Over the last two years or so, I have posted several graphical resources, including a variety of recolors, redesigns, and even some completely original artwork by me. I thought my stuff looked pretty good, but I see others posting artwork and getting WAY more traffic on their threads! I haven't heard any negative feedback or constructive criticism. All I get is ignored.
What am I doing wrong?
Here I will compile most of my graphical works
These two images show many of the handheld weapons in my mod. I redesigned the laser pistol and heavy laser into the red/blue design to look like the laser rifle, and I also put a scope onto the laser rifle. I got the brown lasers from AwesomeGuns.Laser mod, and I altered the brown laser rifle to look less like the red/blue version. The brown plasmas with blue and green lights are from Shadow's Terran Plasma mod, which are themselves slightly modified from Chiko's original designs. I made the blue plasma pistol and heavy plasma by hand, and also altered the plasma rifle a bit and made original blue clip designs for the rifle and pistol.
My mod features new ammunition for all of the handheld cannons and launchers. I redesigned the small rocket into the smoke rocket (the white one with the blue tip) and recycled the small rocket's artwork into the alien rocket, since it already has a color pattern very similar to the alien grenade. I tweaked the incendiary rocket and made a fully original graphic for the fusion rocket (the purple and blue one). I added Alien Explosive ammo to the heavy and auto cannons; it looks sort of like the HE ammo. I added conventional ammo to the blaster launcher: explosive, incendiary, stun, and conventional ammo to the small launcher: explosive, incendiary, and smoke. (The explosive blaster bombs are less powerful than the alien's bombs but also cheaper.)
I built a large workshop graphic based mostly on the small one, and my mod also contains maps for large workshop, general stores, and radar which I made. I made a baseview graphic for the large radar but it's pretty terrible and I hope someone else makes a better one. I'm too lazy to get an image of it but it's basically a flat room with 4 of the small radars hooked up and cords connecting them along the floor.
This is a decent yet slightly dated screenshot of my Lightning. I've really fallen in love with my Lightning redesign, and after using it quite a bit, I really feel that it is on par with the Firestorm--you totally want it at first, but later game ships are definitely better. Though just the same, Firestorms and Lightnings can easily carry you through to the end of the game--they just can't visit Cydonia.
Since this image, I've made a few graphical fixes and I recently added a bunch of graphical resources to my LIGHTNIA.MCD tileset, though I have yet to go through and touch up the ship maps. I'm particularly proud of the work I did to present existing tile pieces at different angles and such:
- Lightning door both directions, also 2-tile Lightning door
- Purple door imported from Avenger, also with 1-tile variant
- I shifted the position of the Lightning door image to allow it to be placed as a wall piece
- Thin inner walls using Avenger wall textures
- Door for thin wall with X decal
- Stairs going all four directions
- The fourth chair
- Consoles facing all four directions
- 2x2 power source for even-dimension craft
I didn't just flip or mirror the textures. In most cases, I had to adjust the lighting and in some cases I had to re-align textures and compose things from pieces of other things or build some parts by hand. My ultimate goal was to make everything look like it belongs in the original tileset, like it was made by MicroProse, not me.
I'll finish this post with my sectopod laser:
I gave it a green laser and snagged a distorted laser pistol sound from X-Com Files. One of these surprised me with reaction fire in a map the other day. As easy as it was to make this, I'm quite happy with the result. It resolves the old "Sectopod has laser" debate in one nice neat package.
Last thing I'll say: If you choose to comment on my artwork, please direct your comments to my main mod page:
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,5543.0.html or to any of my several other relevant threads involving my works. I would ask that we keep this thread about discussing how I can improve my art and/or presentation skills.
