Graphics

[Kilkakon]

Hey nice work. He looks pretty fitting!

[BU Admin]

Half the battle is having a good eye about what needs doing, and that was you.

[Buster's Uncle]

Logos

[Describing, for the most part, how I did it in Photoshop5 - but other high-end graphic editors shouldn't prove very different.]

…Now this part is short to describe, but time-consuming and tedious in practice. We’d agreed to go with the Usurpers logo for the Starlost- but with the red parts turned blue, to match the change in the leader portrait’s shoulder-armor and the new faction colors.



There are a lot of ways to do that- the best one I’ve found for varied shades like the logos sport involves a long time zoomed in close with the Magic Wand (fuzzy Select) tool, adding all the red bits of each of five iterations of the logo. It took a lot of time and nit-picking concentration; somewhere close to an hour, I’d guess. Once I had everything selected, hue-shifting the red (and a little orange) to a royal blue didn’t take long. I’d considered using the color balance function instead, but tried the hue-shift first, (each has some benefits over the other, but a hue-shift is usually simpler) and found the result attractive.

However, I found that the yellow parts of the logos could maybe stand to be yellower, so I spent another 10 minutes or so selecting those parts of the logos- they gave me less trouble than the red parts selecting, not least because it was for an intensifying, not an outright color change, so it was less important if I missed the odd pixel.

This time I did use the Color Balance function (Image>Adjust>Color Balance, as opposed to Image> Adjust>Hue/Saturation—[in GIMP, the same functions are found under the Colors menu instead]). I shifted the yellow/blue slider all the way over to yellow. It didn’t make a huge difference, but I thought the logos looked great now. The yellow bit in the center of the Usurper logo clearly was supposed to be a star, something I’d never noticed with the orange parts surrounding it. Against shades of blue, however, it stands out as a star, and looks perfect for the symbol of an stellar exploratory expedition.

The only thing left to do now to complete the graphic was to make my standard changes to the Small Report Logos. I used the sample color and pencil tools in Paint to draw it in by hand. With other logos, especially original ones I made, I sometimes shrink the other logos to fit, but here, adding some color by hand to the pre-existing SRLs seemed best. I sampled the predominant shade of each section of the logo and added it by pencil until I was happy with how it looked.

I selected the result and pasted it into the blank pcx I’d used for scan lining the portrait and diplomacy landscape. I selected the box the logo was in, sampled the transparent background color of the .pcx and reduced the contrast of the logo 50%. This darkened the logo, but also changed the color of the background enough to ruin the transparency, so I switched foreground and background colors to save the original color I’d need in a second, sampled the new background color, clicked Select>Color Range and set the slider to zero before hitting okay. This caused it to select only the exact shade that I’d sampled- the darkened background and nothing of the logo. Then I clicked Edit>Fill, and with it set to use Background Color at Threshold mode with opacity at 100% I hit okay, which filled the selection with the original, transparent-in-the-game, background color.

I carefully selected the logo- except the bottom row of pixels- and pasted it back in the right place in the master copy in Paint, set one pixel lower in the box than the other two. Doing this with the middle, mouse-over, logo causes it to seem to leap slightly forward in-game when your pointer passes over it. I think it’s a neat effect, and I do it in all my faction graphics.



Having already changed the faction colors and dropped in the new leader portrait, the graphic was now done. All that was left was to “sign” it and post. When done with the credits I always add to left over space in the graphic, I copy/pasted the master image back into Photoshop, Image>Mode>Indexed Color, loaded the SMACX palette to be sure all the colors were kosher with the game, and seeing no problems with the result, saved, zipped it up, and posted for Darsnan.

Next up: (maybe) Why you should sign your work, IMO.

[Buster's Uncle]

His and Her Nerds

 
…So I needed a new leader for my alternate/splinter Data Angels. After I collaborated to varying degrees with Darsnan on graphics for splinter factions he’d created for his Eye of the Believer scenario, I kept going to make a complete set of alternates to all the official factions. The alt. Data Angels were the 14th, and would complete the project.

