Need Help

Jester · Post by **Jester** » January 28th, 2006, 1:49 pm

Hi, I am working on this Werewolf faction and I could use some help with the artwork.
The biggest problem I am having is that I can't make the background transparent, and I can't really down;oad some good picture-manipulating-program-things because I have a real [censored] computer (2 GB hard disc and stuff).
So if anyone could help me with this I would really appreciate it.

The sprites that I made are found in this topic (Werewolves in the Ideas forum):
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8632

Thanks in advance etc.

toms · Post by **toms** » January 28th, 2006, 3:49 pm

First:
The transparency: You will need either GIMP or Photoshop. (I use GIMP, BTW)

The easiest way is to create a new file with 72x72 pixel and transparent background.
The rubber button can make things transparent to the next layer.

You should also read the helpfiles of these programs.

Second:
The art itself: I canÃ‚Â´t do it for you and itÃ‚Â´s not easy to find one who does it.
But you can look in the wiki pages:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Creating_Unit_Art
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/External_Tutorials

These are the most important pages for learning to create unit art.

And here is JetrylÃ‚Â´s anti-alias turtorial. Also very useful.

Post by **Leonhard** » January 28th, 2006, 4:13 pm

If you don't want to download and learn the gimp (which is not a big software if I'm not mistaken), let me do some advertising for the little software Pixel Editor 1.0, which I use because I don't know how to use softwares like photoshop or the gimp, and which is about 1.1 Megabytes to download. It is quite easy to use. Of course it's free (if not I think doing advertisement here would be quiet a problem

).
EDIT : it handles transparency and it is particularly easy to draw antialiased sprites.

Disto · Post by **Disto** » January 28th, 2006, 5:24 pm

The Gimp is easy to learn, at least to a usuable extent, there are nifty functions whicch I don't even know about but... The Gimp just rules.

Post by **zookeeper** » January 28th, 2006, 5:54 pm

From what I know, the GIMP might be ok if you're not on windows. If you are, then it's probably not worth the pain.

Disto · Post by **Disto** » January 28th, 2006, 5:57 pm

I'm on Windows and the Gimp works fine.

Jester · Post by **Jester** » January 28th, 2006, 6:11 pm

Thanks for all the replies, I think I'll download the GIMP.

@Leonhard:can you make transparent backgrounds with your Editor? If so, can you post a link?

@toms:
Well, as I said I don't really need help with the art itself (I have already made most of the images, haven't posted tehm all though), I just ened help with the transparency.
But, all help is appreciated

Post by **zookeeper** » January 28th, 2006, 6:42 pm

Disto wrote:I'm on Windows and the Gimp works fine.

You obviously have extraordinarily high tolerance for incredibly bad UI's.

But seriously, I really wouldn't count on ordinary windows users to have the patience to use something like the GIMP, that's why I wouldn't recommend it myself.

jonadab · Post by **jonadab** » January 28th, 2006, 7:14 pm

zookeeper wrote:
Disto wrote:I'm on Windows and the Gimp works fine. :?
You obviously have extraordinarily high tolerance for incredibly bad UI's. ;) But seriously, I really wouldn't count on ordinary windows users to have the patience to use something like the GIMP, that's why I wouldn't recommend it myself.

Gimp 1.x on Windows has serious usability problems for two reasons: the way it uses windows does not interact well with the limitations of the window manager built into Windows, and it uses GTK 1.x, the Windows port of which leaves a lot to be desired. (Versions of Freeciv that use GTK 1.x are really horrible on Windows for this latter reason.)

Gimp 2.x on Windows is rather better in both respects. Dock all the major dialogs (layers, channels, paths, brushes, patterns, gradients, and the undo history) together beneath the toolbar, and that works pretty well, on the whole. There is some learning curve, especially if you are not familiar with the concept of layers, but it's worth it if you've been using something lame like MS Paint, since the time you spend learning Gimp will be rapidly gained back in time saved doing your actual editing, once you know how.

Gimp *does* have some system requirements though, and the original poster seems to be indicating that his system is rather old (2GB hard drives were common, when, in 1997?), however, so that could be an issue for him. In particular, one wonders how much RAM he has, since in that timeframe (when 2GB HDs were common), 16MB would not have been an unusually small amount of RAM. I would not like to run Gimp on a system with 16MB of RAM.

ISTR that IrfanView can do transparency, although it doesn't do much *else* in terms of image editing (apart from simple adjustments like gamma correction), and is mostly a viewer and format converter. Still, it's freely available (albeit not OSS) and has much smaller system requirements than Gimp and perhaps would be a better recommendation in this instance.

toms · Post by **toms** » January 29th, 2006, 5:56 am

Jester wrote: @toms:
Well, as I said I don't really need help with the art itself (I have already made most of the images, haven't posted tehm all though), I just ened help with the transparency.
But, all help is appreciated

Sorry, I have to read all posts more particularly.

Post by **Leonhard** » January 29th, 2006, 1:57 pm

you can find pixel editor at http://www.iconempire.com.

Jester · Post by **Jester** » February 3rd, 2006, 9:28 am

Thank you

Jester · Post by **Jester** » February 3rd, 2006, 9:46 am

testing transparency

Post by **Darth Fool** » February 3rd, 2006, 1:51 pm

Jester wrote:testing transparency

Some edits. Improved shadow. Cleaned up some edges, and made unit more standard wesnoth height. Werewolves shouldn't be as tall or taller than ogres!

Jester · Post by **Jester** » February 3rd, 2006, 3:20 pm

Cool.

One question though, why can't werewolves be taller?