DKC Atlas Forum

[Jomingo]

An announcement from the DKC Atlas Staff:

Hello forum-goers! We are currently planning a complete overhaul of the avatar system, and will be creating a gallery (or perhaps multiple galleries) of uniformly styled avatars for all of you Atlas-ites to choose from. What is that style I speak of? Well that is for YOU to decide...

Design the new DKC Atlas avatar style!

We are currently looking for a unique art style to use for our avatars, and this is where YOU come in! Anyone out there who is artistically enlightened can show us a design, and if it looks great, and fits the following guidelines, we may just adopt it as our official design!

Guidelines:

• At least to begin with, avatars must be relevant to DKC-related games of the Rare era.
• Each avatar is to be created from scratch in a unique art style. (We don't want the avatars to be made from screenshots this time round)
• Either digital (computer) or traditional (paint, pencil, etc.) art techniques can be used (or any combination of the two)
• Unless you are happy to create a few hundred unique avatars yourself, we would prefer this design to be relatively easy to replicate.
• We'd like to start with character-based designs - one character per avatar, preferably.

Feel free to post works-in-progress, and to ask any questions you might have about this avatar projects.

Let's get creative!

[Lanky Kong]

How about those:

[Jomingo]

Those look nice, but you didn't follow this:

Each Avatar is to be created from scratch in a unique art style. (We don't want the avatars to be made from screenshots this time round)

[Lanky Kong]

i make those 3 images in paint

[Kiddy14]

He means they should be done by drawing, either digitally (like in Photoshop), or traditionally (like by hand and then scanning it); but should not be done by using screenshots and pasting them in Photoshop or Paint.

Según yo eres de Chile. Mira te diré en español para que entiendas un poquito mejor Tienen que ser dibujos originales (digitales o tradicionales), no puedes usar capturas de pantalla de los juegos; puedes basarte en ellas para tener referencias de los personajes, pero sólo éso.

[Cyclone]

I think Jominigo means something like this.
http://www.rarewitchproject.com/forums/ ... hp?t=19207

Also the dkvine.com(which appears to be down) has cartoony avatars.

[Qyzbud]

Actually, the RWP seems to be down... DKU/DKVine's still going strong.
Never mind, I see what you mean now... and you were right.

The idea here is essentially to create small and unique graphics that are somewhat unusual, but recognisable. They ought to stand out, and can't just be pieced together from graphics that are already available... You can use your mouse/graphics tablet, or crayons/ink... but be original.

[Jomingo]

No Qyz, it does seem that the DKU is the one that is down(the main site anyway, the forums seem to be fine).
And now you corrected yourself, making my previous sentence sound silly.

Anyway, yes Cyclone, the link you provided does indeed show off the idea here. The person had an artistic style which they applied to every Banjo character imaginable. The style itself was a bit too cartoony for me, but the idea remains the same.

The DKU's Neon Gallery is another prime example of what we're going for here.

Something I'd like to reiterate is that we'd really like the "style" to be easily replicated. By this I mean something any one of us with some artistic talent could copy, so that the entire gallery doesn't need to be made by one person.

[K.Rool the Krool]

I'm not sure about how large you were planning on letting the new avatars be but I've enlarged this one to show some detail
It can be scaled down, which I know it'll have to be.

[Rare Lover]

Tried a variety of styles, some look good, and some not so much, the first is the original picture. I basically just messed around in Paint.net















Nothing too advanced, anyone could do it, which is why I did it this way. I still can't help but feel that I missed the point.

[Gnawzooka]

Yeah, I think you did miss the point... You've just taken an existing picture and put filters on it.

[Jomingo]

Yeah, just to reiterate, we don't want you to modify any existing artwork, we want it done from scratch.

[Rare Lover]

I see what you mean but I really can't think of a way to go at it that can be copied by someone else like the neon avatars can.

[Jomingo]

Well, try and think of a theme, like Cave paintings, Pixelated 8-bit characters, Hieroglyphics, Small bodies big heads, etc. Just try and come up with a style or theme we can use.

[BlueTronic]

I remember posing about a year ago, a kaleidoscope made of underwater DKC enemies. Is that anything I could use?

[Jomingo]

I'm not sure, could you post it?

[BlueTronic]

I don't actually have it. The hosting site deleted it already. It's fairly easy to make, like you said it should be. I can make it again.

[Cyclone]

Here is an idea that should be easy for most people to do if they have photoshop. I don't have photoshop installed so I can't show an example grrr.