(Actually I’d already done more than one alternate for some of the factions- if I include overhauls I did of someone else’s custom factions, the Cannabis League and Mindworms with Minds, I’d done the Gaians four times.  [Then if you include the alt. Gender leaders project - well, I once played a novelty sp game with four Gaian variants and three Planet Cult that I called "Attack of the Eco-clones".])

So over a month ago [years now], I solicited ideas for the alt. Angels in the “Alternate Official Factions in Progress” thread. Sexymindwworm said “Microsoft”, Psyringe said “nerd”, and I said “Japanese”.

Thursday or Friday night, I googled for pictures of Japanese nerds. I was surprised not to find a lot more than I did - it was really slim pickin's. I saved a few nerd photos- you never know when you might have use for the images you don't use now, later - and loaded my favorite into Photoshop to begin working it over. The nerd was holding up a computer chip, and since it was hard to make out, I decided to take the hand and chip alike out of the picture.



Before I began working on that, it began to dawn on me that there was a problem. The big chin had fooled me in the thumbnail - this wasn't a very young guy, it was a woman. And a subtly good-looking one when you looked close, at that. See the before and after shots later on.

I pasted the picture into MS Paint, because the first step of turning her into a man would be some copy/paste work to alter the proportions of her face- and as I’ve said before, I find Paint easier to use for copy/paste work than Photoshop5 or Photoshop CS, though these days I use GIMP. I started by zooming in very close and selecting a box that took in most of her chin, and copied it. Then I pasted it back in moved down by one pixel. Then I did it again. Pasting twice moved one pixel each time instead of once moved two pixels keeps the edges of the box-of-face you’re pasting in from showing much as the shading of the face changes along its contours. Then I selected a bigger box that took a bit more of the chin in both directions- you don’t want to paste in the same edges too many times, or it makes a funny pattern- and did it again. The photo was nearly twice the dimensions of the portrait I was working towards, so this wasn’t a big change, but enough to make a prominent chin moreso.

I did the same sort of thing with her jaw line, moving it outward to make the face bigger. Likewise for lengthening her nose. Raised the peaks of the cheeks up and out- Japanese as well as male, remember. It looked like a dude with plucked eyebrows and light makeup now- but- I saw what it still needed then. I proceeded to widen his neck.

So after- I dunno, maybe an hour or two of this; it’s hard to keep track of time when you’re deep in right-brain concentration- I copy/pasted the whole shot back into Photoshop and began using the smudge tool to erase the hand and chip.

There’s a million things I did in the next couple of hours that I could show you if you were in the room with me, but can’t describe in any reasonable length - the process is too intuitive. I smoothed out suspicious irregularities/regularities I'd created around the edges of all the copy/pasting.  I squared those tapered eyebrows and changed the shape of the eyes, removing all the mascara and eyeliner that didn’t stand out a lot, but definitely looked female- all with the smudge tool. I wasted a lot of time trying to select the upper lip and lower face with the magic wand- some things select easy, and others refuse to select just what you want no matter the sensitivity settings, and this was one of the latter. I eventually got something in the right neighborhood selected after far too long trying, and reduced the color saturation and brightness just a tad to make a (bad) five o’clock shadow. (Which, alas, later vanished anyway between the effects of processing the color to make it look painted and the limitations of the SMAC(X) palette, which is not kind to subtle shading.)

His lips were a bit too full and too pink to look male- I selected the lips and reduced the color level a bit, then narrowed them with the smudge tool. I did a lot of things to make him look male and Japanese, far too many to describe in full- if you have talent, you should be able to figure it out like I did. I can’t really draw, and have to depend on nit-picking patience and perfectionism to compensate.

I gave him a haircut- the hair was too full in back where it peaked around the neck, and shortening it there looked more masculine; same for making the hair on top less poofy. I left the long, full, bangs, though, because they looked nerdy.

