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For anybody who is interested, I've been practicing with some classic pixel art style images. I think in the Tiger there is less than 8 different shades of gray. I mean this isn't 8 bit artwork here with the camo, but the underlying gray scale image uses just a few shades and could have been made in Microsoft Paint, if anyone could stand doing such a thing.

The other pic compares 2 Panzer IV's made mostly in a pixel-by-pixel painting, but the T-34 is done using a bumpmap, which is why it looks like a little plastic toy.

There are some pixel art forums and those guys are fanatics about pixel art, and my work probably wouldn't qualify as "pixel art," but I do get lots of tips by following their advice:

I've never been too good at making winter camos. I usually take the shortcut of just making a whitewashed version (basically just a plain white camo layer.)

You know, this really is a work in progress, and I'm continuing to get a grasp on this process. Thanks for posting the CC image. It reminded me that I needed to highlight the edges around the hull. In the youtube video I posted earlier of that man painting his model, if you fast forward to around 33:40 you can see him highlighting the edges, and that basically what I mean by "dodging" the image, which is basically just lightening certain pixels to make them stand out.

Anyway, I used the dodge tool to highlight the edges, and someone on the GIMP forum suggested that I use the "Curves" tool to widen the grayscale color range, making the sprite stand out more and appear more metallic. I messed with it for awhile to get a good primer gray image. I may have overdone the effect, but oh well, I can always undo it.

For the winter camo, I applied a base coat of olivegreen and then used the paintbrush to add strokes of greywhite. Alternately, I could have just painted the basecoat as greywhite and then brushed on strokes of olivegreen.

Also, I've added a pic of 3 different camo pattern in another game that uses 32 bit graphics (with a genuine alpha channel.) The sprites on the left SHOULD look this good in the new game, when it comes out.

Glad you like it. Are you familiar with the dodge and burn tools? It could be easily touched up with those tools to make outlines possible.

Although to do it right, I should have made the bump map at 200% the correct scale, and then reduced by 50%, instead of simply reducing the finished sprite.

Ok, what I have done is make a GIMP, Paint.net, and Photoshop version of my last tank. Since both Pain.net and GIMP are free, anybody can open and view it. If you want to make a .tga file, you can convert it in any of those editors--although you might need a plug-in.

I left all the layers intact, in case someone wants to see how I did it. The only problem is there are many layers (over 30!) and no notes on what I really did for each layer. 14 of the layers are different camo patterns, so maybe someone can turn on each different camo layer, one at a time, and see what colors I used or whatever.

If someone wants to put this image in a current CC game, it probably isn't a good idea, since this image uses semi-transparent pixels and we won't be able to display it correctly until Panthers in the Fog comes out. Also, it is out of scale for current games, and further shrinking would look bad.

But if nothing else, it should be interesting to some people to see how I did it, and maybe someone with more talent can give me some tips!

I find the screenshot below especially interesting because it shows how GIMP, Paint.net, and Photoshop handles overlay colors differently. In my opinion, Photoshop does the best job. Paint.net is even better than GIMP for colors, but Paint.net doesn't have the same powerful tools that GIMP has.

This didn't turn out as well as I hoped, but took me about 45 mins...The roof area is too small and the gradients are too rough, but I'm needing some more practice at the larger scale images for when the new CC comes out . . .

I don't know what resources the CC community uses for making images, but here's something I find useful:

http://www.juniorgeneral.org/load.php?Period=10#World

I get a pic of a Panther, use edge-detect and invert colors in GIMP, then I reduce size to 200% in-game for a guide.

Then I paint grayscale layers over the blueprint, make a bumpmap, then reduce to in-game size and add small details,and then I paint a camo overlay layer.

This is just how I'm currently doing images. Just wanted to share and I wonder if someone has a better way?

Also, I found this free sprite online and re-painted it. I cannot find the original sprite artist, but I would love to ask him how he made the sprite look so metallic!

Anyone here have an idea how it was done? I would love to make a set of sprites that look like metal miniatures!

Strange--They were here earlier. Here is a re-post:

Basically, I'm hitting a wall in my sprite development. I figure CC has been around so long there must be a few top-down sprite experts to get some ideas from.

Hello!

I'm also a fan of the Close Combat games, especially CC3 and COI. I also love to make top-down sprites of armored vehicles! I'm 100% amateur and self-taught.

The CC community has been around for quite awhile, and I was hoping to find some more experienced artists to share some techniques on creating tank sprites pixel-by-pixel, rather than reducing a larger screenshot or drawing. I cannot seem to create decent sprites simply by reducing image sizes.

I've made lots of sprites for the free game Armored Brigade, and the sprites in Armored Brigade are around the same scale as CC: In AB they are slightly smaller at 6.4 pixels/meter and CC I think around 7 pixels/meter. In the upcoming "Panthers in the Fog," it looks like around 10 pixels/meter. This is very exciting because at 10 pixels/meter, sprite artists will have more pixels to make very good-looking sprites! Hopefully the new game will be easily modded for Cold War or modern mods with larger/better sprites!

I'm far from a professional artists, but I do make my sprites from the ground up, pixel-by-pixel.

I have posted an example of 10 pixels/meter T-72 tanks and some that look like metal miniatures. Anything less than 10 pixel/meter this doesn't look right. Also, I'm posting an example of some of my sprites at 6.4 meters/pixel: (at different zoom levels, so they are not all at the same scale.)

I think there is probably already a tank graphic available right now for about every single vehicle (modern or WW2) already created for CC and ready to be added to any mod, so there's really not much use in making a bunch of new sprites, but what about 10 pixels/meter??

I would love to share ideas and different approaches for creating sprites with some CC artists!


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