The NP member comic discussion thread!

[bluestarultor]

Shirya: Interesting. Where did you get those zombie sprites?


POS: Because Loyal put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into making them for her?


Also, as a general announcement, I've recently come across a LOT of Paint.Net plugins (still no air brush, but it's getting to the point where I might just write one myself) that are both awesome and useful. For reference, I've been experimenting around with them in these banners:

This one:

contains a water reflection that's capable of using two formulae, for both still and moving water reflections and transparency detection to simulate shore. The background was done with some creative layer filtering over a "nebulous" rainbow texture set to zero for an hourglass shape.

This:

was done using a global fire renderer for the background (which really works better for bigger areas) and a different fire renderer for the letters. The second one is also useful for lightning and "fire fill" like here because it puts weights on the placement and fierceness of the flame based on how close the area is to neutral gray. Values closer to black or white are used to determine wisps of the flame with a random generator. The only side effect is anything not rendered as fire turns black, so it's best used with layer filters.

The letters on this:

were done with that same second fire generator and a "true blur" plugin I found, which only blurs the edges of shapes. The background is just an example of the cloud renderer that PDN comes with.



I'm not going to lie. I was stupid and did this manually with a normal gradient copy/pasted for both shines and the default emboss effect, plus some layer filtering. If I had been smart, I would have used my new multi-color gradient tool.


Other neato tools I've come across include a drop shadow tool (so y'all can't say PDN doesn't have one and Photoshop does anymore), stenography tools for revealing hidden images, paint splatter, a smudge tool, a plugin that turns your pic pastel, lens flare, sparkle/flare generator (from a brightness threshold), a "crystallize" (shatter effect) tool, light rays, polygon/star rendering tool, plugins to shape your image to a 3D shape and make seamless textures for 3D models, random effect tool, and plugins that now allow you to flip just the parts of the picture that you want to (which I missed from MS Paint).


So I guess you all can see how I've been spending my time. XD

Seriously, though, if anyone is interested, I can ZIP these back up and send them to you. There are a lot I didn't list here, so if there's anything in particular anyone needs, I can either give it out of my current stash or use my search-fu to see if anyone shared a plugin on the Paint.NET forums.



Also, thinking about it, maybe all that should just be a post in Creativity Convention, rather than cluttering things up here. I just figured I'd share the love with you guys, since you'd probably get the most use out of it, but a mod might think differently.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

I just googled zombie sprites and clicked one of the first links; i think the game's "Zombies Ate My Neighbors"

[bluestarultor]

Wow, Thad. That's just not true on so many levels. I spend pretty much all day around here most days and can vouch that nobody is on most of the day. I'd say that if anything, it's my fault. XD

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Aw crap! That means i probably caught it from the zombies and passed it to you when you asked where i found the zombies in question!
(Again, im the one who suggested the comic, I'm just poking fun at myself)

[Flarecobra]

Need an Esuna?

[Loyal]

I assure you, Shyria ain't to blame.

I really need to finish that picture of mine... First thing tomorrow, aye.

Well, second thing. First thing shower.

[bluestarultor]

Loyal, the first thing that strikes me about that pic is the fact that her far eye is too high on her face. Otherwise, it's awesome. The eye in question is actually the perfect size, which is something I've seen messed up in even professional animation. You could click and drag that into perfection in less than 10 seconds. Kudos.

[Loyal]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

Loyal, the first thing that strikes me about that pic is the fact that her far eye is too high on her face. Otherwise, it's awesome. The eye in question is actually the perfect size, which is something I've seen messed up in even professional animation. You could click and drag that into perfection in less than 10 seconds. Kudos.

Done. Thanks for the advice.

[bluestarultor]

That's, like, 90% more awesome. Kudos!

[RickZarber]

Honestly Loyal, I think that's some of the best work you've ever done.

*High five!*