Wheel Creation Direction

[Avar]

 

In an effort to provide clearer ongoing art direction, this thread will serve as a quick reference for wheel creation best practices.

Media Type(s): Main Menu System Wheels, System Sub-Wheels, Game Wheels, Genre Wheels, the Wheels on the Bus.

Minimum Width:

• >1080p: 400px
• 4K: 800px
• 8K: 1600px

Note: There is no height limit, just use common sense. 175px/350px/700px is a good general guideline for 1080p/4K/8K but this can be deviated from if a given logo has abnormal dimensions and you feel the aethetic would be improved by a non-standard wheel dimension.

Note: Ideally you'll wanna draw/redraw and touch these up at hella high resolution (the most your sanity or computer can handle) and downsample to the resolution required for a given format. This maximizes quality while minimizing the possibility that anyone will have to redo the work in the future. 8K is a good "future proof" minimum standard to hold yourself to as a general best practice. 

Best Practices and Standards:

• When transferring a wheel that already exists for another system, verify that the art is actually the same. Some games have different art for different systems. Here's an example:

General Klax wheel:

Actual Klax art as it appears for the Atari 2600:

Totally different, and Klax is a good example of a game that has completely different art on almost every system it's on. While I encourage laziness, please be vigilant and make sure the art's actually the same before copying it from another system.

The same goes for games that have different logos in different regions. If you see that art already exists, don't immediately assume that art will be the same across all regions/systems.

• Use the logo as displayed on the box art first. If unavailable, the in-game logo is a useful backup.
• Always remove all (R) and (TM) logos.
• Do your best to eliminate jaggies and ensure all cuts are clean.
• Wheels should be drawn and submitted "sans-plate" ie. Just the logo art on an alpha layer w/o any unofficial background.
• If additional artistic elements exist beyond the lettering eg. smoke/fog/light or any sort of effect or extending element, it's up to the artist to determine how much of that effect should be included to ensure optimal aesthetic value.
• If a user/artist plates a wheel set, they should do a quick visual check of the entire set to ensure every wheel is visible against the plate. Plates should be chosen to maximize readability.

Here's an example of some plates I made for Atari 2600 that are hard to read. This is to be avoided:

Note: Plated sets with wheels like this can still be uploaded but won't be flagged/rated as having as high a quality in the new system as a set that's universally readable.

And here's how I adapted the plate aesthetic to fix them:

 

You'll see in the ongoing audit that I'm flagging any plates set as "YELLOW" that has hard to read wheels. The quickest way to check your set is simply to open it in Windows Photo Viewer  or in HyperSpin and burn through them as fast as you can process what you're seeing. Hard to read wheels will stick out like a sore thumb.

 

Main Menu Specific Direction:

If you make a main menu wheel set, please make a wheel for every system in the official set. Additionally, please either curate your set and make additions as required or communicate with the community such that another curator can be assigned who's willing to do so. This is to ensure a good wheel set doesn't end up with gaps in it, since the main menu benefits the most from having a homogeneous wheel set style. Providing your PSD files is a good way of ensuring the set doesn't "die" if an artists becomes unavailable for any reason.

Note: Main Menu Wheels may be created/released with built in plates but please be vigilant with updates as new sets/wheel items become available or release your PSDs.

 

A good way of checking the quality/cleanliness of your cut is to view it against a black or contrasting background. This will highlight any flaws in the outline. Here are some examples:

This is a very rough-cut Amstrad CPC wheel for Activator (Europe):

And here's an example of a wheel that seemed cleaner but which has some roughshod pixels when viewed against a black backdrop:

 

For an example of wheels that are virtually flawless, see @diskmach's latest work on the Nintendo 3DS, similar to that depicted at the top of this post.

If anyone has any additional points or feedback, please let me know. Cheers!

 

[Avar]

Added example images to clarify certain points.  If anyone can think of any additional points/tips or useful imagery, please let me know. Artists feel free to use this thread to keep newcomers in the loop when it comes to useful tools/techniques

[Avar]

OP amended to remind people to always remove (R) and (TM) logos. Just randomly caught an instance of a default logo slipping through with one, which then carried on to almost every wheel set that used that system XD Will continue to check for this as I go and correct accordingly.

[Alli]

Hi!

I loved the design. Hoping to see more improvements!

 

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

Appvn Jio4GVoice  3DS Emulator

[kurtindoretro]

eu gostaria de ajuda pra criar wheel animada para o meu hyperspin porem não sei como criar e nem que formato o hyperspin aceita