Rook's Collection O' Splash Screens

Rookervik

If I'm doing a HD splash screen I'll use pre-made fonts any time I can. This one I used Illustrator and copied some of the actual letters, and made up the rest. They were all angular, so I didn't even check to see if there was a Perfect Dark font. Just started vectoring. :D

The pixel ones are all dot-by-dot custom. It's a lot of work.

Here is the outline in Illustrator. Lemme know if you ever have any questions. Tho, don't know how to get in touch, there's no PM on this forum.

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lilbud

Typically, I will find a font that looks similar to what I need, and manipulate it to my needs. I am no artist, so if I try custom, it will not look good. Look on my thread for a failed Mega Man one.

Rookervik

@lilbud
Mega Man was quite hard. You saw mine, I actually ended up using the Rockman font rather than Megaman just because it was easier to replicate. (Rockman is Megaman in Japan)

lilbud

@Rookervik I tried Mega Man 2. Had to do it pixel by pixel. Tedious work.

edmaul69

@lilbud thats how i do all my pictures. I also do pixel art for homebrew intellivision games. Lucky for me the graphics for the intellivision arent too complicated. I lost all of the art from a hard drive crash but i recreated all the levels of super mario bros. i am thinking about trying the mega man pi screen. I have tha patience of job and nothing but time on my hands so i might try it out.

edmaul69

@Rookervik @lilbud opinions?

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Edit: Replaced with good imgur pic

meleu

@edmaul69 said in Rook's Collection O' Splash Screens:

I know you didn't ask my opinion, BUT I LOVED IT!!! Sure I will use it!

edmaul69

@meleu i just edited my pic for an error. please re-download the image

Rookervik

@edmaul69
Looks great! Perhaps stretched a little? None the less, you followed all of the aspects of the original. The top white line is cut-off properly. You got all the colors right. Very, very nice! :D

lilbud

@edmaul69 Part of me hates you right now. Looks good. I'll be in my corner if anyone needs me.

edmaul69

@Rookervik thank you. i made the pic the exact same size as the original. it was by pure coincidence that i made the word "retro" was the exact same size as "mega". i was expecting to have to stretch the word pi out but i didnt end up changing the size. yes the word "pie" appears stretched but actually isnt.

@lilbud 8-bit pixel art i can do. its just sooo time consuming. and this one was hard. trying to keep the words fitting to how it would actually be able to fit in the game. (it is double sized in the game so a single pixel appears as a 2x2 pixel square) trying to mantain that aspect ratio i did as close as i could. and i have to say, no need to "hate me" :D i wish i had your talent in art computer graphics. i could make all the splashscreens you make but as a pixel artist you can only imagine the time they take me to do them.

so my hats off to to both of you for your mad graphic skills. just glad to be here to enjoy the cool stuff you guys make.

lilbud

@edmaul69 I am no artist. Never had any training or prior experience. My first one, Super Mario 1 (NES), took about 3 hours in MS Paint. I then moved to Gimp learning from YouTube and tutorials online. Can't use Photoshop because...

Can't afford it for myself. My school puts a copy on our school-issued computers. But I prefer my setup.
My computer will crash running even the demo of Photoshop. So Gimp as a replacement for that and Inkscape instead of illustrator.

I appreciate the comments. But alot of these are trial and error. Doing things and praying that gimp doesn't crash on me. I go by the seat of my pants learning as I go. Doing these started as, "Can I actually do this?" I've seen Rookervik's work and that is what got me started. I just do these as a hobby, sometimes even do one in Study Hall just because. Thanks for what you said, and I am glad that people enjoy what basically started as a, "Hold my beer and watch this" moment.

edmaul69

@lilbud its been a hobby for me. And until about a year ago i only used ms paint until i got paint.net. The only reason i use paint.net is for invisible areas (not sure what you call it?) and for paint fill on stuff that is not a true solid color. That has changed the time i spend on artwork. But for mega man was done 100% in ms paint. If ms paint had a few extra features i would never use anything else. Having the snap feature photoshop has on either program would be nice. However i am lost when it comes to photoshop.

lilbud

@edmaul69 Alpha Layer is what you call that transparency. Might want to try Gimp, bit difficult to learn. It has that snap feature you talk of.

edmaul69

@lilbud i will look into it. Most graphic program i get to try im like a little boy happily eating his ice cream cone in the mall then notices his mommy aint around.... I get so excited to try a program then pure confusion and panic. I wish i could figure out inkscape but i dont know how to do one single thing and i have no clue how to. Ive clicked on all kinds of stuff and i cant figure crap out. I wanted to figure out vector graphics for the carbon theme controllers and no clue....

Rookervik

I've tried both Gimp and Inkscape. Gimp I can use but it takes, on average, twice as many menu clicks to perform any action as compared to Photoshop. And Gimp is very hacky. It's very slow, and crashes a lot. But it gets the job done, albeit slowly.

Inkscape is totally different from Illustrator. I've tried to use it but the time it would take me to learn it, I could put into actually working on stuff. So I haven't bothered. :D

Blender though, there is way too much going on in Blender. Even simple actions I have to keep going back to tutorials to remember. I'm not sure I'll ever get any better than I am now. -_-

Another program you might try is GraphicsGale. It has a free version that works wonderfully. The paid version gets you the ability to save GIF, ICO, and CUR files. That's all. I used Graphics Gale for all of the pixel art in the Pixel theme.

edmaul69

@Rookervik thanks. I will give it a whirl. I also do use paint.net for intellivision game graphics because i have a tile grid for it and a custom palette that i setup with only intellivision supported colors. (Which is only 16 colors) makes creating game graphics a breeze and when i make a whole title screen and stuff i can count and adjust to make 64 or less unique tiles. I kinda wish i went to college at a much younger age because i wanted to be a graphic artist back then.

lilbud

@Rookervik I could say the same about Photoshop. The speed of the program that is. Funny thing is that it will take forever to open, freeze up alot. But close at the speed of light.

edmaul69

@lilbud said in Rook's Collection O' Splash Screens:

@Rookervik I could say the same about Photoshop. The speed of the program that is. Funny thing is that it will take forever to open, freeze up alot. But close at the speed of light.

Will someone get this guy a better laptop?? We need him pumping out more art!!

lilbud

@edmaul69 The laptop I made the first one on was bad. This is the computer that gave birth to most of my splashscreens. https://www.amazon.com/HP-15-f305dx-15-6-Screen-Laptop/dp/B01420TKBI. Never needed more than that. I buy what I can afford.