Deth McBones Industries Graphics Exchange

[Deth McBones]

Thanks for the feedback!

Sandris, Samez, if you guys have any requests, I'd be happy to do them. I find color pictures the easiest to work with, but I could try to make a 19th century Napoleanic techpack if it's needed for the new scenario.

 

[Taras Bulba]

you just made my day!

you just made several techs I needed to fill in for my MDE mod, and they're amazing!

keep up the good work

 

[Deth McBones]

Just to let you people know I haven't left, and I've been working on something big.

I'm only done with the ones with a small icon....still lots to do.

42 images.

L to R, T to B.

"Robberies"-Armed Robbery, Bank Job, Gold Heist "Various Crimes"- Arson, Gambling, Bribery, "Sentences"- Fines, House Arrest, The Chair
"Violent Crimes"- Racketeering, Kidnapping, Political Killings "White Collar"-White Collar Crime, Credit Fraud, Computer Fraud "Prisons"-County Lock-up, Maximum Security, Island Prisons
"Organized Crime"-Organized Crime, Bootlegging, Money Laundering "Personnel"-Thugs, Assassins, Dons "Forensics"- Fingerprinting, DNA Testing "Outside Involvement"-US Marshals
"Asian Influences"- Triads, Smuggling, Street Racing "Arms"-Handguns, Tommy Guns, RPGs "Equipment"- Hostage Negotiation, Police Choppers "Outside Involvment"- INTERPOL
"Urban Crime"-Street Gangs, Urban Decay, Drug Running "Various"-Bombs, Getaway Cars, Cash Stockpile

Obviously the 12 techs on the left are not for the criminal tech tree.

 

[georgestow]

Nice!
I think the 'arson' tech looks best, although they all look great!

 

[Omni314]

wow

 

[General 666]

Cool ,man ! Your Icons are really looking great. I will love to include them into my Mods.

Bye
General 666

 

[Deth McBones]

Did I say 42? I meant 48.

Get them here.

OP updated.

 

[Samez]

Nice icons! Esp Money Laundering made me smile...
Perhaps a x-ray scanner like the ones at the airports would be a nice addition

 

[Omni314]

Brilliant stuff!
Oh, the ideas!

 

[Blue Monkey]

It's hard to evaluate the artistic merits of your work when the previews are at a reduced size & blurred. I'm referring to the finished set, not your WIP preview.

 

[Deth McBones]

Well, okay, but I really don't see much difference.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Well, okay, but I really don't see much difference

The key to icon success is the small icons, imho. If the small icons work, the large ones take care of themselves. The small icons are the ones that appear on the tech tree, so they're the ones we see most often during the game. I've learned to evaluate my own & others' work by the small icons as a result.

Almost all of your icons look blurred in the preview. That's fine if it's an aesthetic choice. Personally, I like crisp small icons, but others may not. In making those choices it's important to ask ourselves if the small icon, by itself, will let us know what the tech is. Will it be easily identifyable on a tech screen with dozens of other icons?

For comparison I took a B&W, high contrast icon I've made & one of yours. B&W & high contrast to help us focus on the differences in the previews, not the decisions about the images themselves. Here's the preview as I posted it in a few different threads:

Here's the small icon of my preview placed beside one of yours:

I zoomed to 400% in my graphics program & took a screenshot of each. Compare these:

There are lots of artifacts (pixel color of what should be a solid background varies) in the borders around your icon. The edge of the icon itself has been antialiased - blended between the color of the background & the colors of the icon itself. All these artifacts are consequences of resizing the image. Every icon in your preview suffers from the same artifacts of resizing. The same thing exists in the newer preview you've posted. So I can't tell from the previews if blurriness is something you like.

By previewing the PCXs at the size they will appear in game we show our work to best advantage. You've worked hard to make these. Why not let us see the work clearly?

 

[Deth McBones]

I see what you mean. I believe it is the uploader I use that has reduced the resolution of my images. Immediately after reading your statements, I pulled up my image on my computer and saw nothing amiss.

The original full size JPEG must have been reduced by Photobucket. That's the only reason I can see that would declarify my original image. Here it is in the original form.

This is from imageshack.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Much better! I can see better where you're going with these. I think the large icons are very well done.

I can see you're coming to grips with many of the issues I faced with small icons when I started out. Loss of detail is the bugaboo. Selecting a key part of the image often works, as you've found. Another kind of loss of detail happens because scaling blurs the image. you can see what I mean in the one with the magnifying glass & fingerprint.

I've had some success with various combinations of brightness/contrast manipulation, changing saturation, & sharpening edges. Often I work on a copy of the large icon & do what looks like I've pushed those changes too far, but looks just right once I've reduced it. Slowly I worked out a routine that works for me - a set of adjustments to do before resizing & another set afterwards. But it's not always successful, & pretty subjective anyway.

Keep working to improve. Maybe some day you'll win the pcx of the month poll.

 

[Deth McBones]

Slowly I worked out a routine that works for me - a set of adjustments to do before resizing & another set afterwards. But it's not always successful, & pretty subjective anyway.

Yeah, I have my own way, and is easily seen in this set because there were so many. Really I do all of them on a case by case basis, as no two techs are the same.

For example, the Political Killings sm is actually the 32x32 block in the middle of the large image, whereas White Collar Crime is most of the entire large image just scaled. Others, such as Molotovs and RPGs, are a small but recognizable detail. This is often tricky, like the Gambling small icon is focused on the cards, not the gun and liquor. The small icon I am most unhappy about is the Racketeering, as the hand grip and money doesn't really show that the gun is a Thompson, and the drum magazine kinda looks like more shadow.

But I did my best, and yes I will improve.

Really I find the most time consuming part of tech icons is accumulating the right images to suit the subject. For Drug Running I wanted a drug running boat, but there is no defining characteristic of one, besides the ridiculous amount of outboard motors, and I didn't want controversial images of drugs or drug users, so I opted for the cleaner picture of the packages. This set in particular was hard to find universal and non-controversial or cliched images to work with.

Spoiler :

As an aside, I found it interesting that I ended up having no faces (with one exception) to remove the personal aspect of crime.

 

[Deth McBones]

Just added a new pack I had finished a while back. Agriculture. Hope it's useful to somebody.

Get it here.

EDIT:
Oh, and this pack too. Ancient Archery.

Get it here.

EDIT EDIT:
And this one. Middle Ages

Get it here

EDIT EDIT EDIT:
Long night. 19th Century:

Get it here

EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT:
And here is the last one. For now. Early 20th Century:

Get it here

 

[georgestow]

ZOMG! I love them!
You make epic tech icons!

 

[Civinator]

I like your tech icons, too (especially the 20th century ones).

 

[tom2050]

Agreed! Very well done, they all look quite professional

Tom

 

[General 666]

Good job ,Deth ! I like all of them.