First post, splash pics


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Blades Runner

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Post Friday, 18th January 2013, 01:58

First post, splash pics

Hey guys. I've had the mantis account for some time already but never checked the
forum until yesterday. I've stepped sometimes into the development wiki though.

I'm making a couple of illustrations based on dungeon crawl, depicting two of my
favourite characters (kobold summoner, and DDNe of Ashenzari), with the idea of
making them splash pics if you guys like them, it'd make me really happy.
No big deal if you don't like them though, I'd do them just for fun and ink
practice anyways, but it'd be awesome to contribute to an awesome game.

What I'm really wondering about are the technical specs for the splash pics. What
size, color and format constraints apply, I will also need help submitting them.

For now I only have these very poor previews as I don't have a scanner at home,
but you get the idea. Once they're both inked I'll digitize them properly and start
coloring them with the computer. The kobold summoner is already inked, the
deep dwarf necromancer is only sketched.

Kobold Summoner:
foto kobold summoner resized twice.JPG
Kobold Summoner of Sif Muna splash pic inked tentative, smallish, crappy quality.
foto kobold summoner resized twice.JPG (32.56 KiB) Viewed 8596 times

Wielding a staff of summoning, and wearing a leather armor, a cloak, and gloves.
You can also see the butchering knife and a pack of imps harassing a worker ant.
I also gave him (her? it? of no consequence.) a backpack to represent the inventory.

Deep Dwarf Necromancer:
foto deep dwarf necromancer of ashenzari resized twice.JPG
Deep Dwarf Necromancer of Ashenzari splash pic sketch, smallish, crappy quality.
foto deep dwarf necromancer of ashenzari resized twice.JPG (36.49 KiB) Viewed 8596 times

Wearing an elven ring mail, an elven buckler, two rings and an amulet.
Also wielding a short sword of distortion, the "straps" you can see around the sword
and buckler are meant to be eventually developed into chains to represent cursed
equipment, and you can see a shattered altar of Ashenzari in front of the character.
I might add undead minions to reflect the necromancer-ness, but I'm not sure yet.

I've done all this throughout the day, I like kobolds (even got to play one in
a D&D 3.5 game once! I wish that happened often!) for their craftiness and
deep dwarves for their resilience. I'm a devout worshipper of Cheibriados and
an occasional worshipper of Ashenzari and Sif Muna.

Any suggestions are welcome, especially for the Deep Dwarf picture, since
it's only sketched, although I can't give you a guarantee that I'll pay heed to
all or any of them.

The pics are smallish in size because when I hit preview, with the size I was
using before you had to scroll a lot, so I thought it was a better idea to use
a smaller size. They're piss poor quality anyways.

Thanks a lot for reading this guys. DCSS rocks my socks.
Hirsch I wrote:Also,are you calling me a power-gamer? this is highly offensive! now excuse me, I have to go back to my GrBe game, that I savescummed until trog gave me a Vampiric +9 claymore.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Friday, 18th January 2013, 04:55

Re: First post, splash pics

Those look quite nice. I look forward to seeing them finished!

As for constraints, most of the current splash pics are 416 x 416 pixels including the title; there's no restriction on colors or formats (Crawl uses .pngs exclusively, but I can just convert anything else you submit). If you look in /crawl/dat/tiles you can see all the existing screens, which will give you a sense of the style to try and match -- Denzi-style pixel art is fine, as is the more painterly style used by e.g. white_noise.

When you're ready to submit them, you can open a ticket on the Mantis tracker, or just contact me via IRC or whatever. Let me know if you have any other questions!
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Blades Runner

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Post Friday, 18th January 2013, 10:30

Re: First post, splash pics

No worries about PNGs, it's probably the format I use the most.

The problem is that I'm a bit torn on the technique/finished aesthetics as I do pixel art too, so I'm not sure which
way to go, the Denzi way or the transmuter octopus way. I guess I'll decide when I have them scanned.

The 416x416 size shouldn't be a problem with the Deep Dwarf but for the kobold I may have to rearrange
parts of the picture, crop it or make it real small because it's rectangular right now.
Hirsch I wrote:Also,are you calling me a power-gamer? this is highly offensive! now excuse me, I have to go back to my GrBe game, that I savescummed until trog gave me a Vampiric +9 claymore.

