Spinmaster - spinmast(killboy35_11-23-2008)

[killboy35]

It's been a long time since I want to create my own theme.

However, it's still kinda ugly (lack of available artwork + no PS experience)....

Any help on improving this one is appreciated !! (if you tell me : improve this, my answer will be : yes, sure, but how do I do it ?) :)


animations :
title - grow bounce + hover resting
characters - grow center shrink (ideally along with the spiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinmaster sound)
van - chasing
video - fades in

[killboy35]

Nobody on this one ?

yet it's a really good game (my favorite actually) !!


I would just like to have some help on how to smooth the edges of the logo and clean the rest up a bit...

It's actually all pixelated cause I took everything from ingame screenshots....and any advice on cleaning the whole thing is greatly appreciated !!

Thanks

[BadBoyBill]

Everything on the theme is way to small in my opinion.

[Harry2280]

Whilst I am not an expert (or even close to it), I'd agree with BBB.

Can you make the images larger to fill the screen some more?

The van and the DataEast logo look out of place as they are so far away from everything else

[hollywood]

Yeah....title should be way bigger. I think you could increase the video size as well. Everything needs to get bigger so there isn't such wasted space. Nice job so far.

Lance

[killboy35]

Better ?

[bent98]

I think title sand characters hould still be bigger. Maybe move video box down and shrink data east logo abit.

[killboy35]

I think this way it's fine...

My concern now is to smooth a bit the edge of that spinmaster logo.

Maybe someone has a link to a tutorial on how to do this ?
Or a quick explanation is fine too :flute:

[killboy35]

All right I took an hour to anti-alias the logo and I'm pretty satisfied with it. Now if anyone wants me to change something, speak now or forever hold your peace...

And thanks everyone for your advices !! :)


EDIT : I forgot to ask : is there a way to let the flv sound play along with my custom sound ? It actually lasts only 3 seconds and I'd like the flv not to be mute even if my sound is played............so, possible ? planned ? or should I stop asking things ?

[Harry2280]

I think it looks much better now. Something about those characters scream that they want to be even bigger... but it does look pretty good

[BadBoyBill]

Im curious to why you choose to use in game art over real art? I really dont like themes that use in game art to much.

[killboy35]

Well I couldn't find artwork outside the game except for the flyer and even then it was not really clean. Besides, every element on it was partly masked by another. As I suck at redrawing missing art, I decided to take ingame art....

As to me, I'm curious to know if it's possible not to have the flv being mute when adding a custom sound ?

[manipars]

Greetings killboy35! It looks good, keep it up.Here is a slightly better MVS game title logo, The JPEG artifacts and the edges still needs to be cleaned and worked on but hopefully it's still usable. Try it and see how it looks. I think that neogeoforlife.com and neo-geo.com has different HQ versions of the marquee and front scans, I'll check it out.Cheers

Spin Master MVS game title: /edit url broken:
http://i448.photobucket.com/albums/qq210/manipars/SpinMasterHSwheelimg.png

[killboy35]

thanks for the logos tolomame and manipars !! unfortunately they don't fit so well with the characters...

I decided to add a bit of transparency to the data east logo and finished the main logo cleaning (also for the wheel).

I think it's time to post it now and move on to something else....

Thanks everyone for your advice !

Ps : is it normal that the blue triangle on the right doesn't disappear ?

[BadBoyBill]

I looked at the flyer and though you think its not clean enough, its alot more clean the in game logo, in fact alot of themes I make are from the same quality artwork. First before cutting any logo out of a flyer blow the flyer up to a higher res, maybe 1000 px width then cut it out, apply a small smart blur filter possibly if needed, and you will have a good enough quality logo to use.

From the flyer (15 minutes):

http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/../examples/mame/spinmaster.png



Im not trying to come down on themes from in game artwork, but I think we all should spend a little more time doing themes from real artwork when available.

[manipars]

Wow! Amazing BadBoyBill! I definitely need to learn about HQ image tracing in Photoshop, I'm looking forward to billpa's video tutorial on that area. I could spend a lot of time with logo like that and trying to smooth and clean the edges by smudging it bit for bit or erasing it or messing around with new layers and Gaussian blur and the end result never looks as impressive, clean and hi-res as what you posted in that limited time that you worked with it. I think I'll put everything on hold for now until I can replicate that method (hopefully someday... =) It is hard to find any good quality artwork of marquee for many games and mastering this technique is a must in those cases. I just wish that I could've done something like this with the blurry title-logo from my ZeroWing theme. My source was a tiny marquee image. Cheers

[BadBoyBill]

Im surprised you did in game art for zero wing, the flyer for zero wing is beautiful and would make an amazing theme.

The tutorials we have dont really show how to get the result I got here, but more basic techniques.


Hers the lowdown on how I got the flyer image to look like that quickly.

1. Printscreen the flyer page on arcade flyers, no need to save the file.

2. Paste into Photoshop and draw a rectangle marquee around the logo, with a little extra room.

3. Crop the image and resize to a width of 1000 px or more.
(Hint: Cutting an image out at a higher pixel will give you more to play
with and have better cut results.)

On this particlular image I took these steps.

4. Trace with the pen tool only the color area not the border or shadow and copy that selection to a new layer.

5. Apply a 1-3 pixel smart blur to the cutout image.

6. Now when the image is cutout the outside edges arent perfect, you'll see some caryover from the uncut part of the image. To take care of this first select the layer so the whole cutout image is selected then use the clone stamp tool and carefully sample nearby areas and go around the edge of all the letters constantly resampling areas near the edge. This will clean up the edges tremendously which is why the eges look so clean.

7. Next apply a few pixel stroke to the whole image in black.

8. Trace out the shadow real quick and color it black on a new layer below the letters layer. This image had to have the shadow traced since its not really like a shadow but more like a 3d block.


Now you have a 1000 pixel width image to play with. It will always look better doing it at 1000 and shrinking it later than it is cutting the image straight out of the flyer.

Shrink the image to fit into your theme and make a 400px wheel image and your done.

This basic procedure can be used to make any flyer image look super clean. Also I didnt do it in this image but normally I toss the cutout image and would normally redraw the gradient with a fresh new one on a new layer for the best quality look.

[manipars]

Greetings BadBoyBill and thanks for the explanation of this method. This is much appreciated. This should be a sticky in the "Graphic & Theme Creation" sub-forum as part of the "Theme Building" advanced level threads for others to also benefit from it. This method will definitely improve my future themes. Thanks again for posting it. I'm going to test it right now =) Cheers.

PS. I used a hi-res flyer for Zero Wing for the space-ship but the title logo and the dragon was unfortunately from a lo-res marquee.

[killboy35]

In the first place thank you very much bbb !
I have already sent the theme....Guess I should resend it with your logo...


The tutorials we have dont really show how to get the result I got here, but more basic techniques.


Hers the lowdown on how I got the flyer image to look like that quickly.

That's what I was asking in the beginning !! Sticky this !!



4. Trace with the pen tool only the color area not the border or shadow and copy that selection to a new layer.

I have already been trying to follow the tutorial about the pen tool but unfortunately I couldn't get the pen to do what I want. It's been overlapping black over my logo, going far away from the path on the bottom corner of Spinmaster's S..... I tried like 40 minutes long to make it work then I gave up. :banghead:
Maybe there's something from the tuto I didn't catch...