Author Topic: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?  (Read 14194 times)

Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #30 on: May 14, 2014, 04:35:35 pm »


Skylaxian Battle Carrier.

I see your pixel art skills have become even more impressive over the years ;)
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Offline I-KP

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #31 on: May 14, 2014, 04:48:46 pm »
I remember you!

Cheers.  :)
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Offline nas1m

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #32 on: May 15, 2014, 02:25:07 am »
Skylaxian Battle Carrier.
Holy s**t! I love it :D.
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Offline doctorfrog

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #33 on: May 15, 2014, 03:03:25 am »
It's good to see some more I-KP artwork! Fantastically done.

Offline lifehole

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #34 on: May 15, 2014, 10:21:45 pm »
Amazing, really, really great stuff. I can't wait for this to become a modpack/get put into the game. It's just visuals ofcourse, but.. but.. It looks cool!

Offline I-KP

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #35 on: May 17, 2014, 02:48:36 pm »
Alrighty then, the all-Races line-up...



Acutian Executors; Andor Suppressors; Boarine Tuskers; Burlust Longships; Evuck Herald; Peltian Solar Fortress; Skylaxian Battle Carrier; Thoraxian Exterminator.

(Also drawn but not shown above: all mode overlays and lightspeed bitmaps.  Damage overlays have not been redrawn because the above ships largely comply with the original silhouettes so they'll still work as they are.)
« Last Edit: May 17, 2014, 02:52:00 pm by I-KP »
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Offline Histidine

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #36 on: May 17, 2014, 10:29:28 pm »
Excelente!

Sorry if I missed it, but will you be doing the non-race-specific ships as well?

Offline I-KP

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #37 on: May 18, 2014, 07:01:17 am »
We shall see!
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Offline I-KP

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #38 on: May 18, 2014, 11:50:21 am »
After having just played a few hours with the modpack in place I think I will set about also doing the Model X, Velocitor, and the various Hydral/hunter/pirate/civil faction ships.  I won't do any turrets, small ships or 'bases' at this stage.
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Offline I-KP

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #39 on: May 21, 2014, 07:04:29 pm »
A few examples of the supporting cast...



Claymore, Cutter and Velociter around a Hunter Colossus.
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Offline ChristopherRC2000

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #40 on: May 21, 2014, 09:10:50 pm »
Very nice work. I hope they put your ships in the game, or as a game pack? Is that the term? Very cool.

Offline MaskityMask

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #41 on: May 22, 2014, 08:15:59 am »
I'm kinda wondering if these awesome designs become official ones... Doesn't that mean tittle screen floating ships need to be eventually replaced as well? Wouldn't mind if that would be done later, these designs are too awesome to not be used

Offline I-KP

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #42 on: May 22, 2014, 09:34:06 am »
Most good games allow re-skin mod packs, and they're a good dodge for visual disconnects like the one you've highlighted -- I do not plan to redraw the side-on images of these ships -- because when a player loads up a mod pack they're choosing to accept that by often partially overriding the original art direction for a game they're introducing possible visual disconnects; by conscious action they're deciding to 'see past' them.

I submitted a fair number of art assets to AI War, and a lot of them were used, but it was difficult to find an art style that fitted in with the rest of the game and to stick to it.  (In the end I chose the original pixel art style over the newer 'render' art approaches.)  At the time the lack of coherent art direction for AI War was one of my overriding whines about the game - that's okay, at the time Arcen were mostly ideas men and coders, not necessarily artists.  (To be honest with you I wasn't a fan of the new 'render' art stylings.  Not just because they were inconsistently implemented alongside pixel art but mostly because they weren't pixel art themselves; pixel art has a certain timeless quality to it when done well whereas 'render' art tends to age very rapidly.)

I suppose what I'm gradually heading towards here is my support of making these TLF assets a mod pack rather than having them ship as direct replacements, largely in the interests of hiding the likely resultant visual disconnect between the menus and the game itself behind informed player choice.

I'm going to bundle these all up into a pack and make it available for players to use no matter what Chris ultimately decides to do with these, if anything.  ;)
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Offline MaskityMask

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #43 on: May 22, 2014, 11:10:18 am »
Most good games allow re-skin mod packs, and they're a good dodge for visual disconnects like the one you've highlighted -- I do not plan to redraw the side-on images of these ships -- because when a player loads up a mod pack they're choosing to accept that by often partially overriding the original art direction for a game they're introducing possible visual disconnects; by conscious action they're deciding to 'see past' them.

I submitted a fair number of art assets to AI War, and a lot of them were used, but it was difficult to find an art style that fitted in with the rest of the game and to stick to it.  (In the end I chose the original pixel art style over the newer 'render' art approaches.)  At the time the lack of coherent art direction for AI War was one of my overriding whines about the game - that's okay, at the time Arcen were mostly ideas men and coders, not necessarily artists.  (To be honest with you I wasn't a fan of the new 'render' art stylings.  Not just because they were inconsistently implemented alongside pixel art but mostly because they weren't pixel art themselves; pixel art has a certain timeless quality to it when done well whereas 'render' art tends to age very rapidly.)

I suppose what I'm gradually heading towards here is my support of making these TLF assets a mod pack rather than having them ship as direct replacements, largely in the interests of hiding the likely resultant visual disconnect between the menus and the game itself behind informed player choice.

I'm going to bundle these all up into a pack and make it available for players to use no matter what Chris ultimately decides to do with these, if anything.  ;)

Aww, okay. I thought the render/sprite thing was that big ships are rendered while small are sprites. Anyway, I would think it'd be kinda sad if these would "only" be a mod since not every person is going to see them that way since a lot of people don't search for mods or bother changing default settings. Or maybe I'm just projecting since I rarely search for mods myself...

Offline x4000

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Re: Custom Ship Art Pack - What Do I Need To Know?
« Reply #44 on: May 22, 2014, 11:20:03 am »
My plan for these is to make them official, I-KP's permission pending.  The style of ships he's doing here actually is not too far off some of the new stuff we're doing with the Obscura ships in the first expansion, although they still have different flavors as a new external race should.  Oops, did I just say that!? ;)  :P

Anyway, in terms of the side view art and the art of ships in the cutscenes, I don't see those needing to be consistent with the in-battle graphics.
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