An easy thing I did towards the end was to make his shirt look a little future-y. I did something I do a lot- removed the lapels from his collars. They stuck up straight now, and no one but me may notice, but the devil is in the details in these things.

It was time to make it look like a SMAC-style painting now. I pasted the shot into GIMP to use Filters>Artisitic>Oilify on very low settings - high settings, even medium, turn your image way too impressionistic. Then I pasted back into Photoshop and spent a long time fiddling with hue/saturation and color balance. It’s another intuitive thing impossible to describe in detail, but the idea is to end up with a narrower range of colors than a photograph. With the color balance function, I generally brought up the red, magenta and yellow at the expense of the blues, greens and cyans- real human skin has a trace of those tints, and paintings tend not to. I kept bringing up those rosy orangey colors, then reducing the color saturation to compensate. There was a good deal of fiddling with the brightness and contrast, too. Also blurring and sharpening to blend my mistakes rearranging in, and carefully reduce the realism further.

Finally, I loaded the SMAC palette- this is one of the only times you’ll like the limitations of the 256-color palette -when the image takes to it well, anyway- because it reduces the range of shades of the skin, making it look even more like a painting. The result was a face that was a little blotchy-skinned- which is ordinarily a lot of work to smooth out, but perfect for a nerd. All the processing had turned the highlights of his hair faintly red, so I selected his hair and turned it back to blue.

The faint background was long wiped out by now, so I selected it, deleted it to the white background color and went looking for a new background to paste the figure onto. The hacker theme made me think of the green on black Matrix thing, which I had no trouble googling. I pasted the figure onto that- and hey! The numbers of the shot I found were Japanese. Perfect. (That background ended up giving me the color scheme I used for the rest of the elements of the faction later- green and black.)

[I believe I blurred and sharpened the whole once or twice, too, to blend them together a bit.  The alternative is a lot of time zoomed in very close with the Smudge tool scaled small at low power, working around the edge of the pasted-figure.  (Anyone who's ever spent much time shooping any photos will have noticed that the edges of people in photographs blend in with their background, or it would be a heckuva a lot easier to make convincing slanderous fakes of Sarah Palin.)  I probably spent a few minutes going around his edge with the Smudge tool, but I don't remember adding the excellently faint greenish tones near his edges, and that looks to be a happy accident of blur/sharpening.]



So I added scan lines and dropped the portrait in, then saved and went to bed.

… the next morning when I looked at it, I decided that his jaw was too robust to look really Japanese, so I ended up spending a while with a pre-scan lined copy I’d saved (always save a .bmp or .png before you do the scan lines- you end up needing to revisit the portrait for further alterations or something often enough that you’ll be glad you did) and spent some time slimming his jaw and making his chin more pointed. Now he looked  reasonably Japanese. I re-scan lined and dropped him in again…



Voilà!  The leader of Node Masters - he was project manager on the Network Nodes for MorganSoft before he struck out on his own; he left a backdoor in each one...

...

Not long after, as part of a collaboration with Maniac on fixing up the suckier SMAniaC (I tried to talk him into changing it to SManiAC for symmetry and the AC ending, but no dice) factions, I used the original shot again for a SMAniaC faction (The Genesis, replacing a pasty-white creepy mutate), leaving her caucasian and a her this time. Perhaps the difference in process will be educational.

[More than I regret my fuzzy memories of my process on a job I did three years ago, is now that I'm tarting up an old tutorial with pictures, I find that I saved so few pictures of the stages he went through.  Fortunately, I have a little more of the female version.]

     

As you can see, she went through very simular, opposite, steps.  I thinned her jaw line and made her chin less prominent - and took out the cleft.  I made her hair fuller on top and longer in back, though I kept the unruly bangs untouched again - they're still nerdy.  In fact, I deliberately added unruly escaped hairs around the edge of her hair, since the fluffing up had smoothed things out; it's perfect for a non-vain busy lab wonk.  (ProTip: When it comes to straight up redrawing elements of a portrait, hair is easy, at least with the handy-dandy Smudge Tool.)

