Post by Sersay on Nov 6, 2014 1:57:52 GMT -6
Commission list:
Sergei (Dreadhowl logo for a flag.)
Duskraven gang (Raven+wolf related crest)
Rensin (New mask, kinda jack fool style)
Sergei (New cutter sails design? Need to talk over it more, clarify what you want.)
Sersay (Special snowflake personal crest)
Stuff
Things
The first time I got a message from Antione to make an icon in a 256x256 box, I didint quite know what on earth he wanted a wold howling at a read moon for. And even after he explained it was for an in game logo, I wasint quite sure how it would work or look, or how it was applied. I did exactily as he asked, and our first emblem was created, but once I saw it in game, saw how it was applied... I thought to myself...
"I can do better than that."
That being said, our crest is a fine one, and it fits nicely in the background deco Sergei has selected for it. Truly, the sails strike fear into MY heart, and im not an enemy.
Here I thought i'd post about my work on the crests, any new crest work, updates or other craft related to their creations, such as images used and methods of creation.
The First Crest Design:
The Second Crest Design:
Sergei (Dreadhowl logo for a flag.)
Duskraven gang (Raven+wolf related crest)
Rensin (New mask, kinda jack fool style)
Sergei (New cutter sails design? Need to talk over it more, clarify what you want.)
Sersay (Special snowflake personal crest)
Stuff
Things
The first time I got a message from Antione to make an icon in a 256x256 box, I didint quite know what on earth he wanted a wold howling at a read moon for. And even after he explained it was for an in game logo, I wasint quite sure how it would work or look, or how it was applied. I did exactily as he asked, and our first emblem was created, but once I saw it in game, saw how it was applied... I thought to myself...
"I can do better than that."
That being said, our crest is a fine one, and it fits nicely in the background deco Sergei has selected for it. Truly, the sails strike fear into MY heart, and im not an enemy.
Here I thought i'd post about my work on the crests, any new crest work, updates or other craft related to their creations, such as images used and methods of creation.
The First Crest Design:
The image Antione first sent to me was simple. Here's what I had to work with.
All I had to do was get a circle image keeping the wolf and the moon in the circle, with edges fading into transparency. Easy enough.
Opening the image up in gimp, I use a simple ellipse select and make a perfect circle around the area, and then invert the selection. Why do I invert? To select everything BUT what I wanted to keep. Because im gonna delete everything else out in one go.
After everything around my circle is cut, I invert back to my selection and use feather edges in Select -> Feather. What does this do? It gives the edges of my selection a fading in effect, and i can increse how far the fade goes into the selection. For our first crest, I think I set the feather to 50.000 px. I made this a month back so I cant remember exactily.
After that, I copy my selection and create a new gimp file, 256x256 in size, with transparency for background. I then paste the image onto the new file and start resizing the image BEFORE anchoring the image onto the new file. And thats that. Here's our finished product.
See the grey checker background? That means it's transparency. It's the same in most image editing programs that I know of.
All I had to do was get a circle image keeping the wolf and the moon in the circle, with edges fading into transparency. Easy enough.
Opening the image up in gimp, I use a simple ellipse select and make a perfect circle around the area, and then invert the selection. Why do I invert? To select everything BUT what I wanted to keep. Because im gonna delete everything else out in one go.
After everything around my circle is cut, I invert back to my selection and use feather edges in Select -> Feather. What does this do? It gives the edges of my selection a fading in effect, and i can increse how far the fade goes into the selection. For our first crest, I think I set the feather to 50.000 px. I made this a month back so I cant remember exactily.
After that, I copy my selection and create a new gimp file, 256x256 in size, with transparency for background. I then paste the image onto the new file and start resizing the image BEFORE anchoring the image onto the new file. And thats that. Here's our finished product.
See the grey checker background? That means it's transparency. It's the same in most image editing programs that I know of.
The Second Crest Design:
Ooooh boy, well now that I knew how these images where applied in game, i'd been sitting on the idea of making a new and improved crest for awhile. I COULD have hand drawn one myself, but it takes ALOT of motivation for me to get to hand drawing these days... Being the resourceful Sersay I can be at times, I went out and found me some images to use in crafting a new image. First, I started working on this image.
<img style="max-width:100%;" src="http://i.gyazo.com/9951b3868777b5840b5ba8377619bc8e.png" alt=""><br><br>"But sersay! That hand is in the way! And that wolf isint all black, it's faded in some areas!" Pfffft, big deal. Like before, im going to do a mass deletion of alot of crap I dont want from this image. So I start my selection with the stuff GIMP will have an easier time selection perfectly using the Fuzzy select tool.
"What the heck is fuzzy select?" You ask? Well it's finnicy at times, but basically it automatically selects whole shapes. If there's an area of black all connected, the fuzzy select should get most of it no problem. I had to give the tool a few extra clicks to make sure I got all the sharp ends of the wolf design selected.
Then I invert the selection, hit delete, then invert back. Now I have all I need from this image. The moon didint create a fully enclosed space around the wolf head... So I saved the image after the mass delete and opened it in MS paint, making a black circle and lining it up with the moon lines to complete the moon and make sure the curves are perfect.
I wanted a bit more to the moon, So I went and hunted for moon drawings that'd fit in with this wolf design. Thats when my next image used comes in.
"But, but Sersay! That moon is white on black, not black on white!" Selection is magical...
Once again, I use a nifty selection tool, this one called Select by Color. Why not fuzzy this time? Because there's grey areas near the edges of the white that can be finnicy in being counted as part of a whole shape. For this, color selection was simply more finite in getting exactily what I wanted. Once more, after I select what I want, I invert and hit delete.
But that leaves me with a white on white image. From here I simply invert back to the trible design, and here's where another neat trick with selection comes into play. With what I have selected, if I take a paint or pencil tool and try to draw all over the god damn image? Only areas inside my selection will be colored. It's a simple matter of slinging my mouse all over the screen and painting the white selection black.
Now that I have my wolf and my extra design aspect for my moon selected. I start a new file, with transparent background, and before I do anything else, I create two extra layers on the right side where my layers - brushes tabs are. I do this because I want to move two images around each other without sticking them both together on one image just yet.
I place the wolf image first, flip it so it's facing the other direction using the Flip Tool, then switch to the layer above the wolf and paste the moon image. Before anchoring it down to it's layer, I move and resize the moon to appropriatly fit with the moon on the wolf image, and because they are all black, it simply blends together.
...I still felt it needed something more, though. It still needs that intimidating bloody red to it. But a simple fill with red I knew wasint going to do it justice. And besides. I can do much better than a fill in color anyways. Using my relentless search skills, I found a third image to use in the crest's creation.
At first i was simply looking for red moons, but when I saw something with a face in the moon, it gave me an idea to look for something a bit more scary.
"But Sersay! SERSAY! It's not RED!" I know. First off, I use Ellipsis selection to select the moon, then invert selection to delete all the black space, and the invert back. Now to make this moon red...
For this, I go to Colors -> Colorize. This automatically converts the image to a cyan color, while bringing up sliders to adjust the cyan to different hues, lightness and saturation. I slide the hue over to a reddish color, up the saturation a bit (As in make the color more intense), THEN I darken the red a bit.
After the coloring is done, I copy and paste this new, scary ass moon to the wolf image with the layers, and create a new layer UNDER the other two. Placing the moon on that layer, I again move and resize it as needed until it fits perfectly in that circle of the wolf howling at the moon.
Finally, I merge all the layers down into a single layer, select ALL, copy it all, create a 256x256 new file with transparent background, and paste and resize as needed.
The final result, is this.
<img style="max-width:100%;" src="http://i.gyazo.com/9951b3868777b5840b5ba8377619bc8e.png" alt=""><br><br>"But sersay! That hand is in the way! And that wolf isint all black, it's faded in some areas!" Pfffft, big deal. Like before, im going to do a mass deletion of alot of crap I dont want from this image. So I start my selection with the stuff GIMP will have an easier time selection perfectly using the Fuzzy select tool.
"What the heck is fuzzy select?" You ask? Well it's finnicy at times, but basically it automatically selects whole shapes. If there's an area of black all connected, the fuzzy select should get most of it no problem. I had to give the tool a few extra clicks to make sure I got all the sharp ends of the wolf design selected.
Then I invert the selection, hit delete, then invert back. Now I have all I need from this image. The moon didint create a fully enclosed space around the wolf head... So I saved the image after the mass delete and opened it in MS paint, making a black circle and lining it up with the moon lines to complete the moon and make sure the curves are perfect.
I wanted a bit more to the moon, So I went and hunted for moon drawings that'd fit in with this wolf design. Thats when my next image used comes in.
"But, but Sersay! That moon is white on black, not black on white!" Selection is magical...
Once again, I use a nifty selection tool, this one called Select by Color. Why not fuzzy this time? Because there's grey areas near the edges of the white that can be finnicy in being counted as part of a whole shape. For this, color selection was simply more finite in getting exactily what I wanted. Once more, after I select what I want, I invert and hit delete.
But that leaves me with a white on white image. From here I simply invert back to the trible design, and here's where another neat trick with selection comes into play. With what I have selected, if I take a paint or pencil tool and try to draw all over the god damn image? Only areas inside my selection will be colored. It's a simple matter of slinging my mouse all over the screen and painting the white selection black.
Now that I have my wolf and my extra design aspect for my moon selected. I start a new file, with transparent background, and before I do anything else, I create two extra layers on the right side where my layers - brushes tabs are. I do this because I want to move two images around each other without sticking them both together on one image just yet.
I place the wolf image first, flip it so it's facing the other direction using the Flip Tool, then switch to the layer above the wolf and paste the moon image. Before anchoring it down to it's layer, I move and resize the moon to appropriatly fit with the moon on the wolf image, and because they are all black, it simply blends together.
...I still felt it needed something more, though. It still needs that intimidating bloody red to it. But a simple fill with red I knew wasint going to do it justice. And besides. I can do much better than a fill in color anyways. Using my relentless search skills, I found a third image to use in the crest's creation.
At first i was simply looking for red moons, but when I saw something with a face in the moon, it gave me an idea to look for something a bit more scary.
"But Sersay! SERSAY! It's not RED!" I know. First off, I use Ellipsis selection to select the moon, then invert selection to delete all the black space, and the invert back. Now to make this moon red...
For this, I go to Colors -> Colorize. This automatically converts the image to a cyan color, while bringing up sliders to adjust the cyan to different hues, lightness and saturation. I slide the hue over to a reddish color, up the saturation a bit (As in make the color more intense), THEN I darken the red a bit.
After the coloring is done, I copy and paste this new, scary ass moon to the wolf image with the layers, and create a new layer UNDER the other two. Placing the moon on that layer, I again move and resize it as needed until it fits perfectly in that circle of the wolf howling at the moon.
Finally, I merge all the layers down into a single layer, select ALL, copy it all, create a 256x256 new file with transparent background, and paste and resize as needed.
The final result, is this.