Hi guys!

[No Name]

Hello everyone!

Long time lurker, first time poster...

Taken the plunge and donated to HS and EM, amazing value, peanuts for what is on offer!

I currently have MAME, ZX Spectrum, SNES, Gameboy all working perfectly and looking unbelievable! (Obviously mame needs work)

Even the gf gave a 'that actually looks quite good' comment, praise indeed.

I even made a (quite crappy) main menu theme for the speccy.

Although I am a little concerned at the time this may consume...

[zomboided]

Good to see more guys on from the UK, welcome.

I did a bunch of Spectrum stuff recently that turned out real nice

Main menu - http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/downloads.php?do=file&id=5886

Default theme - http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/downloads.php?do=file&id=5901

Letters pack - http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/downloads.php?do=file&id=5885

There's a bunch of box and wheel art on the ftp site too in /Upload Here/matt/

[No Name]

Thank you so much, Speccy is looking awesome now...

Is any other wheel art being worked on, would love to add to it...

[horseyhorsey]

Yes. Can't go wrong with that theme & letters. Cheers btw.

Although I am a little concerned at the time this may consume...

Well, with this 'hobby', no matter who you are, you'll probably learn something. More than can be said, sat in front of English TV going dead behind the eyes.

[zomboided]

Thank you so much, Speccy is looking awesome now...

Is any other wheel art being worked on, would love to add to it...

Not very quickly.......I'm doing them when I feel like it, but I'm back doing MAME themes for a bit now as I'm bored of drawing crappy old logos.

[No Name]

Apologies, I meant I would love to add to the wheel art...

Is there any official list or do we just go through them randomly?

[Polemicist]

You said Gameboy. Yup art is being worked on. How that art is being worked on is a long story.

[No Name]

Any room for a n00b?!

[Polemicist]

Define noob?

[No Name]

I think I can do some artwork, just not sure where to start, don't want to do something someone has already covered...

[Polemicist]

Show us what you can do.

/Upload Here/Polemicist/O

That is the current folders that need filling for the Letter O and most folders have some form of artwork for you to base things off. Hmmm except for Otto's Ottifanten - Baby Bruno's Nightmare (Europe) as that one seems to have a crap box art that is actually on Hypersync DB which is irritating. Anyway.

What needs to be done is simple.

The Boxart in that folder. Check it and make sure it is the official Boxart for that game. If so then search for an even better quality scan of that same Box. Put that new image in the folder.

Take the logo and if the scan is hi res you could just cut it out.

Now I really am annoyed

http://www.gamefaqs.com/gameboy/997271-ottos-ottifanten-baby-brunos-alptraum/images/box-170670

There is artwork for that game. Damnit. So much to fix and no time to do it at this time of year. *sighs*

Anyway lets look at an easy one. Out of Gas (USA)

God that artwork is aweful. *sighs* See the Out of gas logo. Nice easy to see. Use your pen tool (I'm a fan of Illustrator for redraws) cut the logo out and expand it say 400% and trace around each letter. If you put a nice little stroke on the outside edge of each of the letters the overlap will give you what you need. Once you have created your artwork you need to put the thing into a size 400 x 175 px 8 bit RGB saved as a PNG interlaced with a transparent background. In the case of this particular logo I would say keep all the elements seperate as we may need to get a little creative to change it around. Obviously with a logo this shape you need to weigh up where you are going to put it and you may need to make changes to the image if it is really crappy shape. But you will be surprised what can be done.

This one

came from this art

and still fits nicely into the 400x175px template.

Here is the instructions on Wheel creation etc:

http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?28426-Photoshop-theme-amp-wheel-making-overview

When you are showing us the artwork if it has a white background stick it on a black background for posting on the board so we can see your work.

Once you have made the wheel stick the PSD and the PNG in the folder. I'll take care of the rest.

--------------------------

If you want an example of something extremely complex as I find time I am working on this:

which was based on this:

Redraws are the best way to make art sing. I really love the old DICE games and this particular artwork just spoke to me. The game itself gets boring really quick but just the old flyers and stuff are good fun artwork and just asking to be redrawn. You can see in the car that I've taken the main purple colour and used that as the background and then placed segments over the top of that. With many artworks you have to create things that don't exist such as the nose of these two cars. http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?29046-Birdiy-birdiy-johnodon(20131010) That is a great example of someone that has great skills but lacked the ability to see what wasn't there. In the end he came up with an awesome theme but just needed a hand (to make a foot). Mattedsmith is a good one to look at for funky redraws as well. Pretty much all the buggers here that have the Hyperspin Artist Collective tag are worth looking at. Damn sweet stuff.

Anyway I digress. Enough of my guff. Feel free to fill those folders as much as you like. PM me if you have questions or just post here and I'll give you a hand. Or anyone else can.

[zomboided]

We've got a massive project going at the moment to mint various different systems with box art, wheel art, themes, databases, etc. Doing box art is easy enough...that's just cleaning up art and applying it to a template. Doing wheel art is a little more difficult because it usually involves a lot of cutting out/redrawing. Doing themes is more difficult again because it's just a butt load more work.