I tapered the shape of her glasses frames; it's a subtle cue, but squareness of the originals was one of the things that  looked superficially male and fooled me until I took a good look.  I gave her a nose job.  I turned her shirt into a lab coat.

I am proud to say that I reckon I made her noticeably better-looking without making her too good-looking.  She still belongs in a genetics lab, but has just enough of that sexy librarian thing going that grows on you until you'd totally like to make out with her if she'd let you.

Maniac reaction was "I love Dr. Nerdinia!" (my nickname for her.)  He just meant that she's a good character image - I think.

...

[Amusingly, only as I edit this together do I realize that the original was wearing a cloth headband, strangely-placed toboggan, or a snood, of which more is left, when you look for it, on him than her.  If my eyes worked, I'd be a very dangerous artist, but the much sharper monitor I have now helps.  I don't think I ever spotted the nose ring before, either, but it's completely gone, anyway, for both of them.]

Neither leader stands out in my memory as being especially a lot of work, as leaderheads go, and people could play the two together with little more reaction than thinking they must be related - which ought to be a good characterization/background/story point.   (Not the only portrait I've used on more than one faction - I could easily play another novelty game called plain "Attack of the Clones" with no hippies or completely identical leaders.)

Below's the line-up, original alongside both final versions.  They're a good example of the universe of possibilities you have for taking source material in many directions if you're good and think.

   

[Buster's Uncle]

Looking at work of mine that I hadn't examined in three+ years until I was preparing the above, the accomplishment I find myself proudest of isn't turning proto-Nerdina into a dude; although it's a flashier sort of showing off, that was somewhat elementary stuff, given a good understanding of the difference between men and women's faces.

The bit that impressed me with myself most was the images of Dr. Nerdina transformed, but still photographic; not only did I make her pretty -much easier said than done- but the dead bril part is that when I zoom in, I can't see the 'seams', that is, signs that the cute lab rat had been shooped.  If I had done a less-than-meticulous job, you'd be able to spot the marks of it around her chin and jaw and nose when you zoom in.  Easy enough to hide it in the painted leaderhead; not so much at photo resolution. 

Seriously; a really good, undetectable extensive photo retouch of a face is extemely difficult, bordering on impossible.  I definitely am going to have to think of a way to draw "proud" as a smilie.

...

Just because I carefully prepare these how-tos as articles doesn't mean I don't invite discussion; Kil, Lizard, I'm looking at you.  Any comments more interesting than "It's nice"?  Any questions or sugestions?  Thoughts?  Unrelated graphics issues?  Lizard, you got anything to show me on those bases of yours?

[Kilkakon]

A proud smilie? How about nose in the air, hand on chest? Haha..?

Yeah you clearly put 110% effort into that neuter person to change it into a man and a woman. Talk about an interesting experience for the person.

I can't say I've put as much work into a photo as you have. The most interesting thing I did once was taking a copy of a face (mine) and putting it as an extra layer underneath the normal one, and then blurring it to smithereens. Then I made the top crisp layer have like 50% transparency, which had an interesting dreamy effect.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah, the difference, I'm sure, is that you can draw.  Draw well, I mean; I had to get good at some alternatives.

It was an interseting experience for me, as well; I get attached to (as in sweet on) the atractive women leaders after spending so much time looking at them.

[Rainbow Lizard]

I've decided to re-haul my bases sheet to use a photo instead. What do you think so far?

[Buster's Uncle]

I think you're zeroing in on being an accomplished faction artist fast. 

I like what you did with the leaderhead a lot, and I love the improvement with the new bases.  They are a very attractive design.  Watch out for the general pastel-ness of the bases, and I think your lower "in the on postition" report and coucil logos are way too dark. They should be 30-40% lower contrast, not more.