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Post Friday, 18th January 2013, 13:19

Re: First post, splash pics

You need some space for the title anyway.

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Post Monday, 21st January 2013, 06:55

Re: First post, splash pics

Psiweapon wrote:No worries about PNGs, it's probably the format I use the most.

The problem is that I'm a bit torn on the technique/finished aesthetics as I do pixel art too, so I'm not sure which
way to go, the Denzi way or the transmuter octopus way. I guess I'll decide when I have them scanned.


Personally I feel the current pixel art splashes are too uniformly crisp, which makes them overly busy, and they would be helped by some antialiasing and localized light diffusion. By contrast the OpTm is more on the blurry side of things and needs some sharpening. So if you go with pixeling I hope you'll restrain any temptation to make everything sharp (that armour is in particular danger with the number of edges in it) , and if you go with CG I hope you take some time to sharpen up the most important areas.

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Post Monday, 21st January 2013, 18:45

Re: First post, splash pics

Thanks for the suggestion, orange.

When I do "big" pixel pieces I usually use big areas
of flat color with antialiasing where colors that are
not next to one another in the ramp meet.

But I'm not even sure what technique I will use for
finishing these. I'll probably tackle the DDNe first
since it's simpler.
Hirsch I wrote:Also,are you calling me a power-gamer? this is highly offensive! now excuse me, I have to go back to my GrBe game, that I savescummed until trog gave me a Vampiric +9 claymore.

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Post Tuesday, 22nd January 2013, 10:41

Re: First post, splash pics

savageorange wrote:
Personally I feel the current pixel art splashes are too uniformly crisp, which makes them overly busy, and they would be helped by some antialiasing and localized light diffusion. By contrast the OpTm is more on the blurry side of things and needs some sharpening. So if you go with pixeling I hope you'll restrain any temptation to make everything sharp (that armour is in particular danger with the number of edges in it) , and if you go with CG I hope you take some time to sharpen up the most important areas.


That is basically Denzi's art style, pixel art is usually very crisp and personally I think it looks great. The thing is that art is subjective and you just have to let artists do their thing and work in the style they enjoy working with. Of course if something completely doesn't fit Crawl's visual style then it might raise questions, but there is a lot more freedom with splash screens than tile art.

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Post Tuesday, 22nd January 2013, 13:27

Re: First post, splash pics

Well I can do with any and all suggestions thrown, and I usually take them all into account ("taking into account" != "following")

Even the suggestion you don't follow is useful as it gives you a better idea of why you don't do that or at least a different perspective on the issue.
Hirsch I wrote:Also,are you calling me a power-gamer? this is highly offensive! now excuse me, I have to go back to my GrBe game, that I savescummed until trog gave me a Vampiric +9 claymore.

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Post Tuesday, 22nd January 2013, 13:51

Re: First post, splash pics

mumra wrote:That is basically Denzi's art style, pixel art is usually very crisp and personally I think it looks great.

Actually that's just a particular type of rendering where everything is detailed and sharp even when it logically must be out of focus or faded. Pixel art is still art, it doesn't get an exception from the principles that make art work. Detailing and contrasting everything equally flattens the image, no matter your medium. Doing more detailing rather than less makes the image less visceral/organic and more technical/sterile. Using mostly or entirely high-saturation colors also reduces depth. So unless you're intentionally GOING for a 'paper cutout' look..
For counter-examples consider the levels of contrast found in the 25 highest ranked artworks on PixelJoint. Or just look at them for fun ;)

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Post Tuesday, 22nd January 2013, 15:54

Re: First post, splash pics

savageorange wrote:
mumra wrote:That is basically Denzi's art style, pixel art is usually very crisp and personally I think it looks great.

