New Splash Damage Site Launches! Excitement!

(uvhannes) #21

looks cool!

(kamikazee) #22

Ooooh - shiny!

And I see your tapirs got us some brand new feature$!

EDIT: Hmmm, the link in my signature did no longer work. I guess we need to raise a call to update one’s signatures and links.

This may also affect internal links, unless some inhabitants of the code monkey closet managed to find/replace all the old links.

(stealth6) #23

where are more emoticons?

(caliban) #24

the makron is satisfied :smiley:

(SCDS_reyalP) #25

Overall, very nice, but I have to say I find the orange on off-white to be a bit jarring. :nag:

The lack of :nag: and :tapir: also cast doubt on your loyalty to the makron :slight_smile:

(Joe999) #26

at last! when i click on the last page of “Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Previews and Interviews”, i get to the last page :smiley:

(RosOne) #27

Looks very nice, but it could use a smaller header for the forums.

(signofzeta) #28

so what happened to the tapirs? How come there aren’t any on the main page?

(badman) #29

Well, we had to eat something while working on this thing.

(S14Y3R) #30

Right on, looks great. Gonna miss the 'ol grey, need some themes mebbe, eh?

I guess this guy ate the extra emoticons :cool:
:stroggtapir:

(BaronBlabla) #31

Who made the header? I want to know how he did that. What techniques he used. I’m doing a lot of photoshop but I never made something that beautiful. The cool thing is that just like the previous one, it really expresses splashdamage.

(badman) #32

The header art was mainly done by Laurel. MoP took a pass after and added a bit more depth to it. I’ll see if I can get a bit more information out of them. :slight_smile:

(Tully) #33

BaronBlabla: Glad you like it! Badman actually got the thing started before he handed it to me :slight_smile: Two different techiques used on the white metal and on the explosion itself –

The explosion itself was made with a combo of painting (with wacom tablet) and photo overlays of real explosions. There’s no magic trick to it- you really just have to have an eye. The bits of metal debris were just painted in. There’s a bit of motion blur on them to make them look like they’re moving.

The cracks on the left side dark bits were pretty much just painted in very finely. I started it and MoP sharpened it up and added more rusty corroded bits.

The rusty white metal texture was a combination of many photo overlays manipulated in photoshop to be the correct colour. Bolts were one, rust drippies were another, metallic scratches yet another, then all brought together with the paintbrush and some other methods.

It was done largely with techniques used for game textures. I’m sure MoP could point out stuff more specifically than me – making textures specifically being part of his job. There are tons of tutorials on making game texures online, but it takes practice to get really good at it.

(MoP) #34

I have two… I fear I’m overqualified :frowning:

Edit: Do glasses count as cheating? Quad damage!

(BaronBlabla) #35

I don’t have a Wacom tablet, but my I ask which one you used? I was thinking of buying one myself since I’m very interested in Photoshop and I have some drawing skills. And if it’s very expensive, what kind of cheaper tablet would you recommend? I don’t have a lot of money (I’m 15 years old…) but I would like to get one under 100 euros.

PS: How long did it take you?

(kamikazee) #36

If you (rarely) paint some quick sketches, Wacom tablets come as cheap as 30 euro (I bought me one of those when I was 17). However, those are really basic and mostly have a surface which is way too small for any serious work.

If you are serious about drawing, it’s better to try to aim for larger and better tablets, but those don’t come in the 100 range, I’m afraid. In fact, you might be better off to just do it the old fashioned way - drawing on paper and scanning it.

However, if you are a professional artist, I’ve heard a quality tablet can be a real time saver.

(Salteh) #37

BaronBlabla, I recommend using http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/cat/533/?currFilters=&orderField=prijs&orderSort=asc to look for a well priced tablet - perhaps a wacom bamboo or graphire 4? ;o

(signofzeta) #38

wah tapir died, wah, tear, cry, sob, any synonym of crying, whine, etc.

The only thing to remember the tapir from is that mug of the tapir on the slipgate africa map.

(BaronBlabla) #39

well, the graphire4 looks pretty nice. It A5 so not too small. It doesn’t show photoshop itself which would be very expensive, but I can see there is some kind of system for putting photo’s on? The Bamboo thing also looks very nice, but it’s twice as small? And it says 2450dpi which is even better than my mouse so it’s very accurate?

Maybe if I have one I can do some artwork for Splashdamage? :slight_smile:

(Tully) #40

[QUOTE=BaronBlabla;174610]I don’t have a Wacom tablet, but my I ask which one you used? I was thinking of buying one myself since I’m very interested in Photoshop and I have some drawing skills. And if it’s very expensive, what kind of cheaper tablet would you recommend? I don’t have a lot of money (I’m 15 years old…) but I would like to get one under 100 euros.

PS: How long did it take you?[/QUOTE]

The Bamboo Fun is probably your best bet at moment if you want to buy a new one – the graphire4 seems to have been discontinued by the company, but if you can get a slightly older one that’s a bit bigger it might be good. Size isn’t everything, but more space is nice – easier on the wrist. I used a 4x5 tablet for years and I was just as able to use that to make good artwork on that as I am using my 9x12 Intuos. The size of your desk is also a factor, cause some of those bigger tablets take up tons of room.

Honestly, I don’t remember how long it took – it was spaced out over a few weeks while I was working on other things. Plus then MoP worked on it, so I’m not sure how long he took. If I were to make something like this from scratch it might take me day or two, but at work there are often a lot of revisions from management types who want this or that changed for various reasons.

If you’re thinking about this stuff at 15, you’re probably gonna do ok :slight_smile: I got my first tablet when I was 16. Just remember that it’s all a matter of a lot of practice and developing your skills. Definitely get a tablet if you’re interested in all this – I’ve seen people go from complete noob to amazing pro artist in as little as a year, but that was a result of an insane amount of work (i.e., no social life, just creating art ALL day every day in a very focussed, driven fashion with pointed and often harsh critiques from better artists that kindly help them).

The artists here have worked hard for years to get their skills to pro-quality. There’s no one trick that will make it all work, just a lot of learning as you go along. Photoshop doesn’t do the work for you… it’s basically like a very elaborate pencil and sketchpad. It can help you create amazing things, but it can’t make a novice produce professional work.

I’m such a buzzkill. Hard work – it’s a cliche cause it’s true :tongue:

MoP: :rolleyes:

signofzeta: There’s still the running tapir smiley! :stroggtapir: