new icons from manikus
 

Here are a few I did after seeing Uatu's awesome undersea collection.

They are a great white shark, hammerhead shark, and a dolphin.

Enjoy! :D

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Very nice! Shading is very realistic, as are the forms themselves. The dolphin looks very cute :D The shark is animated very nicely, too - quite scary!

Actually, one thing I was thinking about - do undersea creatures need shadows? I made my first non-upright undersea creature today, and left it without, since, I dunno, it seemed kind of strange with a shadow, but I am not sure... :( (Doesn't help that my icon is nearly black, so that a shadow would completely obscure the picture... but your shadows look fine with your icons)

Re: new icons from manikus
 

I thought about this very issue for a long time. Reference pictures I was using showed nearly black shadows for the pictures of sharks as they were in clear (Caribbean) shallow waters. The dolphin pictures had no shadows as they were in deep water and there was no visible bottom for the shadow to fall on.
The other thing that I noticed was that the shadow took on the tone of the medium - blue water had dark blue shadows, green water had dark green shadows, etc. It wasn't just the shadow that was tinted however, but the creatures themselves. So, I thought I would leave the tinting up to the user. :D It would be super cool if we could use an alpha layer in combat (we can use a grey scale one in the viewport).

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Very cool! Almost looks like a render! :D Hmmm shadows are ok I guess.. it really depends on what depth they are at from the floor of the ocean/sea/lake.. since the character is gonna be on the bottom, I guess shadows would be ok--maybe distort them or soften them a bit--refraction.

NICE STUFF! More! More! ;)

Re: new icons from manikus
 

BTW--don't you LOVE that you can attach files now? :) SO nice. I added some more file formats to be allowed. Any other formats we need? (I saw your rtf file issue)..

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Awesome. :D

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Hmm - interesting about the shadows. Yeah, it WOULD be much better if we had alpha transparency for the shadows - for example, perhaps we could set pure black (0,0,0) as partially transparent (as long as we avoid using this color for anything but shadows in our art).

As it is, my ixitxachitls (did I get that right?) are nearly black themselves, so black shadows would obscure them completely, unless I make the shadows somehow really small... :(

Re: new icons from manikus
 

I think that would be cool. I try never to do any of my shadows at 0,0,0 just b/c I hope some day we'll be able to do this. (I know that some slip through b/c I forget... :) )

I would like a totally different layer that would work like the alpha blending overlays for the viewport (i.e. the auto-darken feature) but would allow me to substitute a color of my choice or load a graphic to be blended; with the latter you could do clouds or dust storms or fire... :D:D:D

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Hmm - that sounds like an interesting idea ;) I do find making shadows the most boring part of creating icons, though, and would prefer to minimalize that part of the task if possible :D

(Plus, having separate files for monsters and shadows would complicate things and take up extra space on servers ;) )

Re: new icons from manikus
 

I was unclear, I think. Icons would stay the way they are, but (in my dream world :D) there would be another layer available for the combat (not connected with any other graphics) that could be turned on for alpha blending purposes.

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Well, I suppose that we could allow alpha transparency in icons somehow, although editing them in real life is a bit tricky.

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Okay- here's the screenshot of my new underwater combat wild...a little hard on the yes, I know. :) That's why I'm just posting a ss, ladies and gents.

http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/2...oor1fz4.th.png

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Hey, looking good, although I guess you are still working on it! But what is that HUGE thing in the corner? An elasmosaurus? That dolphin looks mighty tiny adjacent to it... :D

Is this your shallow water set?

Re: new icons from manikus
 

This is the shallow water set.

Huge thing in the corner? Oh my goodness- what is that? I didn't even see that when I was down there during my dive! I was too busy looking at the big shark that looked so hungry.
Whatever it is, to me it looks like some kind of "sea dragon"...

:D:D:D:D:D

Re: new icons from manikus
 

:D Me like big icons...

Re: new icons from manikus
 

I decide to re-do the shadows, too. I still have the all-black version, but I decided to add in the deep blue semi-transparent version as well.

Just b/c you like big icons...;)

Introducing the Sea Dragon! She'll have stats and a monster database entry when I make my undersea pack available. :)

Re: new icons from manikus
 

This sea dragon is beautiful! The only thing that does not convince me is the neck (while attacking). Seems like it is becoming shorter.

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Good point...I'll look at the model. Seems there is sideways movement of the head that is not visible in my render. I'll fix that as soon as I get back from my meeting. :)

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Hmm, there is this shadow behind the head that might indicate a sideways moving. Okay! :)

I am not that familiar with AD&D-monsters, anyway, I would expect a sea-dragon to spit fire (even under water). :D

However: This is really a cool icon!

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Okey dokey, she's got her neck looked at by the chiropractor and is all better. Look to the post above for the new and improved sea dragon. :D

I don't have enough room to put a breath weapon in the icon pic, but in the future I will probably make a new attack pose that gives me some more pixels to play with. ;) As far as I know, there is not an official sea dragon in AD&D (I am certain that there is not in 2nd edition.) Fire would be cool, but I kind of imagined her with a steam jet breath weapon- all the heat of fire, but since it's underwater... :D:D:D

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Steam jet... sounds good... However, fire would do as well (just think of magnesium ).