Actually that's just a particular type of rendering where everything is detailed and sharp even when it logically must be out of focus or faded. Pixel art is still art, it doesn't get an exception from the principles that make art work. Detailing and contrasting everything equally flattens the image, no matter your medium. Doing more detailing rather than less makes the image less visceral/organic and more technical/sterile. Using mostly or entirely high-saturation colors also reduces depth. So unless you're intentionally GOING for a 'paper cutout' look..
For counter-examples consider the levels of contrast found in the 25 highest ranked artworks on PixelJoint. Or just look at them for fun ;)


Some really nice artwork there. I wonder if this one could be a comment on Crawl and the removal of mountain dwarves and replacement by Octopodes? ;)

Anyway as I said art is highly subjective and there are no absolute principles that make it "work". It just is :)

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Post Tuesday, 22nd January 2013, 22:21

Re: First post, splash pics

mumra wrote:Anyway as I said art is highly subjective and there are no absolute principles that make it "work". It just is :)

The artist has a meaning structure and the consumers have a meaning structure, and it's inside that difficult-to-predict interaction between meaning structures that particular artworks 'speak' to particular people (ie. the 'heart' or 'spirit' of an image is difficult to reduce to a step in a procedure). That part is subjective, in the sense it depends on the subjects.

But the principles I'm appealing to are independent of that -- artistic frameworks like color theory, flow, composition, depth of field, refraction of light, atmosphere,etc exist because of facts about how our *eyes* and the *physics of light* work. These are the principles behind making an image that is harmonious and pleasant to a larger number of people. They are not subjective, despite individual variances in the condition of people's eyes like color blindness effecting how accurately they perceive picture elements. It's certainly true we haven't got 'making good art' down entirely to a science, but there IS plenty of science about it that we'd be foolish not to take advantage of.

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Post Wednesday, 23rd January 2013, 08:03

Re: First post, splash pics

You're ignoring the importance of context savageorange. Denzi's not doing murals or gallery portraits, he's doing pictures for a computer game. He made a lot of the tiles for Crawl, tiles which are for the most part very flat and pixelly. Look at the player dolls. His splash pics are almost certainly intended as "blown up" versions of this flat tile imagery, with a dash perhaps of homage to the graphics of older computer games. In that context his style works perfectly.

While it is certainly true that there are established techniques for achieving given effects in art, it does not at all follow that more realistic images are "better" than less realistic images. Better for what purpose? Context, as I said, is crucial, as is the end the given artwork is meant to serve.

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Post Wednesday, 23rd January 2013, 09:14

Re: First post, splash pics

I must confess that all my criticism has been made with the 'undead warrior' image in mind; after specifically looking over the others, I think they're fine.
The combination of over-detailing and over-contrast really only afflicts the undead warrior image.

While it is certainly true that there are established techniques for achieving given effects in art, it does not at all follow that more realistic images are "better" than less realistic images.

Absolutely. It's images that demonstrate a better understanding of reality that are technically better. (ie. choosing how to render based on an informed understanding of which elements of reality bring out the image you want to make.)

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Post Wednesday, 23rd January 2013, 14:24

Re: First post, splash pics

Psiweapon wrote:I'm making a couple of illustrations based on dungeon crawl, depicting two of my
favourite characters (kobold summoner, and DDNe of Ashenzari), with the idea of
making them splash pics if you guys like them, it'd make me really happy.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing your finished pictures. Please keep us updated.
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Post Monday, 25th March 2013, 18:33

Re: First post, splash pics

Okay... sorry guys, I've tried my hand with the deep dwarf necromancer time and again and I always end up frustrated,
so I've made a Kiku splash pic. I already submitted a ticket, I hope I did it allright. Here it is anyways:
Attachments
title_psiweapon_kiku.png
title_psiweapon_kiku.png (263.82 KiB) Viewed 8245 times
Hirsch I wrote:Also,are you calling me a power-gamer? this is highly offensive! now excuse me, I have to go back to my GrBe game, that I savescummed until trog gave me a Vampiric +9 claymore.

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Post Monday, 25th March 2013, 18:43

Re: First post, splash pics

The red background makes an ugly square. Note how all the other title screens have a black background. I suggest you make it like a cloud to have black borders.
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Post Monday, 25th March 2013, 23:19

Re: First post, splash pics

Looks great! I don't like the Kiku text in the corner, though. I think it's better to let people come to their own interpretation, and I especially think that the gods in crawl should remain without any definite graphical representation.

Also, what galehar said.

