U
Um I would know this how
Guest
does anybody have any tips on creating new units? so far i have merely been redrawing specific weapons on old units, and i am sick of it....
Morten Blaabjerg
Settler
Interesting question!
I am NOT a great artist, but there are some things to do to get around this. Personally I use Paintshop Pro, and there are 3-4 tools that I use more than the others.
1) Rescaling -you can take a large image or drawing and rescale it to Civ2 measures, including changing the palette to Civ2 (and downgrading to 256 colors). This is not as easy as it sounds, because most images will need some modifications when rescaled, to fit with the artistic "style" and theme. If the images look too photographic, they really don't fit in the game very well. -and sometimes a good looking image just looks like crap when resized to such a small scale.
2) Magic Wand -with this you can line out any portion of an image, and then cut'n paste as you please, provided the background is neutral and "invert selection" is used extensively. So you can "marry" different images in really neat ways.
3) Pick and Replace color -the blue/red icon in the toolsbar allows you to change a particular color in the image. Pick up the color with the "pick up stick" and choose the exchange color as the background color, and double click on the color to be changed. Voila!
These three tools combined with steeling, borrowing, tracking, and ferociously hunting down relevant images from other games, scenarios, photos, drawings etc.(with proper credit given), will do wonders, even if you don't know how to draw things on paper. But even then I have learned quite a bit using these techniques, and sometimes you just have to draw things yourself, because you cannot find anything that can be used. -And mostly for the better. I think it gives your graphics its very own style, which is better than a big mish-mash of different styles.
I am NOT a great artist, but there are some things to do to get around this. Personally I use Paintshop Pro, and there are 3-4 tools that I use more than the others.
1) Rescaling -you can take a large image or drawing and rescale it to Civ2 measures, including changing the palette to Civ2 (and downgrading to 256 colors). This is not as easy as it sounds, because most images will need some modifications when rescaled, to fit with the artistic "style" and theme. If the images look too photographic, they really don't fit in the game very well. -and sometimes a good looking image just looks like crap when resized to such a small scale.
2) Magic Wand -with this you can line out any portion of an image, and then cut'n paste as you please, provided the background is neutral and "invert selection" is used extensively. So you can "marry" different images in really neat ways.
3) Pick and Replace color -the blue/red icon in the toolsbar allows you to change a particular color in the image. Pick up the color with the "pick up stick" and choose the exchange color as the background color, and double click on the color to be changed. Voila!
These three tools combined with steeling, borrowing, tracking, and ferociously hunting down relevant images from other games, scenarios, photos, drawings etc.(with proper credit given), will do wonders, even if you don't know how to draw things on paper. But even then I have learned quite a bit using these techniques, and sometimes you just have to draw things yourself, because you cannot find anything that can be used. -And mostly for the better. I think it gives your graphics its very own style, which is better than a big mish-mash of different styles.
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