General tips/info on drawing items.

[Relic]

This tutorial was created by Manuts, for the tibia.de graphics forum. You can find the original here: link


here is my tutorial because some people asked me if i could do something

the best to begin is to get a good program for drawing, paint shop pro is enough, gimp too (and free) and photoshopreally nice if you can have it

to begin something you have to think what shape you will to your item, i often sketch quickly some tests on paper to see.

then you can begin with your program. because drawing easily a shape is really hard in 32*32 pixels, most of the time i create an empty white 64*64 picture. and i try to make the same sketch more precisely to have a good start

mantus_tut1.jpg (15.91KiB)Viewed 10158 times

when it is done, i reduce it to the 32*32 format needed, and i begin to brush the shape with some colors quickly no matter clean it could be

mantus_tut2.jpg (27.48KiB)Viewed 10158 times

then, when the main is done, i choose a really dark color and paint all around the item to cover the white and finish the quick colors

mantus_tut3.jpg (28.41KiB)Viewed 10157 times

after that i can begin to give better details. the best to do is giving the lights and the shadows. you have the burn and dodge tool to do that, but this tool is hard to manipulate to get realistic lighting, because you have to choose what kind of lighting you need on your item

you can configurate the tools with photoshop like this :

"highlight" give a saturated light on colors, good for metal and chrome and stuff like that whereas it gives really grays dark and shadows (bad for gold ). on the contrary "shadows" give saturated shadows and white light. "midtones" is the middle
with that you can play and add more detailed light, you can tried to give colors shadows 'especially unsaturated blue or purple) to give a roxor style to your item

because you have to work with pixels, you have to add pixels details, so you need the pencil 1px tool and you can add some little stuff to emphasize critical details (like point of light on the gold, or chain mail or very small details)

never forget to have a no-zoom view, to test what it will look like too, most of the time a zoomed view looks good whereas the item is all flat and sad at 100% zoom so you have to pay attention.

when you are near to finish your item, you have to cut it from the background and give the alpha, to do that paint flash pixels around it and select the flash zone and delete that. pay attention to be on a layer and not on the background and to have a magic select with no antialias, because we are working with pixels.

if you have something possible to complete with mirror, you can do that but do not forget that you have to correct the lights after

mantus_tut9.jpg (32.6KiB)Viewed 10156 times

be sure to have a perfect alpha by deleting the empty zones, and then you can save in a png file

mantus_tut10.jpg (12.81KiB)Viewed 10156 times

[apple]

Take too

http://www.vbgore.com/index.php?title=P ... _Tutorials

Nice Stuff

Shields, Sword, Helmets, Potions, Tree etc...

A good "sprite editor"

http://www.aseprite.org/