Not-so-subtle green reflection (has the most visibility?):


If anyone has any thoughts, do share, and thanks! (I might be leaning most towards the greener one at this point)

[eishiya]

I think the chunky dithering looks good here!

Have you tried an option where the reflection uses darker gold colours?
Here is an edit with a darker gold reflection:

I also made the reflections a little more accurate by putting the lighter colours closer to the gold surface (so, above in the reflection), since the sides of the letters have their lightest colours closer to the gold surface.

I got a bit carried away and played around with it, too:
- Fixed the banding on the edges of the gold
- AAed "VI" just as an example of what the text might look like AAed. I think it looks nice, but the sharp pixels have their charm too.
- Reduced some redundant colours in your original gold plate. There are still some colours that are indistinguishable at 1x, so there's more colour reduction you could do.
- Probably made all the gold colours a bit too saturated xP

[nessx007]

Oh wow, I'm blown away how much a difference that makes. The slight AA and the flipped reflection shading were those final polish touches I didn't even know I wanted (as you might've guessed, I made the reflection the lazy way, by copying the text layer and scaling it beneath the original, only redrawing a bit here or there). I actually like the slightly more intense gold here too. I had lost some saturation in shifting opacity around for the reflection so its nice having it brought back in.

You did some serious detail work, I owe you one! (and ill go ahead and apply the AA to the other letters next).

After that, it's on to the DEFEAT title. Thanks again!

Bonus: if you're curious what we were working with before, and why I was adamant on updating it, here's the titles from many months ago:

[nessx007]

Little bump just to update with the "Defeat" plate (to avoid making a 2nd post).



Open to critique on this one as well!

[eishiya]

I think the reflection on this one looks quite faint. That's fine if the Victory one will also be faint. The reflection intensities should be about the same so that the two feel like they're from the same "reality."
Also, the lightest parts of the reflections feel a bit too light to me.

Another consistency issue compared to the Victory text: the lighter outlines on the letters looked thicker on the Victory text. The Victory outlines covered the whole letter, but here they don't. I think it could look very good with the outline continued all the way around, into the flame, especially if you reuse the flame colours. Perhaps you could leave the yellow-flame bits un-outlined.

The bottoms of the letters other than "D" feel a bit like they're at a different angle from the rest of the letter because they're made of longer vertical line segments than the rest of the letter. Something at subtle as removing the corner pixels or adding some AA could help them look better.

You've got nasty banding on the sides of the "board" again. Take a look at how I avoided banding in my edit for ideas. The key is to avoid lining up line segments.

[nessx007]

Ahh yeah I must've pulled the plate element from my old project file (since it's just a flipped version of the victory one), ill be sure to get those matching.

And thanks for the rest of the edit suggestions, I'm all for consistency so now that those things have been pointed out I won't be able to unsee them lol. Back to work! Thanks again,