If you saved a copy of script kiddy there prepared and cut out, I'd advise a lighting tweek to make him blend with the background better.  The lighting tool in GIMP kinda sucks and the background lighting is exactly right-to-left, so select the left (your left) half of the figure>Brightness -5%, narrow the selection toward the left by roughly 10 pixels>Brightness -5%, and so on, (probably taking less than half an hour your first time or you might be overdoing it,) then re-scanline and paste the figure back in overtop the old version.  It'll make a difference in how he looks real with that excellent background.  If you don't have that stage saved, you can cut him back out of the background and skip the rescanlining before you put him back on the original - but you have to do it four times that way - it's up to you.

You've made laudible progress, you're getting very close to a finished product, and I'm proud of you.  The art on your next custom faction -you will end up wanting to keep at it at least long enough to make a set of seven, everyone does- will be easy by comparison.

If you find time, tell me a little about yourself - my Buncle powers say that you're around senior in high school-age, North American, and have no business staying up as late as you often do.  Am I full of it? 

...

I've been wrapped up with forum business that I'm about to put to bed for now, and will get the next tutorial ready and posted today, still, just not as early as the last two, which I got prepared the night before.

[Rainbow Lizard]

Your Buncle powers are incorrect. I am actually British, so I run on GMT time, rendering your 'stays up late' assumption void. You got the age right, though.

[Buster's Uncle]

Ah.  I haven't 'heard' the British in the phrasing of your posts, but I'd wondered about your schedule.  You get up way too early for my blood, then.

I am not your typical ugly American - I cherish diversity, and only wish for more co-nationals because it gets too quiet here during my evenings. 

Would you care to comment on the provenance of your leaderhead photo?  I have two conflicting guesses I'd like to settle between.

[Rainbow Lizard]

Actually, I didn't consider that when searching for it, so I have no idea on the nationality of it.
By the way, do  have any ideas on the tier 4 city?

[Buster's Uncle]

A stock photo off the net, then.  It had the look of one of those stock photo sites.

More of the same for the stage four bases, of course.  Maybe a second smaller globe atop, or beside, the big one?  Maybe some touches of gold in spots to indicate it's reached its ulitimate stage?  It's a nice effect, where I've seen it used.

I like your choice of Tachyon Fields, BTW , but the perimeter defenses might be placed a little bit high on the cities.

[Buster's Uncle]

AC Palette

If you're going to mod SMAC(X) graphics, eventually you'll run into the "blue (or pink) box around my bases" problem...

Do this. Load palette.pcx. That's the color guide the game uses. Save it as a palette your graphics program can use. In Photoshop5, that's done through Image>Mode>Color Table. Choose the Save option on the right of the pop-up. In the pull-down beside Save As, choose Microsoft Palette (*.PAL) and save.

To create a GIMP AC palette; open palette .pcx from your SMAC(X) root directory (any untouched faction.pcx should do, but with this one you can feel sure).  Windows>Dockable Dialogues>Palettes.  Right-click on the background of the Palette box>Import Palette.  Check the Image option at the top>Import.  You should now have a palette called something like palette.pcx at or near the top of the Palette box. 

Whenever you save a faction .pcx, first Image>Mode>Indexed and in the Indexed Color Conversion pop-up, click Use custom palette, uncheck Remove unused colors from color map, and click on the colorbox under Use custom palette to load your palette file.  Hit Convert, then save the .pcx as you normally would.

Load that palette always before you save your work- some color manipulation alters the default palette, and stuff doesn't always display the same in-game. Doing this can head off a lot of problems.




By the way
The sun in Alpha Centauri is always to the right at a late-afternoon angle.

Remember this when you're lighting your bases- they WILL look subtly wrong if you get them turned the wrong way. I have seen others do this with otherwise excellent bases. Do not flip my nice Deadlock bases horizontally, and then credit me like it was MY fault.

(Do not forget to credit me when you steal adapt my stuff, either. I don't mind being ripped off- I’ve done it to others in the past, but I did credit them.)




