The Competition & Teaser Thread

[Strela]

Hi everyone,

It's like a perfect segue, my next teaser topic was to be how we did the soldier artwork. Richie 61 has done a good job of pre-empting me but only in a small way

Steve Trauth's Scenario Design Center has the first image posted on the 'how' we created the soldier & vehicle graphics posted this weekend.

You can see the creation of the German machine gunner at this link;

http://hist-sdc.com/mdc/series_pzb_graph...ique_I.php


There is also the example of the PzKw IIIn that was shown on this thread earlier here;

http://hist-sdc.com/mdc/series_pzb_graph...que_II.php


Below is an example of how we created the Soviet Airborne soldier.

The first step was to find an appropriate photo. This is harder than you think! The photo has to be from at least the waist up and preferably face toward the camera. The soldier can't be smiling and it's best if they have a weapon at hand or visible.

Once a photo is found it has to be cropped. This is easier with a colour photo as automated cropping uses different tints to determine areas. Unfortunately most photos from World War 2 are black and white and this makes the cropping process much more difficult. It usually means that it has to be manually cropped. This is the computer equivalent of using an extremely small pair of scissors to cut out a complex shape. The normal time it takes to crop an average figure is at least 30 minutes.

The next step is to 'colour' the image. Tiller Game's artist Joe Amoral, was sent the copped images and examples of the colours required for the various uniforms. Joe then coloured each image with a focus on getting the uniforms and skin tones right.

The next step was to prepare the coloured graphic for input into the game. The image is used in two places; in the Unit Graphics box and on the default counters. The coloured image is loaded into Photoshop and reduced in size. Photoshop has some of the best reduction algorithms but the image usually needs a little manual editing once resized. For the unit graphics the usual size is 75 pixels high. This may vary 10 pixels either way but the usual determinant of scale is the size of the head on the image. This is compared to images that have already been created for the game and the height adjusted until the heads are of similar scale.

Once the right size has been determined the graphic needs to be transferred to a 'colour background' that approximates the national unit box. When a picture is resized there is feathering around the outside of the image. Copying this onto the colour background converts the feathering into an approximation of the background it will be on and ultimately blends the edges. If this step is not done the image ends up with an unsightly halo. The last step of the process is to position the completed image onto a neutral background. Positioning is important here as it will determine how it appears in game. Put a vehicle too low and you will cut off track or sections of wheels etc.

The same process is done for the counters but the base size is 35 pixels. At this scale usually 'sharpening' is required to lift the contrast in the images due to the diminishing size.


Here is a flow from photo to counter for the aforementioned airborne soldier;



David