There's a template in my ftp folder if you want to do Spectrum box art, jveigas is doing a bunch currently, but there's like 5000 games so we could probably use some help. If you want to pick something that's not been done (ie not uploaded to FTP) and post up 5 or 6 examples then we can give comments.

If you want to do wheel art, then again pick something that's not in my ftp folder and post up some examples. The standard needs to be high though, no poorly cut out logos, redrawn and retouched if necessary, etc.

For themes, head over to the theme forum, check out what's in the download section and pick something that's not being worked on.

We could use all the help we can get so if you have some level of skills, it'd be good to have you contribute

Polemicist, I really like that Gameboy Tomatoes box art...had forgotten that show existed!

[Polemicist]

Speak of the devil.

Yeah box art is easy enough. Finding the Japanese Game Boy and Game Boy Color box art is a pain in the ass. Cleaning it up and making the 3D boxes is just a time consuming thing. Great place to start though especially if you aren't that familiar with Photoshop.

[relic]

if you guys want me to show stuff ive gathered for game boy colour let me know i have various artwork items

[No Name]

Cheers guys!

Will have a go and post up what I come up with, I have been using inkscape maybe time to move across to adobe...

[Polemicist]

If you haven't used Adobe before it has a bit of a learning curve. Also has a very large price tag. If price is an issue you can also use Corel. I use both but prefer Adobe. Master Suite costs a fortune though. Still worth it.

[jeepguy81]

I use mostly adobe just because work pays for it but I have used inkscape in combination with blender and I gotta say its pretty darn good. I've never been stuck not being able to do something in that I can't do In another. If the adobe price tag is to steep I would just stick with inkscape personally. Just my 25 cents. Master Suite is the shiz though!

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

[No Name]

Man, I'm rusty...

Is this ok?

[Iggy]

Hi NoName! Welcome to the HyperSpin mix! If you have a chance to get Adobe PS, then we can give ya some good pointers! (Im a converted Adobe user) Pretty good try for your first artwork!

With the above artwork I see a couple of things that might need some practicing: The curves could use some work. Example, take a look at your Os, U, S, and G....notice how the curves are not nice and uniform.....they have several cusps in them which distract from the rest of the image. The other thing is that the red stroke is not uniform all around.....check out the distance of the stroke on the upper part of the S to the lower part of the S. Unless intentional, the stroke should be even all around.

[Polemicist]

Mate if that is your first one good work so far.

If you make the picture like 50% transparent and hide the red background layer you can work around the image much better.

I thought this little logo would be a good one for breaking you in.

One thing you will notice with the pen tool is that complex curves may need a few extra anchors but you need to limit the number as much as you can to make things look smooth.

There is a great tutorial on using the pen tool by Lynda.com and it is part of a huge collection on using Adobe Photoshop CS6. You can actually grab the pen tutorial from the FTP here on THK's folder. I believe that it is also on the Lynda site for free as well but from memory you have to have an account. :-/ Meh just get it here.

[Iggy]

Hi NoName.....here is what it should look like all said and done so that you may compare your work to mine....a few tips to along with Pole's advice to get ya started:

1.) For redraws, make your canvas exceptionally huge....then increase the art template to fit within the canvase.......for the above artwork I used a 3000 x 3000 px grid with the Out of Gas box art proportionality sized (that way when you reduce your redrawn art to 400 x175, the details are retained and curves are really smooth

2.) In Adobe PS, when you do an outside stroke, you will notice that sharp corners become rounded corners.....this is because the path implementations in PS is not vector based unlike Illustrator...you have several options to get around this limitation: I just create another path outline, create a new layer behind the lettering, fill in with a color, then merge the layers together.

3.) I always like to apply a slight blur before downsizing the art to 400x175.....give the curves more of a smooth look

4.) Try to see if you can match a font first using www.whatfontis.com....if you can match a font, use it!!!! This will save you a ton of time!

5.) Before you post your art, apply a black or white background to see if you see any stray pixels

6.) If there is a slight variation in your redrawn, that's fine.....as long as the redraw is as close to the source as possible, who is going to notice?

7.) Have fun with it an don't burn yourself out.....redraws is an art to itself and will need constant practice to refine your skill set......they take a long time but in the end the result is amazing!

[No Name]

Thanks guys! Much appreciated. Will keep at it.

[Polemicist]

8) If drunk or over tired don't post your artwork until you wake up and look at it a second time.

[Iggy]

8) If drunk or over tired don't post your artwork until you wake up and look at it a second time.

I know im in violation of # 8.......plenty of times I was drunk and posted artwork

[zomboided]

My input here after redrawing too many stupid old Spectrum logos is to draw each of the letters individually, use stroke to get the uniformity and bring them together as a smart object containing overlapping multiple layers. You can then stroke that to get the finished article (squaring off the corners where necessary).

It's a good attempt, you've just gotta put the work/practice in to pick up your own set of techniques. Despite all of the good advice on this site, I still try and avoid using the pen tool as much as possible as for a lot of jobs it feels too slow to me.