Signing your work

It was very hard work you did; take pride, man, and take credit.

What I'm talking about is putting some text into the empty spaces of the .pcx files claiming responsibility. Network Node often did this. I always do it.

Why?

Because I'm proud of my work. I can't speak for you, but I often don't bother to have a look at any text files included with other people's art, and you ought to make it easy for me and others.

So why should you do it?

Because I might rip you off for one of my projects. Not wholesale; but for instance, Darsnan has designed several faction graphics by telling me to take the bases from Network Node faction Y and the logo from faction X, and- you get the idea. We all poach from each other all the time, (that's just the way fan creative endeavors are) and it's a good idea to stick your handle in every file you've worked on that you can.  (DO be aware that not everyone shares my relaxed attitude about stealing repurposing, and respect the wishes of those who don't want to be robbed, should you become aware of them.)

Try to give credit when you rip me someone off. It's cool; I'll credit you when I poach from your work. Take it as the complement that it is when your stuff is worth stealing- but be sure to have signed it...

[All these passages were written a long time ago, when I'd recently done few factions that involved punching up someone else's work, and I'd been collaborating with Darsan, doing it the way described above once or twice.  I stand behind my remarks, but haven't adapted another SMACer's art in years.  It's an even prouder thing to do all-original work, especially as you get a body of work under your belt, gaining skill and confidence.  It's not a bad way at all to get started, though.]


A thought on cropping leaderheads

When you have any choice- the shot you're working with is a different shape than you need, for instance, or when the diplomacy sizing comes out a pixel wider & taller- about the positioning of the leader's face, I'd suggest going for whatever tend to center the leader's eyes in the box. Sometimes there's a reason not to do so, but basically it's a video conference, and we're assuming they've got something better than a webcam over their monitor.

The leaderhead, ideally, is looking straight at the player in most cases. Get those eyes as close to the center of the box as possible.



Network Node Factions

I've mentioned poaching from Network Node's work. Network Node was a SMACer and an associated website that is now defunct. There was an amazing quantity of custom factions there, many if not the majority, I gather, by NN himself. It's a wonderful source of material to poach from. For me, not least because I don't feel as comfortable with generating bases from scratch as most of the other elements.

Maniac, who isn't completely helpless with a graphics program but is no artist, patched together several of the original faction graphics for SMAniaC from NN factions and used others wholesale (later, I came along and made him the replacements and improvements used in the latest release, but his patchwork creations were quite servicable.)

I’ve posted a giant .zip of all the NN factions -originally provided by Maniac- in our Downloads: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=102

No faction artist should be without it.



Ready-made projects for the faction artist...

Are you an artist in need of a project? Go to Apolyton and search the AC archives - there were about 10 million custom factions posted in the old days, most of them without graphics. In fact, if you're like me, you've downloaded a few custom factions from various sites' Download section only to find them artless, or with an existing faction's art, or graphics half-customized, but with Hive bases.

Well, make some of those poor things some proper full faction graphics. (That's how I came to do the Texas faction art to be found on my factions page.)  It'll keep you as busy as you want to be for quite a long while...



Managing all your files

If you're like me, you're going to end up with a god-awful pile of files related to graphics projects- other peoples' factions you've downloaded, pictures you've used or thought you might use, your finished faction graphics, .zips of your finished graphics, saves of crucial stages in something you worked on- stuff like that.

In one of my SMAC(X) directory copies,  I have it mainly divided into three sub folders I created: Factions, Web page, and Graphics. I dump factions by people I don't know in the Factions folder, which has many sub folders. Because I maintain a web page for my custom factions, I try to put any .zip files in one place there, (and also any thumbnails and screen shots for the page,) and the Graphics folder started for general stuff in progress, and has evolved into my main workspace/storage in the SMAC(X) folder. It has numerous sub folders, too; A lot of my work these days involves multiple factions as a set, and increasingly I need to dump all related files somewhere together to help me keep track.  I have an AC2 subfolder for forum icons and forum-business  art in general.  I have a (bulging) avatars sub; I have folders named after various people I’ve collaborated with, where I keep stuff related to those projects.  Many of the subs have subs.

