LordTrilobite wrote:Well, I only really make visual mods, since I'm an artist, not a programmer. I had some ideas for a mod that would change the visuals of the shops and the cargo bay menus. But it wouldn't change any of the functions underneath.
Not related to portraits, but I we speak about artistic-"only" changes have a little request, that would make me *very* happy (and that, so far, was denied by any other artist out there) - could you, please, take look at the graphic of projectile used for ABS (AE's artillery)? I just can't stand the fact that it looks like Giant Gelatinous Cube propelled toward our ship, very immersion-breaking. Also, they *much* more pixelized than any other thing in the game, which looks ugly on it's own, but even more so if one use "better planets and background/asteroids".
Now, I'm not an graphic specialist, so what I say may be useless in practice, but I have some ideas, how it could get improved... First, its color could be changed to green. In both vanilla FTL and CE, the more "condensed" shots are all green - heavy lasers, Artillery lasers, etc... It would be more coherent as green. Now, it's shape could be changed to one less circular (making it more like blast of plasma, than gelatin). I'm not sure if its resolution could be upped, too, but if yes, it would help -projectile starts tiny when shot from background fleet image, then goes bigger and bigger, creating effect of coming from "inside" of screen (from far away to closer to "camera") - unfortunately, it makes it unholy big pixels even bigger, at the end they're half size of crewman. I would prefer, for sure, to have bigger picture scaled down at the beginning, than scaled up at the end (but even if that isn't possible, other changes could help).
Now, I know it's a lot of text for a small change like that, but i really hope that it could be done by competent graphic artist.
LordTrilobite wrote:Though I suppose I can look into raising the shoulders a little to make them more visible.
Thanks, I think that it would help, indeed
BTW, huge thanks for taking comments as constructive critique.
LordTrilobite wrote:Regarding the Mantis and the Rockmen. Now that I have had some time to reflect on the pictures I made, and have seen them for a longer time ingame. I would agree that the Rockman could use a redo. It looks a little too blobby and it's also too zoomed out. I think I'll make a different version that's more zoomed in and with a more rocky surface. I will post pictures when I get around to making that.
Good idea, as far as my imagination goes, it would indeed look better.
LordTrilobite wrote:Then there's the Mantis. Personally I'm still very satisfied with the face. One thing I don't like how it turned out, is how it attaches to the torso. When I made it, the one thing I wanted to avoid, was making it look to much like an actual insect. I mean, it's an alien after all. I think it breaks the immersion if it's just a large praying mantis like the ones we have here on Earth. I wanted to do something different.
(...)
But one thing is for sure. I will refrain from making it look too bug-like.
Thats some good reasoning, I see your point. Indeed, it is a good idea to keep it from looking to much like big-bug-from-earth (even if original creators made him exactly that, it seems
). Now, Rockman's suggestion about making claws visible (like they're held in upper position, at the same level as head - like we see Mantises doing, all the time, on ship's corridors) is exactly what I was thinking about. It would make it look less like aggressive plant, I think.
As for Lanius, funny enough, I thought of him as one of best portraits. But, Rockman have a point here - in game, their "things" look more like blades (sharp edges), than "spikes". If wanting to do a little make-up here, I think that sharpening edges would help. In-game, both their ships and they look like bunch of very sharp knives bundled together. I wouldn't be too eager to hug them, even leaving apart oxygen-absorbing properties
Last but not least - while Engi portrait is nice, don't you think that its face-something is too flat? it looks a little like its head got caught between two parts of ammo press. At least their in-game appearance show that "glass" (or whatever it is) as a shape a little closer to rectangle.
Cheers,
/Estel
// Edit
And another point - if possible, instead of doing complete re-dos, you could leave current portraits as variants - so, we would be able to encounter both "sharper" rocks, and the "blob-like" ones. Humans could use some more different-looking faces variants, too. If it's not possible to use different, random portraits, just scrap the idea.