A Crawl <Tiles> Comic - Pg 1 up!

[TehDruid]

This is by no means going to be a spectacular attempt at a comic strip with hand drawn art, since I'm no artist (digitally or on paper). Still I'd like to try it out and hopefully make some people laugh in the process.

Anyway, here's a brief introduction to the main character of the upcoming story:

Doomhammer 1.png (77.57 KiB) Viewed 3970 times

[Un67]

Looks very promising! Will definitely follow this.

[mageykun]

Gah! The pixels, they don't scale right! Seriously, the sprite nerd in me weeps. Some of those squares are quite clearly rectangles.

(...and there's probably a font nerd out there crying over your choices in that department as well, but thankfully that's not me. ).

Good luck! Remember, the first comic is the hardest. Well, actually, the second one's a whole lot harder. You're hurting before you even get started, and you haven't learned anything that will make it easier yet. Then you get to the third...

[TehDruid]

Gah! The pixels, they don't scale right! Seriously, the sprite nerd in me weeps. Some of those squares are quite clearly rectangles.

(...and there's probably a font nerd out there crying over your choices in that department as well, but thankfully that's not me. ).

Good luck! Remember, the first comic is the hardest. Well, actually, the second one's a whole lot harder. You're hurting before you even get started, and you haven't learned anything that will make it easier yet. Then you get to the third...

Shit, they're onto my crappy job! Quick, burn the evidence!
Well I didn't promise anything remotely fascinating in visuals. Not promising a breathtakingly hilarious storyline, too, but hey, let's see how it works.

EDIT: PAGE 1 FINISHED METHINKS (here goes nothing... please remember, I'm just doing this for fun... so don't be THAT harsh, at least for now)

Doomhammer pg1.png (87.33 KiB) Viewed 3935 times

@Mageykun Yup, there's rectangles again.

[pratamawirya]

Keep 'em coming

[Un67]

Pretty well done, actually. Keep it coming!

[Grimm]

(...and there's probably a font nerd out there crying over your choices in that department as well

The font nerd suggests Vera, the official Crawl font. It's in \dat\tiles.

[varsovie]

And underline the lines, or write in black, because withe on pale gray...

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

There is a fairly easy way to outline text on such background.

Make a copy of your text layer, repaint your text on the copy black instead of white/any_bright_colour or white instead of black/any_dark_colour, and give it a slight nudge, like x+1 y+1 or something like that, and then shovel it right under your main text layer. An easy way to make a shadow.

[TehDruid]

Thx MyOtherHedgeFox! I'm a long ways away from knowing how to use layers masterfully yet. I'm gonna try it on the next page when I do it although I think there might be an option to create a shadow automatically for the font. Also I guess I should make those pages larger since everything seems to be crammed in there.

@Grimm

I don't feel particularly strong about changing... But there seem to be too many Comic Sans haters out there, apparently. I'll use the Vera font next time and see if it looks nice. Or something else.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

Try "making" some userbars from the existing sprites for training, TehDruid. If you don't mind hacked stuff, I'd recommend using Macromedia Fireworks 8 instead of a Photoshop (the article is used for a purpose!) -- Fireworks has excellent support of animated GIF files paletted semi-transparent PNG files. Besides, you can use both raster tools and editable Bezier curves-based vector shapes there!
Nice fonts can be found at Dafont.com, unless I'm mistaken. Look for Dafont. Most fonts there are free for non-commercial use. If you need some nice vector shapes, grab some vector fonts -- Fireworks can transform a typed phrase into a vector shape, and you know how use that little "Character Table" program that comes with Windows, don't you? =)

Besides, you'll learn how to make userbars and understand why you should not use "reflection effects", crappy animation and Visitor font all the time.

[TehDruid]

Try "making" some userbars from the existing sprites for training, TehDruid. If you don't mind hacked stuff, I'd recommend using Macromedia Fireworks 8 instead of a Photoshop -- Fireworks has excellent support of animated GIF files paletted semi-transparent PNG files. Besides, you can use both raster tools and editable Bezier curves-based vector shapes there!
Nice fonts can be found at Dafont.com, unless I'm mistaken. Look for Dafont. Most fonts their are free for non-commercial use.

Besides, you'll learn how to make userbars and understand why you should not use "reflection effects", crappy animation and Visitor font all the time.

Um, to be honest I don't understand exactly what you mean by "making userbars". Could you elaborate a little, see I'm pretty much a big noob at image manipulation and all this sounds a bit confusing. Again thx for the suggestions.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

Userbars were quite popular before signature pictures defeated them.

Basically, a userbar is a small image designed to be put into a forum user's signature to designate his likes, dislikes and membership.

Some examples are:


A userbar I made for an on-line browser RPG in which I was an admin member. I still am an admin there, but I don't do much things there nowadays. 350*19 or 350*20 px.


A userb... I mean, bigbar for the game "The Ur-Quan Masters", which is Star Control II open-sourced. 350*40 px.


As you can see, in both cases I used a few images from the game, and drew the rest using Fireworks vector tools and my lame mouse-drawing skills.


For some reason, there is no English Wikipedia entry on them. =) If you know any other language:
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%AE%D0%B7%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B1%D0%B0%D1%80
and look for yours in the left sidebar.

The usual size for a userbar is 350*19. The so-called "bigbars", with size == 350*40, were also popular, but did not reach the same popularity.

Userbars are still used in Russia, though their usage has "jumped the shark" since the most popular forums have placed severe restrictions on using images in forum signatures.

[TehDruid]

@MyOtherHedgeFox

Oh yeah I've seen plenty of those on other forums, so I guessed you meant this. I've never made one before though, lol. This is the first forum I'm actively participating quite a bit.
Some useful info about sizes there, thanks yet again.

Actually English isn't my mother language, Greek is.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

It is like making cut-outs in a kindergarten (and some userbars have the same quality). Try making a few and remember that sometimes you should stay minimal. But still you should keep your work finished: it should be distinctly separated from the outer page (with a border or a hint of it -- my bigbar is the example) and it should be good-looking.

http://www.userbars.com/ and browse through the most popular ones.

My "inspirational collection" (~11.9 MiB)

[TehDruid]

It is like making cut-outs in a kindergarten (and some userbars have the same quality). Try making a few and remember that sometimes you should stay minimal. But still you should keep your work finished: it should be distinctly separated from the outer page (with a border or a hint of it -- my bigbar is the example) and it should be good-looking.

http://www.userbars.com/ and browse through the most popular ones.

Well, thanks again for your time typing all this info (EDIT: And the collection file!). Much appreciated.