How Wussel draws ships and wings!

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Wussel
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How Wussel draws ships and wings!

Post by Wussel »

I decided my stuff should be CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. So please mention it, when you are using some of it.

Nobody really asked for it, but it might be usefull anyway. First some research is of course in order, like we did here for a skyship:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=44491

I had some learnings on drawing the skyship. First learning: The rigging shoud be added later separately. Second: People seem to be more in need of ships than skyships.

About how to draw stuff: I would say it is a 3 phase process.
1. Lines
2. Colors
3. Shading
I basically will end up with each in a different layer in a XCF-file format. I use GIMP.

First will be lines. We need lines. Any line less then 2 pixel will not work as a line in selection tools and filters anymore. I suggest to work much bigger than needed. Minimum oversize is a factor of 2 about that what you will publish.

Lines can be done fully digital with the the line tool in GIMP. That is not looking good and sketching does not work for me digitaly.

I propose the use of paper and pencil! Sketch what you need on a decend piece of paper! It can be rough. Take a faser pen (not a fine liner) and draw black lines on your piece of paper according to your sketch.

Put it on a scanner or take a picture if you must. The result will be shocking, but it will work. Keep in mind that what I propose is 10 times bigger as what is needed.

For educational purposes I will show you the raw file from the scanner. From here you could technically follow all my explantion digitally if you have GIMP. You are encouraged to make your own brutal linework. Keep in mind that some jaggedness will keep lines more interesting for many things.

Anyway here it comes raw scan 1.1! I allways use PNG Format. However the PNG is more than 15 MB! So here is a JPG with less than 3 MB.
s2-o1.jpg
If there is interest, I will continue this and I promise the final product will be a ship in the quality of the skyship. From now on the PNG files with lineworks will be much smaller. Around 700k only. So if you can do this (see above) I will explain how you can do that (see below).
s1-144c2.gif
s1-144c2.gif (46.99 KiB) Viewed 6119 times
Last edited by Wussel on March 2nd, 2018, 6:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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ForestDragon
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Re: How Wussel draws ships

Post by ForestDragon »

nice job :) look forward to seeing more of your ship-art (you seem to have some skill when it comes to drawing ships :D )
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Wussel
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Re: How Wussel draws ships

Post by Wussel »

Wow I am the skill0er! First students signing up. That is a record. So get pencil and paper. I admit I had to go to a store an buy a black faser pen with a wider tip for my first try on something. A well invested $1.

My point is that you can draw seriously anything what you would want as game art including portraits but especially all kind of embelishments. Just use this process. I tried working fully digital for a year and never got anything done. So starting rough is really a quick way to get the art rolling.

But here is the next clue anyway. The file above needs to be turned into black and white. As you see I did not use a rubber. There are even sketch line from the back side from a discarded sketch for another skyship. I used both side as it is not toilet paper.

There might be myriads of ways to turn it into b/w. I do use the remove colors first. There are color fragments which would show later. So do set it to greyscale first! The I use contrast +70 with light +40 (This gets you the white). Than I use contrast +40 again with light +0 (This removes some grey fragments).

Then I select all color white and increase the selection by 3 pixel. Then I reduce the selection by 4 pixel. Now I take a new layer and fill it with white (Using that selection). This removes most of the left over fragments. Than I merge the new layer on the old.

The black thing on the rim has to go to. I select it and increase selection by 5 or so. Pure in white will do. Many ways will work. I just find this most efficent.

Voila! Here you get raw 1.2! Please try it yourself!
s2-o2.png
Last edited by Wussel on August 31st, 2016, 5:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Durin_the_great
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Re: How Wussel draws ships

Post by Durin_the_great »

Your art us really stunning! Even though I never liked ship scenarios. Keep on!
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ForestDragon
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Re: How Wussel draws ships

Post by ForestDragon »

here i quickly converted it to transparent background, since wesnoth sprites do that all the time, i also added some placeholder colors too:
the white pixels suggest that your outline has some defects to it
the white pixels suggest that your outline has some defects to it
framework-ship1.png (14.43 KiB) Viewed 6094 times
i am the kind of drawer who hates doing stuff from scrath, but if there is a base/outline to work on, i can quickly make something ok looking out of it (what i posted here is just a placeholder).

btw, use the 'Update' button in browsers more often
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Wussel
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Re: How Wussel draws ships

Post by Wussel »

I had other things in mind than giving everything away in a single day! Wellcome to the thread! So the next thing is digital work only like verything from now. So we basically use digital painting tools.

What happens next is simple get rid of everything that does not belong there. You noticed that there are black lines which are wrong. I did not try to get rid of them with tipex. I do it now. Take the brush tool and get rid of whatever is wrong. You have a unlimited supply of black and white color in your computer. The lines are roughly 20 pixel wide. Use a brush size of 16 as starter. That would be all what is needed. Sometimes I get rid of bigger black parts by separating them from the main to select them with the selection tool. But using a brush is kind of a fun process for me. A word of advise: Undo is your friend. So if you do a line and you destroy more than you gain, than think of your friend.