My system has evolved as I went, and I cannot urge anyone just getting into this hobby enough to not dump stuff into the root folder like I sometimes did at first. That's where blank.pcx.pcx and my blank shields file, shields.pcx reside to this day [writing a long time ago] - two files I use in making almost every new faction graphic- and while I was thinking about it, I just moved those two to Graphics where they'll be slightly easier to find when I want them.  [It’s saved a lot of time, since]

And BTW, I have another graphics-related folder: Official Factions. See, for graphics play testing, it's quicker to replace, say, the Gaian graphic in the root folder and have a look at an old game save. This increasingly resulted in it being a pain when I needed an original faction for something -I’ve done a LOT of modding, and had to do a LOT of play testing; before I did something about it, it got where I had virtually every faction spanning three copies of SMAC(X) replaced or altered- so I finally broke down and made a backup folder for all the official factions; the text files, too, and I get a lot of use out of the folder and save a good deal of time having them where I know they'll be waiting unaltered.

Your mileage may vary, and you'll want to develop a filing system that you're happy with, but I daresay that any modder of any flavor will back me up on this: you need to keep your modding-related files organized, or you will be sorry. Dedicated folders are your friend.


Collaborating

I think the merits are probably highly variable according to your nature, but I recommend getting into collaborations when you can. I’ve found that, having put so much work into a graphic, it bothers me very much when I post one and get little or nothing in the way of comments.

A month or so into my first SMAC forum, someone eventually told me he loved my stuff, but generally didn’t have anything to say about it. That’s a big reason that I go to so much trouble to engage new artists when they pop up; I know how sad and infuriating the sound of crickets chirping in response to good work is.  Believe me, I know from extensive bitter experience.   Knowing that it probably has more to do with (especially) the text modders -and SMACers in general- just not having the visual vocabulary to express their reactions does little to mollify your inner child.

I fell into my first collaboration when I glanced over someone’s scenario- it featured splinter factions, but was all text. I offered to do some graphics and put a face on it- and we were off to the races. There are a lot of things I like about working with a partner on a project- kicking around ideas is fun- but the thing I liked best was having someone not only take, but express, interest in my work.

The ideas discussion of the work can inspire you to is wonderful, too. Have a look at any of the many threads in which I worked on collaborations, scattered over four AC forums, including here at AC2 - I think it shows what a good time we're having almost every time.   The play of ideas and different perspectives is wonderful.  Over very many collaborations over years, I've only had one fail to complete because of creative differences (Don't tell your artist how to crop portraits when you're not an artist and he insists the difference is important.)  It's grand fun when it's working out right.

Also, I became friends with modding giants like Darsnan and Maniac through collaborating with them.

Now, collaboration may or may not be for you. Larry Niven likes to say that in a collaboration, both sides have to do 80% of the work. A certain amount of time has to be devoted to reconciling your respective visions. Outright arguments can break out.

The worst part is the waiting. When you’re all fired up and wanting everything now, no matter how great your collaborator is to work with, he’s not going to post instantly to answer your questions or whatever. You have to live with waiting a day or more sometimes.

There are compensations, though. -I’m just sayin’.


Logos

I see that I've only addressed logos in one specific case that isn't helpful in cases of making something completely original.

Logos are usually the easiest part of a faction graphic, barring faction colors. All you need is a simple symbol that looks like something at the size you need. If you know what sort of thing you want, Google will almost never fail you; when it does, logos aren't that hard to draw from scratch. (And I can't draw worth mentioning.)

A couple of notes, though. I feel it's important to follow the example of the originals in having the lower report and council logos dimmer. It's just a nice effect when they light up while mouse-overed, and you want them to match the official factions when played together.