Re: new icons from manikus
 

:)

Some dragons in AD&D have more than one kind of breath weapon.

:)

The sea dragon might have at least two, maybe to compensate for a lack of magical abilities that other dragons have. I would give her psionics to compensate, but there is not really a way to do this in DC yet... :D:D:D

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Nice icon there! :D Giant icons are always nice to have. :) Maybe it could breathe boiling water or something...

Hmm - I would like to give breath weapons to my dragons as well, but I don't think that is possible yet, either, right? (Not sure how to even do any cone-based spells, actually, since unlike circle-based areas, I can't just draw one big animated effect for cones - since I can't guess what direction it would be blasted from...)

(Also, nope, no underwater dragons in AD&D, but some dragons could breathe water automatically... like golds, I think.)

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Breath weapons are not available, yet. I also don't have any ideas about how to do the graphics for a cone shaped effect. (I do know how to make spells with cone shaped effects, so I guess I can always expirement...)

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Yeah, I guess lots of experimentation will lead to an answer of some sort... :)

Re: new icons from manikus
 

I'll add it to my list...my that's a long list. ;)

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Taking a long time to do a proper fireball, by the way... It's nice to be able to draw spells with large areas (lots of detail), but it sure takes a long time with the one square = 6' scale!

Re: new icons from manikus
 

I just got a fireball prop for rendering. :D:D:D The preview renders that the creator made looked great. Now I just have to see if I can duplicate the effect. :)

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Ha ha - one of the good things about rendering is that size isn't as much of a problem...

Re: new icons from manikus
 

That's true. In a lot of cases with DC the issue is about the graphic being too small for the render to look good.

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Hey manikus, how come not all of your icons are on your home page? :D (The dragons, etc.)

On another note, I think I noticed a few new icons on your page - was that troll there before? And the martial artist icons? A few others, too...

Re: new icons from manikus
 

If you check the front page, you'll have your answers. :)
I always add to the news when I do anything on the site. :D:D:D

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Hmm - but I thought a lot of those pictures were fairly new... (like the dragons - also, didn't you do some other icons for Silver Blades? I can't find them...)

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Um, I'm confused- are there icons you saw that are not on the site that are new? Or, do you mean there are icons on the site you thought were newer than the end of October? :)

To make things really confusing, there are a few icons that saw their debut on the site a while before being posted here and there are a few newer icons (such as the red dragons) that are more recent than my last update. ;)

I'm starting to feel guilty about not updating the website in a while. The truth is, it's easy to do, but I'm not too happy with the service because they keep sticking ads on when the agreement we had was nothing but text ads, if that. :( It's a free service, so what can I do? My wife's thinking about launching a domain that would be paid for and maintained by her and I, so when that happens, I'll just tack on my little site. :) (With her permission of course...)

Re: new icons from manikus
 

I thought I saw some icons you posted here that are not on the site (but I may be imagining things :P )... I do remember the red dragons, but I thought there were others...

Re Web services... Yeah, a lot of those services do change their rules suddenly sometimes. I have been lucky so far with mine, I guess - no ads is always nice.

Of course, if your wife launches her own domain, that would work nicely :D

Re: new icons from manikus
 

I guess I should do that update- there are the hill giants and a wyvern to go with the two dragons. There are a bunch of small pics as well, but as those will (probably) come out in the next DC release, I won't upload them to my site unless too much time goes by...

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Ah, that's right, you had some hill giants and the wyvern... :)

Any idea when the next DC release will be, anyway?

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Well, I only hear from Tarlanon every few months at the best of times. :) As far as I know, he and LurchBrick are the only two coders and neither one of them are currently working on anything. :(

I know that Tarlanon wanted to have releases come out several times a year, but I just don't see that happening without some new blood, or the return of CocoaSpud. (Hey, anything can happen...)

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Hmm - perhaps we should try cooking up some plans on capturing CocoaSpud ;)

- What would attract him back? Some shiny new icons? A spiffy new DC game? A shutdown of the WoW servers? :D

Re: new icons from manikus
 

Maybe if we drew pictures of us down on our knees begging him to come back and started emailing him on a daily basis...
The other day when PAul was asking questions about the status od DC, I was hoping that he would write back that he was interested again, and then we could hook CocoaSpud back in and get done with version 1.0 by the end of 2008 easy. :D:D:D But, PAul is working on something else (DC was always his back-up project - he's been working on his own game engine conversion for the last decade or so). And, I can't find any new projects for CocoaSpud, so maybe he'll get back to us yet. :)

On a semi-related note, a designer over at FRUA who did some awesome games went away and told everybody that he was done with FRUA, but just in the last couple of days has been back saying that he wants to create one last adventure if there is the interest.