New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

List of small pics to do (someday; * are finished, + are some % done, # for rejected images :) ):

Forests (only):
*Sprite

Aquatic (only):
*Aquatic Elf

Level I:
Bandit
*Mountain Dwarf/Shield Dwarf
*Goblin
*Orc
*Giant Rat
Shrieker
Bat, Giant
#Kobold
*Xvart
*Badger
*Carbuncle
+Skeleton
Zombie
*Al-mi'raj
Demon, Manes
*Devil, Nupperibo
Halfling
Gnome
Larva
Squirrel, Giant Black

Level II:
*Centipede, Giant
Gnoll
*Stirge
*Gorbel
*Lizard Man
*Myconid
Ice Troll
Azer
Duergar
Fire Bat
Frog, Killer
Kuo-toa
*Modron, Monodrone

Level III:
Ghoul (Ghast)
#Spider, Huge
*Gelatinous Cube
Mobat
*Ochre Jelly
*Ogre
Devil, Lemure
Centipede, Megalo-
Wolf, Dire
Wolf, Worg
Wolf, Winter
Zombie, Juju

Level VI:
+Devil, Erinyes

Level VII:
*Devil, Horned
*Will-o-Wisp

Level X:
*Devil, Glasya (Princess of Hell)
+Dragon, Gold

********

A separate thread for portraits/small pics, which I seem to be doing more of lately :D (My quality seems to be going up a bit as well... yay! That also means that the older ones will have to go to "hidden" mode soon...)

Today I have:

Redhead lady (portrait) - PC/NPC wizard of some sort?
Horned devil (small pic) - to go along with the icon (henchmen for Glasya!).

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Very nice work here. The redhead is exquisite and the horned devil is pretty wicked looking. :D:D:D

If you are benching some of your images, does that mean we can expect an updated version some time in the future? Or, are they to make way for new and exciting pictures? (We win either way. ;))

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Uh... Actually, I still have lots of server space, so that just means that I will hide them (i.e. unlink them) although they will still sit on the server :)

I am experimenting with various new ways of doing pixel art these days (for example, the redhead was an experiment in skin shading with less contrast and less work ;) while the horned devil was an experiment in use of deep shades... and thus less work). In general, I want to get images done with less work (note that I haven't been doing too much of the veeeerrry detailed shading I did more before lately). :D If I can get things done faster, hopefully you will see more stuff soon here... but it all depends on mood and such ;)

My-future-module (when?!?!):

Sub-boss: horned devil
Final boss: Glasya :)

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Well, I think your expirements are proving fruitful. I like the look of both of these images, and if they were done with less work...fantastic. :)

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Well, those were the successful experiments :D I have another one that, em, I don't think I'll be posting up...

(The forest picture was another experiment (in shadows and using less colors), which turned out okay.)

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

I know how that goes. I've got about 5 different tree wallsets in various formats. :) And not-a-one of them is going to see the light of day around here. ;)

Thinking about using less colors, an artist in the FRUA community (hans a.k.a DHanson11 in case you want to check out his stuff) gave me the advice of never using the same color for two or more horizontally or vertically connected pixels in icons, combat walls/wildernesses spell graphics. The reason being that you can fake the eye into thinking there are more colors being used in very small pictures that have a limited palette. (For example, the base icon frame in FRUA is 24x24 with 80-some colors or less available.) I, of course break that rule all the time with DC b/c I've got millions of colors at my disposal, but when I'm hand-doing an icon, I still try to follow it, but modified for 4 or more pixels (b/c DCs icon base is bigger) and if I'm outlining a shape.

I would offer this as my two cents, but its probably not worth that much, so we'll call it my half-a-penny wisdom. :D:D:D

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Ha ha... Yeah, I gotta find some of my old "rejects" and try to fix them up...

But yeah, actually, the idea of alternating colors was one of the ideas I was playing with for the forest... The trees look pretty good (especially the leaves) as a result, although I guess I could do more for the ground (but I am lazy, as I mentioned)...

It is nice not having to fix really large palettes (in terms of colors)...

I don't like using the common "dithering" technique for pixel art where people hatch/hex pixels around, though - we had to do things like that in the old 16 color or even 256 color days, but for smooth surfaces, smooth colors is better now...

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Anyway... lowered the redhead's collar bone a little :D (My images have random "fixes" done to them intermittently...)

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Those portraits are schweet!!! I've been messing around with FRUA a little bit lately, and the main thing that FRUA has in artwork that DC does not is the smallpics. Frua has a bunch of monster smallpics (some animated like the weaving heads of the hydra or the sea dragon breaking thru the coral wall and IIRC we can do animations as smallpics), as well as PC/NPC smallpics which we have in development (and they look AWESOME), and we recently had a bunch of item pictures like FRUA has; there are no generic town/tower/castle pics like FRUA has.

