Chicuelo Theme

chicuelo

@cosmo0
What do you think about something like this? The same background where we only have to change the character, logo and add some items according to that genre, for example in racing we could add a nitro and white flag, for sports a ball and a pair of referee cards, for action games a whip, and a key... Using that criteria we can make all the genres matching fine.
I have a psd where you only have to replace the logo and the character + items

cosmo0

@chicuelo
Wow, looks great!
Not sure about the logo on the blister, though, because then it appears twice, it's a bit weird.
Do you think it will match with all the characters? It reduces the position possibilities, the characters have to stand upright to look good, no ?

@lilbud yeah but then the logo is missing something :(

lilbud

@cosmo0 said in Chicuelo Theme:

@lilbud yeah but then the logo is missing something :(

Maybe pick a different logo to ~~completely rip off~~ use as inspiration. Maybe use Streets of Rage...

chicuelo

@cosmo0
You are right about the logo, its not a good choice to use it twice.
I think you can play with the character using all the space you have. If you choose a character with a pose, you could arrange the representative elements of the genre arround it. Its a matter of try and error.
The only condition I see is that the character and the object must seem 3D or realistic to fit fine the blister.
I let you to take those decisions in order to complete the others :)
You can download the psd from here and you only have to modify the Green layer and put the art by genre inside a folder https://www.dropbox.com/s/2pt3fs2aks1f2w5/Genre.psd?dl=0

For example for racing games, I don't use a character, but yes a F1 from a game so its ok while the genre is understood by the user.

cosmo0

@lilbud said in Chicuelo Theme:

Maybe pick a different logo to ~~completely rip off~~ use as inspiration. Maybe use Streets of Rage...

The problem is that I must find a game for which:

the logo should be from the same game as the character (I tried matching logos and characters from different games but it felt super weird)
the main character is well-known (even though that's quite subjective)
high-resolution and high-quality artworks of the main character are available (I just can't draw)
the logo is recognizable (just "slanted Arial" like Captain Commando is not pretty)
a font that matches the logo can be found (I'm not good enough to create it from scratch, maybe Chicuelo can do it, but not me).

It reduces the possibilities drastically.
I tried many BTU, but only TMNT checks all these criterias.

cosmo0

@chicuelo said in Chicuelo Theme:

@cosmo0
You are right about the logo, its not a good choice to use it twice.
I think you can play with the character using all the space you have. If you choose a character with a pose, you could arrange the representative elements of the genre arround it. Its a matter of try and error.
The only condition I see is that the character and the object must seem 3D or realistic to fit fine the blister.
I let you to take those decisions in order to complete the others :)
You can download the psd from here and you only have to modify the Green layer and put the art by genre inside a folder https://www.dropbox.com/s/2pt3fs2aks1f2w5/Genre.psd?dl=0

For example for racing games, I don't use a character, but yes a F1 from a game so its ok while the genre is understood by the user.

Great, thanks! I'll see what I can do with that :)

For the racing games, I found a bunch of 3D renders of Captain Falcon, if I can put the Blue Falcon (its ship) in there, it would be perfect :P

chicuelo

@cosmo0
I think in that case its going to be better if you use the f zero ship, because racing or any Genre is about an activity and not so about a character so in that case the element that represent racing games is an object instead a character. For fighting games yes, you can use a fighter and some gloves and a boxing bag

LeSabotageur

Loving your theme Chicuelo, many thanks to you and the good people helping you on it !
If I may, i'd like to request a "Steam/Moonlight" theme; it was done on ComicBook Theme and I miss it a bit since I've switched to your theme.

To not simply make a hollow suggestion, maybe it could be done using Gordon Freeman as the character, since he once was Valve's flagship guy; maybe with an artwork like this one :
alt text

What do you guys think ?

chicuelo

@lesabotageur
What do you think about something like this?
Can you tell how the system is saved so match the folder structure right? Its just steam?

Chocovo

Hello @chicuelo would you have the SVG file of MAME and FBA?

cosmo0

@chocovo said in Chicuelo Theme:

Hello @chicuelo would you have the SVG file of MAME and FBA?

The logos are already SVG in the theme ;)

cosmo0

@chicuelo
I've tried the first in the list (action) tonight, what do you think ?

I've added a drop shadow to the items, is it subtle enough ?

chicuelo

@cosmo0

Great! I really like this one! I get the action at firs sight.
Glad you add the drop shadow ;)

cosmo0

@chicuelo
Great :)
Then I'll get to the other images this week I hope :)

LeSabotageur

@chicuelo Awesome, thank you so much ! This is exactly what I hoped for.
As for the system, I can't tell you right now for sure, but I think it was moonlight. I'll check how it was done in Comic Book and I'll let you know as soon as i get home.

chicuelo

@lesabotageur
Geat, I have already added to the GitHub project as "steam" in case its called moonlight its a matter of changing the name and it will work instantly

cosmo0

Hey @chicuelo

Here's my work so far. What do you think? Do you see something that could be improved?
I still have to do puzzles, rpgs, sports and strategy.

The PacMan and Metroid figures are actually amiibos. Maybe I should remove the grey pedestal? Maybe it looks a little weird...

I'm not always convinced by the items, but finding theme and style-matching images is HARD! :D

I think the "games by genre / wow" line could be improved. Maybe typing the name of the genre? Various "exclamations" where the "wow" is?

movisman

Wow!

I have been really busy again unfortunately for the past few days and just catching up on this thread! Some seriously good progress on the artwork front @chicuelo and @cosmo0 - really nice stuff indeed. I'm so impressed.

Do we potentially have an Atari 7800 image on the way..? :)

I had an idea regarding the short description for the consoles - at the moment it says how many bits the console is eg '8 bit console' or whatever. Bits are slightly contentious because so many consoles have both 8 and 16 bit components, or 16/32/64 bit or whatever so it's difficult with some systems to define how many 'bits' they truly are.

I was wondering, do you guys think it would be better for the consoles to have the year of release and generation?

For example, for Sega Genesis / Megadrive:
Fourth Generation Console (1988)

Or Atari 5200:
Second Generation Console (1982)

All taken from here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_home_video_game_consoles

What do you think? It would be nice and consistent across all supported systems then and the information is easy to find if future ones need adding. Or do you prefer to keep the 'bits' (as is)?

If you think it's a good idea I can go through each theme.xml and make some changes.

Thanks!

ohmycommodore

how often is this theme updated, as far as using the update tool to get the latest?

cosmo0

@movisman I like this idea. The NeoGeo "24 bit console" striked me as a bit weird, and I like the "console generation + year".

Of course, it's up to @chicuelo :)