I need buttons!!!

[TheNewSaint]

Love it Love it Love it! Don't know how you do it, but you certainly do! I understand if colors dont work, and then beakers or "Advanced Mixing Techniques" would be great. All I need is something that loosely resembles the very specific ideas I have. Great as usual, cause I love it. Keep up the good work!

 

[Zuul]

Very nice buttons, and yes better than the orginal. Sometimes I wanted to redo the orginal ones because they are very blury and too optimized.

 

[Rabbit, White]

Very nice buttons, and yes better than the orginal. Sometimes I wanted to redo the orginal ones because they are very blury and too optimized.

It's funny you should say that, because not only have I used the original buttons as inspiration and example but I even went so far as to apply some noise to the ones I made, to give them that slightly rough look (the originals probably got that from too much optimization like you said, but when I was making these new ones I noticed that without that little bit of noise they tended to look too flat, too boring). Having said that... thank you for the compliment.

@TheNewSaint: I haven't forgotten about the rest of the buttons, still working on them, just slower.

 

[TheNewSaint]

no problem

feel free to enjoy the pleasures of a personal life

 

[TheNewSaint]

...bump...

 

[SilverKnight]

WOW, these are fantastic!!! I want to play the mod just from looking at these promo buttons! Rabbit, White has set higher standards on this area of modding. Way to go, man!

SilverKnight

 

[Rabbit, White]

Thanks SK, and TheNewSaint, I haven't forgot about these, I'm hoping to get another batch done in the next few days.

P.S. That Spore video is mind-blowingly shattering!

 

[Rabbit, White]

Ok, here is the final batch (unless I missed a button) - 5 air buttons, 3 eathquake, 4 shockwave, 4 waterball and 3 waterwall (the sample pic doesn't show all the buttons).

The shockwave gave me a bit of trouble, eventually I decided to go with what's on the big pic, but if that's too "busy" or something like that then there is a simpler, cleaner alternative. Here is a sample,

So, if you want TheNewSaint, I can either remove the "impact" from shockwave, or the cracks or both (without the cracks though it reminds me too much of water ).

Cheers

 

[Duke van Frost]

I have to admit i love those buttons

Right now i´m trying to do some promotions myself and sometimes it´s really hard to come up with an inspiration for the motives - just wondering where you get all this creativity from

And i´m curious about the technique you use to create those clear forms, I find it rather difficult to do (with Photoshop, that is).

 

[Rabbit, White]

I have to admit i love those buttons

Right now i´m trying to do some promotions myself and sometimes it´s really hard to come up with an inspiration for the motives - just wondering where you get all this creativity from

And i´m curious about the technique you use to create those clear forms, I find it rather difficult to do (with Photoshop, that is).

Thanks.

As for inspiration, well it depends on what kinds of promotions you're doing right. I mean it's much easier to figure out how a fireball should look rather than something like moral or chance of withdrawl.

I also use google image search a lot, sometimes I'll find something that I can use other times I'll just see something that'll give me a good idea.

I'm not sure what you mean by "clear forms" in your last comment, and what you're having difficulty with?

 

[Duke van Frost]

Ok, here´s how i do the work:

I create a selection, fill it with orange, add noise to it, and apply some dropshadow and bevel & emboss.

The difficult part is getting the selection clear and good (without edges etc. - if not intended), the small parts - like in the flames you´ve done - are the hard ones.

Well maybe i need to buy myself a mouse-pen (tablet - if you know what i try to say).

 

[Rabbit, White]

Well, some of the flames are actually based off of clipart style images. I find some 2-3 color images of flames or fires, select the parts that I need, fill them up on a new layer, resize if needed and apply effects. For other stuff I simply zoom in real close, like 500-600% and just use the lasso to "draw" out the outline of the shape.

For example the earthquake button was made by hand, but the waterwall is based on a clipart image of a wave. Sometimes I also "cheat" a bit. The vines for the earth staff were created in Flash where I could quickly and easily draw verctor based curves (I'm not as comfortable with Photoshop's pen tool) which I then simply prntscrn-copied to photoshop and went from there.

The tablet I find mostly useful for large images, when you need to make for example swipping curved lines and such. When working with small images I prefer some more "restrictive" tools, in fact I don't use the freeform lasso but rather the polygonal one. It allows me to take my time and think where I want the next line/point to go, and on a 64 by 64 image you won't be able to tell the difference between curves made with polygonal lasso or a circular selection tool.

 

[woodelf]

Those are spectacular Rabbit, simply amazing.

 

[Rabbit, White]

Thanks woodelf

I uploaded a zip that contains all the buttons in case someone wants to just download them en masse .

And if you got here from my Units Library thread then check out the previous posts in this thread for sample pictures of the buttons.

 

[civ_4_rox]

maybe you could use the planet earth beside the weapon
oops too late srry

 

[DavinciFan]

Wow. Wow. Wow. I ran out of words... Wow.

 

[Rabbit, White]

Wow. Wow. Wow. I ran out of words... Wow.

Thank you

 

[The Great Apple]

This thread should really be moved to the graphics section, desipte the title. It's very useful, and quite hard to find - I almost missed it but for a link in RW's sig.