(begin rant)
I know that if I can manage to find some of that elusive free time to make art I'll get better at making art, but working 2nd shift, from 11:30am to 8:00pm makes it REALLY difficult to do anything other than sleep, eat, and work. I feel like such a robot :(. The alternative to working is not possible, unless my wife gets a dramatically higher income than me (but with her doing CNA classes, she just might have it). Anyhow, for now I try to sneak in some DC related activity at night on the weekends.
(end rant)

ST

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

I'll eventually get around to doing some buildings, but from my polling, they didn't seem to be a priority. I'm not trying to duplicate the pictures from FRUA, I'm trying to get a good base. :D:D:D
It is a bit of a priority to get at least a few monster pics for the next release, of which there already several (which I'm choosing to not make public at this point...you'll just have to wait). We are actually surprisingly close to having all of the small pics we will need for a default art release. Then, we just need another wall or two, a couple of more sprites, a few more spell effects, a few big pics and a map or two. That's it really, then the official art base will be complete.

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Sounds good. I didn't bring up sprites on purpose due to the fact that the sprite animations don't work properly. Everything else we have. :D

ST

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Well, sprites do work in the encounter event. :) And they don't in the rest (currently) not b/c of a bug, but b/c CocoaSpud did not initially add support for sprites to the other events, but eventually made them loadable, but never got to implement
the approach function.

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

In my opinion, for a bare-bones module, I would need the following graphics (in the following order):

1. Essentials: Walls, doors, backgrounds, combat sets, icons
2. Nearly essential: PC portraits
3. Very nice: monster small pics, monster sprites, overlays

So, I am mainly concentrating on making portraits/small pics for monsters right now... I do want to make some sprites eventually for dungeon monsters.

What other kinds of small pics are high on your lists?

Also, I do want to make a big pic sometime, but I have NO IDEA what to make it of. Aerial dragon fight? Girl pinup? :D

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Something Dramatic, like the endboss Castle or the dragon or other vicious creature swooping down upon you.

YEEESSSSS!!!! ;)
ST

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

I guess I've spent so much time with FRUA, that I would list PC portraits as a luxury. :) But, as the rest of y'all seem to want them (not that I don't) that is what I'm currently working on.

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Well - the PC portrait box does sort of stick out without them, and it does ask you to select one in the game while creating a PC, so...

Also, forgot to note - some animated small pics (portraits are not animated, right?) would be fairly simple to make - i.e. the redhead blinking her eyes, a dragon sticking its tongue out (a-la one of the older Gold Box games), etc...

SilentThief:

Ha ha ha... Either picture (dragon or pinup) would be fun to do for sure, but I dunno where I would use the pinup in a game, though...

A pinup would work well, though, because of the horizontal picture frame :)

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

I have never tried to use an animated small pic for a PC portrait. I might have to try this.

Sure, there is the old blackbox, but we have 6 PC portraits that ship with the game now, part of me thinks that the designer should add more if she wants more, though I have been enjoying myself making them. The main concern really, is the size of the download. We're already pushing the upper limits for size for people using dial-up. I guess when we add in the default design, it will blow that limit anyways. :D:D:D

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Ah - I see. Hmmm - well, I am trying to make enough art to fill my own game (that I will make someday... really ;) )... I guess if you make too many portraits, they could go in a "portrait pack" or something...

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

When loading the smallpics, you have the option of entering information for multiple frames, so I assumed we could do animations. I haven't tried it, tho

ST

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

We're going to have 20 PC portraits in the default download. :)

Hmmmm- we will probably have 10-20 NPC portraits, 10-20 item pics, 10-20 place pics and 20-30 monster pics when all is said and done which is somewhere around the 100 mark for small pics. :D A few less than FRUA, actually.

ST: As for animating the small pic, this option is not available for PC pics as they are not picked by the designer, but by the player at game time. (OK, you can put them in the pic pool, or pick them using the proper naming convention, but it's still not through an event.)

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Yeah, and AFAICT the animations would go thru one time during, an event and not loop like they do in FRUA. Unless you had a bunch of repeating frames, you would have only a quick action and then -stop-

ST
ps, but again, I haven't tried this out to see.

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Hmm - by the way, do animated small pics cycle through the animations or are they just one-shot?

Also, new al-mi'raj small pic is up. :) (I like to put stupid-looking cuddly creatures against low-level PCs... ha!)

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Here's the poop on animating in DC. :)
You cannot animate PC pictures.
You can animate other small pics/portraits. It is the designer's option where the animate plays through once or loops. The designer also controls how fast it plays and which frame to start with.

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

It is indeed very cuddly looking. :D
I can see it now...
"Oh look! It's a cute unicorn-bunny. Come here bunny-wunny..."
THWAPT, THWAPT, SLASH!
"Oh my god! So much blood..gurgle..." :D:D:D:D:D:D

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Can the designer control how long each frame is displayed? (Say, 5 seconds for the normal frame, and 0.1 second for each eye blinking frame)

But yeah, you never know what the cuddly al-mi'raj will do... ;) (Not evil, but stupid)

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

I just checked, and looks like you have to have the same amount of spacing between all frames. :( I guess that is my cue to mention the feature tracker at SourceForge...that or you could do like 50 frames that were the same, then the blink sequence. :D

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Yeah... That's what I remember... :( That should be fairly easy to fix, right? If it does get fixed, then I can start animatin' :D

50 frames is doable... but we result in huge files :(

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

I don't know if it's easy to fix, b/c I don't think it's broken. I don't think CocoaSpud ever foresaw that we would want to have varying lengths of time between frames., hence why this is a feature request and not a bug.

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

But - in the old Gold Box games, it was quite clear that certain frames were much longer than the other frames (i.e. the blinking sequences or the tongue-flicking sequences)...

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

But, in the Goldbox games, they just added frames to make part of it look longer. I've taken apart all of the .tlb files. :D:D:D One of the first utils for FRUA that I learned how to use was the TLB extractor maker, so I could get at the default graphics in a paint program. :)

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Well, if you had a long enough display time per frame, you could have like 4 normal frames and one blinking flame and that should work (theoretically)

ST

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Even though it seems like it would take up a lot of memory, the way the Goldbox games did it was quite clever.
The first frame was the background for the whole animation. Each consecutive frame was an overlay. If you are showing the upper half of a dwarf and you want him to blink, you would only have to change the pixels for the part of the face that was a different pose. I don't think they could use blank frames, so there are lots of frames with like two or three pixels in it, because it was just to take up time.

The other "animation" that appears in all of the Goldbox games, is just color-cycling of the palette using LBM files which you could easily change into the TLB format that FRUA used, and, I believe, extract LBMs of the animated small pics.

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Ah - strange implementation... probably one that would be better to change :D We do have timing for spell icons and such, after all.

(Animation requires at least 3 frames for things to look smooth - for a blink, we'd need an open eye, and closed eye, and one in between :) )

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

It took some getting used to. If I recall correctly, the artists did their work, then the programmers took the frames and assembled the TLB files so that the artists didn't have to worry about it.

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Hmm - makes sense, as it is a rather strange implementation after all...

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

For it's day, it was pretty cool. Because of the limited palette, the files could be made very small. :)

Of course this was from the times when you put the whole game on a couple of 3.5 floppies and were amazed at how much space it required. :)

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

Wow, you had 3.5 floppies? I am pretty sure I worked from those old 5.25 floppies... (Took 1 hour load Champions of Krynn, and 30 minutes for each battle... Why did I think that was fun again?)

Anyway, lots of new small pictures for today:
1. Aquatic Elf
2. Goblin (to replace the old one)
3. Giant Rat (looks kind of small, actually, but whatever)

I also retired some of the older ones that were "rough" (in my eyes)... If people want, I can make a "gallery of rejects" or something, though.

Actually, there is a full body version of the aquatic elf... ha ha... Doesn't fit in the 176 x 211 window, though... ;)

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

These are very nice. :) If you don't mind, I'm going to call on Mr. Goblin to join the ranks of DC default small pics. :D:D:D

What would be really sweet, is if at some point in the future, you did a rat picture with a *whole bunch* of rats. :) And, it would be cool to see a picture of a giant rat coming out of a crack/hole in a dungeon wall. (You could even put most of the rat in deep shadow so that he would be very easy to draw (in relation that is).)

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

What, more rats? :D Weeeeeeeell... I want to get more small pics (in terms of number) done, but... If I am in a ratty mood, I guess... (Even one small rat takes time to do...)

(Mr. Goblin accepts your invitation to DC's default small pics... ;) I also like my goblin - put a good deal of time into this one.)

Re: New Portraits/Small Pics!
 

No rush on the rats. :) I was just thinking what would be cool to have.

Your goblin has inspired me to work on the goblin icon and re-do him. :D

Hey! I'm done with finals! Woo-hoo! (Just had to get that out there. :D)