There are options for the line tool. I actually believe I used it on the bow line of the ship. I would suggest, if you tried a line 3 times by hand consider the linetool. Keep in mind that this is kind of boring. So only use it when you need a perfect straight or curved line.

And here the final prework (1.3) for the linework session.
s2-o3.png
Cleaned linework is increadible usefull for later work. That is the reason why I split the ship in hull and rigging. I will dwell on that in my next session (not today). Please sign up below. And please try it out yourself. Feel free to post your results here. Maybe we should limit the homework postings to cleaned linework? You may draw what you like. For example a chest is a nice practice item. Keep in mind that the lines are suppossed to be NOT perfect.

Nice submission! Please keep in mind that we are almost 10 times bigger than the biggest format we will ever use. However the job was to clean the linework (see above). Not to fill in colors. We will come to that in a later session. A line allways has some blury defects. That is what makes it smooth. At the 10 times bigger level we could technically abandon that smooth line thingy and go for solid color only. This is however not a good practise in my opinion, since you should be able to manipulate real linework more or less flawless.

So this is basically all about how to create linework from scratch using only a pencil, a faser pen, a piece of paper, a scanner and GIMP. Try it. It will work!
Last edited by Wussel on August 31st, 2016, 6:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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ForestDragon
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Re: How Wussel draws ships

Post by ForestDragon »

hi, here is a something like a sketch of ship (i hope you don't mind that i used most of hull shape, at least i tweaked the fronk) it's going to be a sauron-ishly decorated sort of ship:
framework-ship-evil1.png
framework-ship-evil1.png (35.67 KiB) Viewed 6054 times
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Wussel
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Re: How Wussel draws ships

Post by Wussel »

Awesome! I see you get the idea about my next session! But not today. My word of advice would be to try pencil and paper on whatever you like. Nothing else worked for me like that. I really like a chest. There can never be enough chests. A barrel would be cool too. Just try a rough isometric/wesometric perspective. Details on that will be part of my next session too.
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Re: How Wussel draws ships

Post by ForestDragon »

Wussel wrote:I really like a chest. There can never be enough chests. A barrel would be cool too. Just try a rough isometric/wesometric perspective. Details on that will be part of my next session too.
Wussel wrote:Awesome! I see you get the idea about my next session! But not today. My word of advice would be to try pencil and paper on whatever you like. Nothing else worked for me like that.
well, i prefer to do it on a computer from start.
Wussel wrote:I really like a chest. There can never be enough chests. A barrel would be cool too. Just try a rough isometric/wesometric perspective. Details on that will be part of my next session too.
that was actually supposed to be a trapdoor, but nevermind. looking forward to the next session :D. about decorations, i think we should finish the shape the hull first, and then get into detailing (that's why i didn't add spikes in the south side)
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Wussel
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Re: How Wussel draws ships

Post by Wussel »

ForestDragon wrote: well, i prefer to do it on a computer from start.
I suffered like that for a year and never got anything done. It was all tedious and boring. I did however emulate the sketching process on a different layer with grey color and a really rough sketch style aproach. Then I lined out everything with the line tool. Very boring process, very time consuming and very boring results.

I finally invested the buck for the faser pen and got a decade old scanner running using linux. Old scanners are rendered useless by lack of driver software otherwise. Really ridiculous.

There will be hints for your trap door design in the next session too. I would not recommand a trap door from scratch. Maybe a sauron-style gate? Could be fully frontal, so you would not have to worry about perspective.
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Re: How Wussel draws ships

Post by Heindal »

Cool, this will definitely help others to make own boat designs.
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Wussel
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Re: How Wussel draws ships

Post by Wussel »

My pleasure, I hope it will work with other things too.

Keep in mind the purpose so far is on how to get usable lineart for anything.

There is a point of the level of details needed. Please keep in mind, how small this will be at the end. I wood scale it down to 144. I know your guys propably aiming at 360. Still I would not recommand structures less than 50 pixel on the big one.

Basically a dot of 20 pixel in diameter will shrink to 2 pixel and less. For practical purpose you do manage the black content of the end product by the amount of lines you are using.

So yes, a trappdoor is possible, but lots of little windows might be difficult. A line of black dots representing something (whatever?) is again an option. Spikes will be possible too, but I would sharpen them a bit from the outside.

Since I am not into double posts I do edit this one:

A few words on perspective. There are awesome resources around about perspective in Wesnoth. Please check them out.
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=20352&start=89
https://wiki.wesnoth.org/Mesilliac%27s_ ... erspective

This might be interesting too:
http://forum.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?t=40545&p=590366

In a nutshell: An isometric square would follow a diagonal line of 1 pixel up and 2 pixel side. A Wesometric square would go 1 up and 1.5 to the side. It would be the line from front left to middle right corner on a hexfield. We have to use that for everything, which is bigger than one hex (72pixel). So a ship falls in this category.

The ship, which you already like so much might be close to isometric right now. It has however a built in perspective, which makes the front bigger. We have to get rid of both things.

Step1: (go wesometric)
To do this I proposed the distortion tool. Take the upper right corner and move it out and up. Take the upper left and move it up.