1. Find an existing render of one of the characters from a players guide or something.
2. Import it into photoshop as the background layer.
3. Create a new blank layer overtop of the background layer and name it Avatar.
4. On the Avatar layer trace the contours and main features of the original Background layer.
5. You can then duplicate this Avatar layer and change blending modes and apply filters etc.
6. Anyone should be able to create identical(style wise) looking avatars. Just trace and apply certain filters and blending modes.

You can create those DKU Neon avatars this way too.

Hope that wasn't confusing. Don't have photoshop right now...

[Gnawzooka]

That sounds like it could work actually.

[Qyzbud]

try and think of a theme, like Cave paintings, Pixelated 8-bit characters, Hieroglyphics, Small bodies big heads, etc.

Yes! Excellent ideas - that's just the kind of stylistic artwork I had in mind. I'll try to sketch up and post a few examples soon, to give people a bit of visual inspiration.

Cyclone's suggestion would be a great way to get started on design ideas.

Kong Fu; I don't think your kaleidoscope style would work well for something as small as an avatar... Besides, you used entirely preexisting graphics anyhow, right?

[Jomingo]

As for the "pixelated 8-bit look", here's what I came up with, though I don't know how good they'd be for Avatars:

This first one I made about an hour ago. It's King K. Rool:


This next one is an 8-bit Squawks, but he's from a bird's eye view(pun intended). I didn't make this for this purpose, I made it for a scrolling shooter game starring squawks, but it's an example of a DKC character in 8-bit form so...


EDIT: Just made this one:

[Soniccuz]

I have 3 DK related avatars custom made with MS Paint







There's also a Diddy one but I won't be able to get to it until Summer Vacation ends.

What do you think?

(edit) Seems I have all three uploaded to imageshack all I had to do was resize Diddy.

[Qyzbud]

Jomingo, Soniccuz; those are all really cool, and would potentially be excellent for use as avatars. Top work, guys!

[Jomingo]

Made this new one today. I realized they look a lot better when you make bigger ones, because you can add a lot more detail. For instance, compare these to my last K. Rool.


Normal one.

Smaller one(I like this better).


Also, here's the render I was basing it off of:

[Qyzbud]

Awesome, Joe... that crocodile rocks! </Elton John reference>

I'm becoming quite fond of the idea of these simplified, pixelated "8-bit" sprites as avatars. The possibility of them looking great at varying sizes is a big plus, as I hope to make the forum look great on high-res 30" monitors and tiny, portable devices alike. Pixel art is particularly good for such extremes, without requiring any large files or complicated designs to look good. Besides, these graphics are perfect for the old-school look.

That said, we're still looking for a variety of other, unique ideas. Keep them coming!

[K.Rool the Krool]

Here's another attempt, slightly less detailed this time, I tried to pixelate squitter a bit and add a "grain" effect over him, if its not what you guy are after I understand. I was just bored and thought i'd take a shot at it.

[Jomingo]

Made this new one today.

Normal one.

Smaller one.


Also, here's the render I was basing it off of:

[Qyzbud]

He looks good, Jomingo! If I could suggest an improvement, perhaps you could do some contour shading on his fur, clothing, skin etc. I think that would give a little more depth to the design, without making it overly complicated. Kind of like how you shaded K. Rool's chestplate/armour - that looked sweet!

I'd like to pitch in some designs... Maybe I'll take a break from our remix project.

[Sockpuppet]

I'd like to pitch in some designs... Maybe I'll take a break from our remix project.

Oh no you won't! BACK TO WORK! Kidding
By the way Jomingo, Kiddy's right hand (On the left of the avatar) looks a bit too big. Other than that it's really good.

Also if there's any artists stuck for ideas, I made this picture a while ago. Maybe someone could do a drawn version of it:

Spoiler!

[CaptainEddie]

This is something I took five minutes to make:

krool.jpg (3.27 KiB) Viewed 162383 times

I hope is obvious enough that that is King K. Rool.

I understand if it's not what you're looking for.

I just figured I'd put it up since it is simple and easy to make.

[Rare Lover]

That looks pretty cool, but the main problem I see is that there would be no way to distinguish certain characters from others. Maybe add more color or detail somehow? That does give me an idea for all the characters faces being imprinted on coins or something.

[CaptainEddie]

Yeah, I see what you mean. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible, but that coin idea is sounding pretty good right now.

[Rare Lover]

This isn't really final, but I threw it up for the sake of it.

[CaptainEddie]

I think that looks really cool. Of course some changes would have to be made to fit the guidelines, but you may be onto something here.