This is very easy to do. Reduce the contrast for the box it's in around 50%, then put the background color back. Simple. (Watch out for isolated bits of background enclosed within the logo, though.)

Now, making the at-rest small report logo conform to the official style is a bit more complex. I reduce the contrast about 75% (depending on how much color that leaves), then in Photoshop it's Image>Adjust>Color Balance, and bring up the Cyan, Green and Blue levels 50%, then Image>Adjust> Hue/Saturation and bring the color saturation back down 50% to compensate. If the result is a dim greenish-blue, you're probably done. If it still has some color left, more fiddling is in order. I like the at-rest logos to pretty much match the look of the official ones; otherwise, they're sort've a sore thumb to my eye.

A deviation from the official style I always use (because I think it's an improvement) is to make the bottom small report logo full color, and the middle, (mouse-over) one reduced in contrast 50%, plus lowered a single pixel in its box. That causes it to seem to light up and leap forward slightly when your mouse passes over it, then move back into place and light up more when clicked on. I think it's a neat effect, myself.

Good art modding requires pedantic attention to trivial details- and I'm still learning as I go.



Sources for Portraits and Diplomacy Landscapes

Unless you’re a rare bird like Kilkakon, who draws well enough to generate his own leaderheads from scratch, when you don’t have something too specific in mind, Google Images is your friend.  Google “portrait” and spend some time poking around.  Google “painting” and “portrait painting” to find a lot of stuff that needs a lot -and I really mean a lot- less work to get SMAC(X) compatible than a photo.  I even made a good leaderhead from a black and white drawing once, which saved me no work, but was a fun artistic exercise.

Here’s a leaderhead gold mine that I haven’t begun to exhaust:  http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/time/21

That’s a specific page (in the 40’s) of a Time magazine cover gallery - they started with the full-color paintings in the 20s or 30s, and only switched to photos in the 50s or 60s, I seem to recall.  Some are more suitable in style than others, and all the important people portrayed dressed like they were in the year they were in, but it’s still a wonderful source of leaderheads.

Also look for painters’ websites.  Some of them watermark everything and ruin it, but they’re not as prone to that as photographers are, and are another good source for images of people that need far less work to produce leaderheads in an AC-compatible style of painting at the right level of realism.

Here is an example of  the sort of things to be found on an artist’s site:
http://www.danielgreeneartist.com/portraits-public.htm
http://www.danielgreeneartist.com/portraits-private.htm
http://www.danielgreeneartist.com/auction.htm
http://www.danielgreeneartist.com/subway.htm
I’ve pretty much mined this particular site out, so go find your own painter to rob.

Likewise, architect’s sites are sometimes a good source of  futuristic base and diplomacy landscape fodder, sometimes from the same shot, sometimes you can luck out and get something good from very different angles.

Just the diplomacy landscape shots is ease itself if you only want a generic futuristic cityscape.  Try googling “futuristic cityscape”, for instance.

Deviant Art will require wading through mountains of crappy scrawls and stuff so cute it would turn even Kilkakon off, but also has tons and tons of wonderful stuff to repurpose, too.

Also, don’t forget the Network Node factions and/or my Custom Factions page, and that I’m not very proprietary as long as I’m properly credited and you’ve never done me a bad turn.  Both are important, IMO, and that's not entirely a joke.

(Now, I've talked about how important giving credit within the community is.  I honestly see no ethical problem with adapting something from a total stranger who will never be affected at all in any way by a limited-release non-profit fan project, and see no point in detailing what outsider I lifted my starting-point material from - and I take my ethics seriously.  It's textual poaching, according to a dissertation I once read, and fandoms do it.  Don't play about due credit within the SMAC(X) community, though.)

There's a lot of stuff out there, so just google it, man.

Good hunting.

[Rainbow Lizard]

By the way, how do you add custom indexes on GIMP? I added RGB on it so I could use some colour tools, but I don't know how to get it back.