Step 2: (make the bow smaller)
Select the lower part of the hull with a square selection tool. Take a copy of the selection. Make it smaller from below and merge it down again.

You should end up with something like this fin 2.1:
s2r-1.png

You can practise this with raw 1.3 to get fin 2.1 yourself. I use this opportunity to make the canvas size square. Square canvas has serious advantages for the down scaling, which we will do at the end. So I suggest to always use square canvas sizes.

The good news is: I would deem this perfectly useable. The very good news is: It makes a lot of sense to utilise the linework for hull derivates at this level. So therefore I will make two more versions using the original linework.
Last edited by Wussel on September 3rd, 2016, 7:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
Wussel
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Re: How Wussel draws ships

Post by Wussel »

Ok, a small digression about the distortion tool using the trapdoor. And an example for a sharpened spike with the selection tool. There might be a point of reusing a spike with copy and paste over and over again. I kind of decided to deal with embelishments, together with sails and riggings.
framework-ship-evil2.png
A trapdoor on the ship would have to follow the wesometric perspective too. You can just copy a wesometric line 4 times, mirrow 2 of them and shift all to the right place. Scaling small items down to make the lines thinner is a viable option too.

Maybe we should work on these ship embellishment briefly together with riggings an sails later? So far there are trapdoor and spikes. The lifting crystal device and the wind crystal device from the skyship would go into this category too. We could try a window or and anchor too. Boxes and barrels for payload would be feaseble too.

So I would propose 2 fundamental variants of the hull before looking into flat colors and than following up with shading. Anybody still onboard?
Wussel
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Re: How Wussel draws ships

Post by Wussel »

There is a more speedy version and a more bulky version. On the racing boat I used the linetool a lot. You might get the idea that while every line is more perfect, the overall impression is geting to smooth.

Fin 1.2
s2-r2.png
I did start the bulky version from raw 1.3. So there would be tiny differences to fin 2.1. I did not clean up so much and added a massive wooden beam at the bow.

Fin 1.3
s2-r3.png
I suggest for you as practise to take the bulky version and make it even more bulky. Please make a version with 3 doors! Hint: make a selection of half the ship at the perceived middle line and copy it in a new layer. Than shift it to the right place and merge it again. You will have to fix the bow section.

Anyway after that we should jump straight into colors. Since you mostlikely are running ahead, I will give you my basic trick straight away.

For flat colors we need medium colors with some white and black and medium hue color wise. I would asume that you like to pick colors with lots of hue, as I did this in the beginning myself. These colors will look boring.

The only color which always needs maximum hue is yellow. Red can take a lot of hue, but less sometimes works well too. Especially green needs only little hue. Black is just like any other color. It should have at least 10% other colors (mostly white). That means it must not have zero hue! So from all the colors only yellow would need special treatment later on.

So here is my super trick: Take a picture with colors you like. A photo would be prefered. Pick medium colors of that picture. I suggest at least planks, beams, floors, but may be door, reling, and inner wooden wall too. Highlights and shades depend on your picking of medium boring colors. You could come up with different color sets for Traders, Navy, Pirates or special Races.

Here is the picture I used for the Skyship. It is not ideal, because it has to much hue. But I liked it, so I used it anyway. Technically you could tone the picture using filters until you consider it perfect looking and than go and pick your colors.
tumblr_mfhw1wUO331r1g40zo1_500.jpg
tumblr_mfhw1wUO331r1g40zo1_500.jpg (98.75 KiB) Viewed 5870 times
Please do some research one awesome photos of ancient vessels yourself. If nobody picks new color, I will use the ones from the skyship.
Wussel
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Re: How Wussel draws ships

Post by Wussel »

ok lets wrap this up quickly. To get the linework on a separate layer you just go for turn color to transparancy. You choose white. You will get the lines in perfect black. I trust you to get that done yourself.

For the color selection I urge you to do a reverse selction. Increase the selection by 6 pixel and invert it. Fill it with the most common color in an extra layer. Select other parts and increase selection by 6 pixcel. Fill with different colors. You should be able to come up with something like this:
s2-f1.png
For shading take a new layer. Set the layer to overlay modus. Use a spray can tool with only black and white. Use a huge diameter and a blury brush. Spray the shades to your liking. It will work. I call that whee shading as it is very quick. You can delete what is outside, but this is not necessary. You can merge it at 50% solid grey, but this is not necessary either. You could come up with something like this:
s2-f2.png
But all 3 layers in an XCF file: Lowest level flat colors, middle level shading in overlay mod, Highest level linework. Keep this for later use. Save what you see as PNG or copy visual in a different picture. Scale it down to your liking. A final trickery: At smaller level you could copy your result on top of each other to bump up the outer lines at this small level. So copy it 2 times on top of the original after scaling it to 144. This should give you this:
s2-f3-144.png
s2-f3-144.png (15.81 KiB) Viewed 5820 times
Try it, it will work. Of course you can choose any other way to pick colors or do shading. I am happy to learn new stuff myself. If you feel up to it: repeat the process for sail, rigging and embellishment in different layers. I would asume the line tool will come in handy for sail,mast and ropes. Therefor going fully digital should be fine.
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