Create Art

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Revision as of 16:12, 12 October 2007 by Wayfarer (talk | contribs) (Sprite Art)

Getting Started

General Information

Graphic artists usually meet on the artwork development forum or on the restricted art development forum. The former is a great place to post and discuss new and current Wesnoth art and graphics, and the latter to see what the art development team is working on.

Unit and terrain art is stored in the portable network graphics (PNG) format. Each frame of a unit animation, and each variation of a terrain is stored as a separate .png file in the "images" subdirectory of wesnoth, and generally these files will be 72 x 72 pixels (the size of Wesnoth's basic hexagonal tile) with an alpha channel (a part of the file that indicates how transparent each pixel is). When creating your own images, you can test them without overwriting any game data by putting them in your userdata directory (see EditingWesnoth for details on Wesnoth's directory structure). The game also supports JPEG images, though these are better suited for story art.

To edit these graphics, you'll need some program capable of creating PNGs - some of the programs in the following list are free, open-source software, and will do the job nicely: Art Programs

If you need some inspiration, we have a Graphics Library which collects art posted on the forum. You can use this for ideas, and as a scrap heap for different parts of unit images (a technique described here).

Roadmap

A list of what's being done and what needs doing:

  • Tiles Status - a roadmap/plan of sorts for future work on terrain tiles
  • A list of current work that needs to be done with sprites.

Art Tutorials

These are a work-in-progress, and describe both how to make art fit into wesnoth's style, as well as giving some considerable tips on drawing in general. Especially useful is the External Tutorials page which lists a large number of art tutorials available on the web.

General Art and Computer Graphics

Terrain Graphics

The following is information specific to drawing terrain for Wesnoth. Read Frame's "Tiles Tutorial" for a good overview of how terrain graphics work.

  • Tiles Tutorial - Frame's tutorial describing the process of making terrain tiles in wesnoth, and how they interact with adjacent tiles.
  • How To Make Seamless Tiles - The tutorial is aimed at Photoshop users, but the technique is similar with The GIMP.
  • Seamless Tiles Using Inkscape - This tutorial teaches a method for making seamless hex tiles in vector craphics (to be rendered in raster).
  • Turning Square Tiles into Hex - Nifty tricks for transforming square (or any rectangle) shaped seamless tiles into hexagon seamless tiles.
  • Castle Tutorial - A description of how Wesnoth's castle tiles work (needs updating, but useful nonetheless)
  • Multi-Hex Tiling Tutorial - A description of how multi-hex tiles work.
  • Editing Castles - Instructions for how to make/edit castles (and other corner-based terrains) using yobbo's GIMP script.

These describe the system used to specify how terrains behave in game:

Sprite Art

The following are different tutorials about sprite work compiled by various wesnoth sprite artists. These will give you the most specific-to-wesnoth information about making sprites, and are well worth a read.

External Tutorials

The following page contains dozens of links to tutorials covering all manner of artwork, including sprite art. These were not made by wesnoth artists, but should prove very useful for general instruction.

See Also