Smilies Requests

[Buster's Uncle]

You wanna @Thunderfall.

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This one was easy...

-And it's 16x15, three frames, and only 380 bytes.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Hmmm. I got a little carried away here, w/ a showy 21x19, eight-frame, 1.54k smilie --- because I can.

-Probably better is the obvious two-frame, 18x17 -two pixels shorter- 518 byte version.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Is that raise-the-roof? It looks nice.

Now we'll need a dive-into-a-mosh-pit smiley!

 

[Buster's Uncle]

OOHH. That would need to be tall is the main thing. I'll see what pops into my head.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, because I've been reading old smilie threads, here's a couple frogs I made years ago:

And a cheerleader I went to a little trouble to make:

-You're welcome.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, because I've been reading old smilie threads, here's a couple frogs I made years ago:

And a cheerleader I went to a little trouble to make: View attachment 589343

-You're welcome.

@Squonk

 

[Gori the Grey]

I myself would love a Shakespeare smiley. And I bet people would find use for an Einstein smiley.

But before you go to any more trouble, we really should get the mods/admins indicating that they're willing to add these to this site's offerings.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Culture and science. I like it.

Thanks for the offer, Buster's Uncle! I think we currently have some of them (such as civ2 units) as avatars but not smilies.

Could you attach them to a post? I am open to adding them to the forums as smilies.

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I've made some improvements to the cheerleader.

She's a little more visible against a light background, and she moves more while pom-poming in place.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Yay to your post from Thunderfall!

 

[Buster's Uncle]

There's Einstein smilies, BTW, in the Civ II stuff submitted:

 

[Buster's Uncle]

?

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Incidentally, that's the folio portrait. -A B&W engraving I colorized.

 

[Gori the Grey]

The second one looks better, to my eye.

Here's another animated one that would be cool: Luke firing up a light saber. Then of course you'd also need Darth firing up a light saber.

I can't believe no one but me is giving you requests. Thanks for all you're doing.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Hmmm. I think this works well enough.

I took an old two-frame I made about 12 years ago:

Did a little altering, added two frames:

And some tedious work later, this:

It's only 16k, 66x37 - had to go 24 frames.

?

 

[Gori the Grey]

I love it!

I'm going to keep making requests until you cry "Uncle," Buster's Uncle.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

 

[Gori the Grey]

Mic drop. Football spike. (American football). Moonwalk.

I bet you'll have fun with moonwalk.

But Mic drop's the one that would really be useful.

I keep feeding you these because you seem to take some delight in working them out.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

I guess I do.

None of those sound really tough.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Better ->

There were two fames lagging erasing previous, a weird artifact of how (combine) and (replace) interact. Finally nailed the problem, jiggered the timing on what the main figure was doing to make it a bit more visible/possible to follow - and while I was in there, a few figures in back move more.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Making a Samurai-Playing-a-Banjo Smilie: an Illustrated Tutorial​

Reading through an old thread of smilie requests, I saw someone wish for a samurai playing a banjo - what the heck; I thought I'd do it. Probably not serious, but what the heck.

I'll be concentrating on technique in these remarks. The step-by-step process is showable/teachable. Creativity/art, well, I can show you how easier/better than why, but why's in there, too. Helping an ESL Italian AC2 member quite a few years ago w/ modding taught me to screenshot heavily to help get past the language barrier.

So fire up GIMP -it's a free download; google it- and follow along.

---

I begin, as almost always, with opening my stock blank smilie, in this case, the 15x15 model:

-Skips a lot of time wasted drawing in the same shading over and over, to have some stock blanks...

Next, I made some room for details, the banjo and animation.

Image>Canvas Size...>20x20>Offset all 5 to the bottom, 2 for approximate centering - (I'll put the big end of the banjo on the 3 side). Thus:

-I'm trying to keep the smilies as small as possible; 20x20 is the ideal upper size. I'll end up revising this 2x wider; taking up extra width is less disruptive when mixed w/ text. Tall as x20 pixels spaces text a little extra, so it's worth going to some trouble to try not to exceed that.

Next, it's going to be an animation of at least two frames, so I'll need a Layers box. That's Windows>Dockable Dialogues>Layers:

Thus:

Now to make a second layer:

Right-click on the thumbnail in the Layers Toolbar>New Layer>make sure the bottom, Transparency, is checked>Okay. (Clearly, I went back and took some screenies out of order afterward; no refunds.)

The image/layer(s) is in an invisible box that needs expanding. SO -
siiigh. -I've hit the attachment limit one pic too early.


Next time: I draw the various elements and, one certainly hopes, it gets a bit more interesting.