Difference between revisions of "Create Art"

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* [[Creating Unit Art]] - A list of specifications you will need to match.
 
* [[Creating Unit Art]] - A list of specifications you will need to match.
 
* [[Give Your Hero A Personality]] - Tricks for editing existing images, including some clip art.
 
* [[Give Your Hero A Personality]] - Tricks for editing existing images, including some clip art.
* [[Basic Animation Tutorial]] - Or "How to Animate Sprites for Dummies," covering the basic theory, and all of the mistakes to avoid.
 
* [[From Base Frame To Full Animation]] - A solid method of moving baseframes forward towards full animation.
 
 
* [[Team Color Shifting]] - How to create art that uses our new team color system.
 
* [[Team Color Shifting]] - How to create art that uses our new team color system.
 
* [[TeamColoring]] - How to automatically team-color sprites to see what they look like in various colors.
 
* [[TeamColoring]] - How to automatically team-color sprites to see what they look like in various colors.
 
* [[Creating Shadows Under Units]] - How we create the shadows for the units in-game.
 
* [[Creating Shadows Under Units]] - How we create the shadows for the units in-game.
* [[Making Bow Animations]] - The current standard for how we want bow animations to work.
 
 
* [[How to Anti-Alias Sprite Art]] - A means of removing the jagged edges on pixel lines.
 
* [[How to Anti-Alias Sprite Art]] - A means of removing the jagged edges on pixel lines.
 
* [[Rotate Pixel Art Without Blurring]]
 
* [[Rotate Pixel Art Without Blurring]]
 
* [[Creating a scratch built sprite]] - An attempt to show some ways creating a sprite from scratch.
 
* [[Creating a scratch built sprite]] - An attempt to show some ways creating a sprite from scratch.
 +
* [[FrankenPacks]] - A quick and dirty way to create sprites for [[WesnothAcronyms|UMC]].
 +
* [[Creating a scratch built sprite]] - An attempt to show some ways creating a sprite from scratch.
 +
====Animation====
 +
* [[Basic Animation Tutorial]] - Or "How to Animate Sprites for Dummies," covering the basic theory, and all of the mistakes to avoid.
 +
* [[From Base Frame To Full Animation]] - A solid method of moving baseframes forward towards full animation.
 
* [[How to create motion blurs]] - A simple explanation on how to create attack animation weapon blurs.
 
* [[How to create motion blurs]] - A simple explanation on how to create attack animation weapon blurs.
* [[FrankenPacks]] - A quick and dirty way to create sprites for [[WesnothAcronyms|UMC]].
+
* [[Making Bow Animations]] - The current standard for how we want bow animations to work.
 
* [[Fire Animation]] - A great guide to creating fire FX by rhyging5.
 
* [[Fire Animation]] - A great guide to creating fire FX by rhyging5.
 +
  
 
=== External Tutorials ===
 
=== External Tutorials ===

Revision as of 21:22, 30 January 2012

Graphic artists working on artwork intended for mainline Wesnoth usually meet on the Art Contributions forum or on the restricted Art Development forum ("restricted" meaning that only those users with special permissions - such as art contributors and developers - can post there). The former is a great place to post and discuss new and current mainline Wesnoth art and graphics, and the latter to see what the art development team is working on. Artists working on graphics for UMC add-ons meet in the Art Workshop forum.

Unit and terrain art is stored in the lossless 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 data/core/images under the main data directory of the game, 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 user data directory. The game also supports JPEG images, although 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 (no longer maintained) 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).

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.

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.

Animation


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