Too bad about the necromancer, I really like your drawing.

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Post Monday, 25th March 2013, 23:31

Re: First post, splash pics

Psiweapon: Great stuff! Your picture should be taken at once, but like galehar I believe it is necessary to remove the god name. It's great that you took Kikubaaqudgha as a starting point (and the picture fits nicely) but for the viewer, that's better left unexplained. We're careful to not even give genders to our gods, so they shouldn't have images either. Isn't there even a commandment about graven images? :)
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Post Tuesday, 26th March 2013, 13:37

Re: First post, splash pics

Hello there, thanks for the feedback!

Okay, so no name text, and black background or at least borders. Will change those details very soon.

I can even change the filename, to something like "title_psiweapon_1.png", to give no explicit hints at all.

About god genders... well, some of them do have them (e.g. Lugonu and Sif Muna are talked about as female)
and lack of gender is hardly an obstacle.

About god representations... First, it's just a representation, that is, not the real appearance of the god. It
could be represented in a myriad other ways. Think of the avatars of Nyarlathotep from Lovecraft, or even
the Holy Ghost appearing as a dove or as a flame tongue. Or think of different cultural representations.
Maybe that's how a particular dwarf, or vampire (or whatever) cult sees it. Or even just a single follower.
(that last case is closest to the truth)

Second, it's not like I did a picture of Allah. Why the taboo?

Third, the concepts are just too incredibly inspiring and juicy to disregard them.

So, in my continued endeavors, I will not label anything... the true believer will understand, even if they
decry me as a heretic afterwards.

By the way, the Deep Dwarf Necromancer is not "cancelled", I just needed to do something else because I had
started to colour it several times and was never happy with it; but I'm working on it again, much more confident
after I had made that picture.
Hirsch I wrote:Also,are you calling me a power-gamer? this is highly offensive! now excuse me, I have to go back to my GrBe game, that I savescummed until trog gave me a Vampiric +9 claymore.

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Post Tuesday, 26th March 2013, 13:50

Re: First post, splash pics

Psiweapon: Hey, the bit about graven images was a joke.

The sexlessness of our gods is not, though. It is true that some folks think and speak of Sif Muna and Lugonu as females (the latter is my fault, because the first, purely working name was Lucy (from Lucifer), which somehow stuck) but you won't find *any* reference to gender within the game, including quotes and descriptions.

Keep those pictures coming, they're amazing!
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Post Tuesday, 26th March 2013, 14:56

Re: First post, splash pics

Sure.

Do you think a drawing of a cultural representation of a god by some of the in-game species (playable or not) would be more acceptable than a plain, unframed representaton?

Like an ogre mage finishing a coarse cave painting of Trog, or a couple of deep elves contemplating hieroglyphs dedicated to Vehumet?

Those would tie in with the picture of a ¿goblin I think? cooking someone in a big stone soup bowl.

...Yes, I'm hellbent on making pictures related to the Crawl Pantheon. In a sense, I can't help it. The concepts, though willingly abstract or vague
on some aspects, are wonderfully rich; and really, as soon as I start giving them any thought the images start flying.

One thing to consider is that representation of a deity need not be figurative. I can't put a face to Vehumet, for example, but it feels natural
to try and come up with an abstract representation of it (or its significance and power)

On the other topic, here's an update of the DDNe :
Attachments
DDNe wip show.png
DDNe wip show.png (259.68 KiB) Viewed 8173 times
Hirsch I wrote:Also,are you calling me a power-gamer? this is highly offensive! now excuse me, I have to go back to my GrBe game, that I savescummed until trog gave me a Vampiric +9 claymore.
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Post Tuesday, 26th March 2013, 15:33

Re: First post, splash pics

And here's an update on the other splash pic.
Attachments
title_psiweapon_1.png
title_psiweapon_1.png (265.15 KiB) Viewed 8167 times
Hirsch I wrote:Also,are you calling me a power-gamer? this is highly offensive! now excuse me, I have to go back to my GrBe game, that I savescummed until trog gave me a Vampiric +9 claymore.
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Post Tuesday, 26th March 2013, 20:55

Re: First post, splash pics

Thanks, I've added the kiku title screen.
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