FreeOrion

Hi my name is Josh.
I joined because I'm an artist interested in giving a hand in helping contribute graphics, conceptual artwork, critiques, and ideas to the project. I have a basic understanding of photo shop, but traditional media comes easily to me, so If anybody has requests in mind, especially a those needs for hand-made drawings, concepts or critiques, I could give it a shot.

I understand you guys want the Icons completed. Like all of them. I'd like to get some questions answered first though if it's not too much trouble.

How abstract is too abstract in the icons?

What sort of theme needs to be adhered to when designing an Icon? The N-Dimension techs have that abstract triangle thingie, and (most) economic techs have a graph in the background.

And what about revising some of the icons? Some of them seem confusing, weak, lack unity, read poorly to me or could just stand improvement.

Opinions are welcome.

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Photo-dump.

Musings

Welcome Josh, concept artists are always welcome. If you are mainly working traditional, that's great. Having a strong traditional skill set is essential, even when working digitally. As you might have noticed, we are currently preparing version 0.4 which is mostly about space combat. Therefor we will need a couple of(I'd aim for a dozen for v0.4 | 2 races, 6 hulls each)ships designed. I'm planing to do this, but I definitely could need some help. If you like, you could just browse through the story forum, pick a race you like and start something from there. Nothing is set in stone, you are free to change whatever you think needs to be changed.


There aren't that many missing from my understanding(only the hard ones . I'll see if I can put a complete list of all finished icons into the wiki.


Too abstract is, if the meaning is not clear. We have some pretty specialized term here and it's hard to simplify them in many cases.


The only theme is: black background, bright shapes, as few shades as possible, logo not picture.


Go for it. It's the nature of a project like this that things get replaced by better alternatives. However, the focus should still be on filling the gaps, instead of endlessly redoing existing work.

I hope you don't mind me asking, whether you have any of your previous work online somewhere? It's always a nice way for an artist to introduce himself IMO.

I'm afraid not. No. Don't remember posting any other online work. I'm an illustration student, not a super professional like the guys you'll find a conceptart.org or even a regular online artist. I will submit some scans from my sketchbook to give you an idea of where I'm at skillwise and what I'm capable of.

As a side note, I would like to post more of these pictures in a way that's easy for forum users to view, the same way tech icons were posted in the tech icon thread. I want the images to look like part of the message, not some lame attachment. So for future reference, is there a way I should go about doing that? Especially if I'm going to submit hand drawn artwork.

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Photo-dump.

Musings

To put images in a post, instead of as attachments, you'll need to have the images online somewhere that allows embedding in other webpages. Flickr and various other sites allow this, I believe.

Once you have the image on the net, and can get a url that points to it, you add to the message text something like:

[img]http://www.somesite.org/path/to/yourpic.jpg[/img]

One of the buttons at the top of the posting screen is "Img" which surround the selected text (ie. your url) with these tags for you, if you don't want to type them yourself.

Those are really nice, a bit small though I love your work on the line weight.


Check out this post: viewtopic.php?p=23976#p23976

I've set up a photobucket account for freeorion some time ago for people who don't have webspace. Feel free to use it.

Thanks for the heads up, I think I'll do that photo bucket thing PD said to do. Now for the stuff you want to hear; I come bearing gifts!

They are all scanned from my sketchbook and all they need now is for someone to translate them into computer graphics. If when I upload the pictures you can't see or read the words or the pictures don't make sense to you for whatever reason, the list of submitted icon designs contained therein will be as follows:

N-Dimension Assembly (Attached)

Transforming Structures


Transforming Structures + Economic Sinkholes


Economic Sinkholes


Economic Sinkholes and Miniature Suns


A Miniature Sun, Miniature Suns, Assorted Icons and PsiCor


The Psi Corps + An Artificial Black Hole


Void Enclave


Exodus Monument and Megaliths




I have added one sample attachment. The rest, I hope, will be able to go towards PD's photobucket.

I'm assuming everybody is seeing those pictures I posted here previously. If there's a problem, another heads up will do.

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Photo-dump.

Musings

Hi Josh,

I've been editing your post to show the pictures. What you need to do is just copy the last link, labeled IMG Code and inssert it here.

That's some fantastic and quite a lot of work you've done here. Thanks a lot. I'm a bit busy this week, I hope to be able to work on them on weekend, if there isn't anyone else interested. Great work, keep going

N-Dimensional Assembly


Exodus Monument


(Will supply images with transparent background on demand)

Transforming Structures

Looks like the pictures are working out then. What's really important is that they look good when they get put in the game. You can probably tell that I haven't tested out any of these icons yet.

Thanks for editing the image stuff too.

I have more work to showcase, but Photobucket is experiencing some downtime. Something about site maintenance and a giant lizard.

Anyways, I'll post new stuff up in the "Collection of Theory Icons" thread. I'm working according to the list Geoff assigned me, so the next batch will include "concepts" for Mining Engineering, Structural Integrity Fields, Bio-Terror Facilities, and the Caducean Institute. Which reminds me: the Medical Pathology Icon is using a Caduceus symbol.

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Photo-dump.

Musings

Nice work!
I'll love to see some of thoses icons in-game!

Keep up the good work

- Trib'

Will do.

If I wanted to "test" an icon for Free Orion and needed to see how it looks ingame, how would I go about doing that?

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Photo-dump.

Musings

If you have freeorion running (perhaps from an installer), replace the icon file of an existing tech with one you want to test, and then locate that tech in the tech tree view in the UI. Chosing one of the first few techs in the to replace the icon of will probably make it easier. You can filter the tech by category, and then one of the first few techs should be easy to find on the tree (especially if it has no prerequisites, so will be at the far left side).

Alternatively, you can edit "techs.txt" in the "default" directory to add the relevant file name to the "graphic" line, but that will require a bit more effort to learn how to do. (Not much more... just copy what is done for the other techs.)

Thanks, but that second tip isn't working for me. I used an XML Editor and I keep getting an error message that will crash the game on load up if I save it (and any graphics tags I added).

But aside from that, are you pleased with the work so far?

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Photo-dump.

Musings

You don't need an XML editor... the files aren't XML. But it's not worth spending time on if you can get the file swapping working without much trouble...
Yep, there's some good stuff there. (But i wouldn't suggest looking to me for validation of visual art...)