[Rare Lover]

I just threw it up real fast using a coin template from Yoshi's Island.

[CaptainEddie]

Yeah, I see the crayon-like style. You also used Diddy from DK64. lt still looks nice, though.

[PotoGamer]

I'd like some kind of hand-drawn style that looks smooth. I'm thinking about printing an image of the character on tracing paper, tracing the lines with a black marker, and lightly coloring it. However, I've been a little busy lately and I haven't done it.

When I'm bored, I'll be sure to try it.

[Jomingo]

He looks good, Jomingo! If I could suggest an improvement, perhaps you could do some contour shading on his fur, clothing, skin etc. I think that would give a little more depth to the design, without making it overly complicated. Kind of like how you shaded K. Rool's chestplate/armour - that looked sweet!

I'd like to pitch in some designs... Maybe I'll take a break from our remix project.

Yeah, I might still do that. I'm still not sure if I want it to have more depth, or if the idea is to be as simple as possible. The original intention was to look about as good as the DK Arcade characters, but I've passed that by far.

Oh, and not to say that this project is more important than that project but....



@ Captain Eddie: I like yours a lot, but I agree that it would be near impossible to distinguish some of the lesser characters with just a silhouette.

@ Rare Lover: I like your Diddy, but like Eddie's silhouette it would probably be better to have colored characters.

@ Poto/Qyz/Anyone else: Please, post your ideas! There are still so many styles out there to check out!

[Rare Lover]

I definitely think the ring/coin thing is onto something, I'm going to mess around with Eddie's K. Rool. I also had an idea while playing BK, what about stained glass pictures?

[Jomingo]

Go ahead and try it out.


I was just thinking though. The DKU Neon avatars fit the site design very nicely. So I think that we should come up with something that fits the "Atlas/Adventure" theme. I can't think of any examples, but that's my two cents.

[Rare Lover]

I was thinking something Indiana Jones-like or something, maybe an aztec design?

[CaptainEddie]

How about something like this?

I tried to combine the coin idea and Jomingo's adventure theme idea.

You can tell I did this in five seconds, and I wanted to fade out the rest of the colors to look the same as the map, but I don't have the sufficient programs at the moment. The final version will look better, but i just wanted to post this as an example. I think it gets my point across.

[Jomingo]

You don't need any fancy programs to make something look good, you just need more patience for some programs. Everything I've ever done was done in MS Paint. My only complaints with that are:
-You didn't make the DK from scratch.
-The DK is KoS styled, rather than DKC styled.
-I don't know what map you used in the background, but it doesn't seem relevant. You should use some generic Parchment rather than a map. That would be easily to fill in anyway.

Also, I don't know how you guys are making your coins, but they seem a little messy. If you have Powerpoint 2007 than you can make a pretty good looking coin, like this for instance:


Or this:


EDIT: I figured I'd try out doing what Qyz said to Kiddy, so here it is. I did not fix the hand or blend the skin color, the former because I didn't really care all that much, and the latter because it was too hard. I tried, and couldn't get it to look good. Also, I try'd making Kiddy's fur a jumble of colors like the actually picture is, but it just looked like a bunch of oddly placed dots that stood out rather than blended well.

[TechKid]

I'm new to this forum, but might i suggest something like this,

This one took about an hour, but if the idea took off, i could upload some kind of "avatarkit.rar" or something, with everything prepacked, so you could do something like this

in under 5 minuets, i also took this oppurtunity to show that this idea is customizable in its timings, as you can see from the different flip speeds, this replication method is completely user friendly, and can be put into a step by step drag'n'drop guide
Edit: added one new model for veiwing

[Rare Lover]

Shrink down the coin a bit and the spinning animation is a cool idea, but I don't know if it would work here.

[TechKid]

Heres to solving 2 problems, size and spin, i changed it so it shows the picture longer than the DKC logo

[TechKid]

Sorta crappy v1 but a color idea cuz rarelover wanted one

[Rare Lover]

That doesn't look half bad. I'd be interested in seeing if it worked with other DK characters.

[Soniccuz]

The coin's an interesting idea.

in Anticipation of her eventual win in the election. I added Dixie to my line of head shots.



and then tried for something like Jomingo's work and added the rest of her.



I never figured out how to make parts transparent though...

[Cyclone]

What about staying with the Atlas theme and use scrolls or maps as the background for the avatars. That could be the template and then anyone could take their favourite character and overlay it on top with sepia colors, or colors that would match vintage style maps.


Pics found on google, DKC2 BG from spriters resource.