Been making skins for a while so this is my first attempt at an original gun. Here we have a Mauser C96. I know it's not too great but its certainly not bad for my first attempt i think

http://i.imgur.com/I0ADXv8.png

seeing it in perspective though i may have made the up and down models too small? i can't really tell. Someone give me input.

Weapon #2 Ak74u

http://i.imgur.com/g8ZYTHi.png

Just realized a big mistake already.... slide isn't supposed to be on both sides :P

up down models on the mauser are a tad small

I feel like you could lighten up the ak74 shading a little bit


apart from that gg i like ya work

Yeah i'm not done with either of them. i threw both together in like 30 mins each on a whim. already touched up the ak a little bit, the one i uploaded is my first rough draft. the up and down models are the hardest part for me to wrap my head around as of right now. perspective and trying to include detail is killing me. kinda gave up on the mauser that's why it looks so crappy, i think it came out a bit better for the ak though? ugh i hate trying to model it from the top with such limited pixels.

And after comparing the mauser side by side with the luger it seems i made it way too small in general... probably should have checked that ahead of time. gonna try to blow it up a bit. might actually have room for some of the details now on the bright side. Oh well, it was my first ever gun gfx i wasn't expecting it to be smooth.

I like both guns very much, my only complaint is that the shading is way too dark.

on the ak? i meant for it to look almost a abs plastic black. i can brighten it a little, so far ive made the grip and the clip a military green to add a little accent to it, i don't wanna make it grey though as it doesnt fit the modern ak74 look i was going for. It's a mesh of 3 different designs. The only part of it resembling the old iconic model from say "cod black ops" is the positioning of the slide. Other than that its blending two more modern designs.

Also it looks alot darker on this forum for some reason, i assure you it isn't as dark as it appears, no darker than the original ak.

http://i.imgur.com/96aZfVo.png

alright absolute final version

The clip is wider at the top (4px) than the bottom (3px).

I oddly can't see this on the full size, but the zoomed in version it looks painful haha. Weird.


Very nice graphics though. Simple, small, basic; exactly the kind of graphics Graal was meant for (not those goofy over-sized guns with pillow-shading). The new AK shading is way better too. Something looks a little funny to me with the Mauser, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I like it, but something just doesn't quite look right. I think it has to do with the lightened line for the slide blending into the white background though.

Yeah i meant for the clip to look a little smaller at the bottom. i might extend it though cuz its kinda been bugging me too. I'm scrapping the mauser and redoing it because it ended up way too small anyway. I figured making it smaller at the bottom would give it a more curved but straight look for the type of small clip i was going for. i think i agree though it should be a pixel wider.

just did a regular screen cap.

Looking at it on pc, I see the same thing they said 3px on top, 4 on bottom. Tripple+ posting in a row is a bad thing and usually if you catch your post the same day you can go back and "edit" it.

The AK74 looks like an MP5 Navy. Probably because of the collapsible stock.

I took alot of things into consideration and made a few adjustments and improvements. here is the final product for reals this time. i did all the touchup work pixel by pixel at 4:45 am to 5:52 am i'm sure i screwed something up though.

http://i.imgur.com/OE1ZFQc.png

I can't really see anything that you might have screwed up. It doesn't look bad. My one suggestion is you might want to make the black lines on the inside of the handgrip a very dark green instead of black, cause it looks a little cluttered. (keyword being "might". For all I know, that might look terrible XD)

i tried that already, i didn't like it. i tried a few things other than black for most of the details (like darker green and dark grey) but with the main colors being so dark already it didn't seem to fit.

Forget I said anything then XD
It looks good

Just curious, why do GFX always incorporate the clip attached to the gun? It's would just make more sense to me to add the clip on during the gani process.

That seemed to be the norm so i just went with it. maybe to make it easier to deal with for idle animations?

When I used to do GANIs, it was a lot easier to have the solid sprite as well for the idle/walk/fire GANIs, especially if you were gonna make something complex (IE breathing animations, pulling a bolt on the fire, etc). Having to individually move and line up two sprites for every frame is more time consuming than importing an extra sprite.

Yeah, Amsel is right. There's only one gani per gun that needs a detachable clip, and that's the reload gani, and it doesn't make sense to make Gani artists' jobs even more time consuming just to save a few KBs in an image file.

On top of that, that's just how we draw it to start. Start with the whole gun -> copy and paste the clip and the gun without the clip separately. And it makes it easy to see at a glance what the whole gun looks like if you're looking at the image.

(Maybe if someone wanted to script a new, modern gani editor where you could link layers so they move with each other but otherwise still maintain their separation, like in Photoshop, we could stop including the whole gun)

I bet we could make a nice select tool to attach multiple images to each other. Sounds like a question for fp4.

While you're at it, add a visual sprite selector, so you can just see the image in the editor window and drag a rectangle over the parts you want to select to make a new sprite :D
(Like in Unity)

Would be much better than having to type in the position and dimensions by hand for each sprite.

Great idea.

Some criticism for the two gun graphics:

-Turn the contrast way up. Particularly on the AK74 thing.

-Also, you have some serious perspective issues. Your up down graphics are drawn entirely in the top down perspective, whereas your left right images are done in a side perspective. Era uses neither of these perspectives.

-You should choose a light source and your shading should reflect this.

No i'm not shading things based on a light source, im shading things based on there not being a light source at all. lol there is no sun in the sky on era bro. Everything shaded that way looks retarded. I prefer very slight different hex values all over the place to give i a metallic look and that's it. And as for perspectives era actually uses both of those perspectives, i see what you mean though i was having alot of trouble with the up and down and just slapped it together but i flipped through some other images and i think i know how to improve it to make it look a little more believable. I thought they were all basically from the top until i actually looked a little more cloesly at some other weapons. I still think it's gonna be alot of trial and error. As for the left and right, they are all just the side of the gun, i don't see what you mean there at all.

I'm not sure if you've seen the latest FP4 editor, but it has a sprite cutter where you can go into "preview" mode and click on a sprite, it automatically cuts out a rectangle based on where the transparencies start, and then gives you a preview. The preview function also works if you're doing it manually (typing in the x/y/width/height). It works really really well.

Edit: Also, totally sorry for derailing your thread Link lol, I'll stop talking about GANI editors now.

Era uses a 45 degree perspective from the top down. In order for your guns to reflect this you must be able to see the side as well as the top simultaneously, not just the side.

I get what you're saying. just have to grasp my head on how to emulate that with such a limited amount of pixels. Thats been the biggest challenge so far is how limited i feel. I'll get better with time. I threw the original versions of both of those together in around an hour while i was drunk. I'll bear what u said in mind for future projects though, i'll just have to extensively study some other gun models without directly ripping them off.

Edit: i think i got a grasp of it. the up and down models look alot more like what you were saying i think natchez, i think the left and right are already fine though


http://i.imgur.com/zZHZRi7.png

damn bro you're good. keep at it.

i don't hate it.... which means you are better than tim.

someone hire his man!

Aw shucks eclipse, you're making me blush.

10mm pistol from fallout

http://i.imgur.com/lhoFBSF.png

Too much black and dark colors, need some lighter colors to see more details....

Its the forum or imgur that makes it look so dark. its actually alot of grey and browns to look rusty. you have to like lean in to see it but I assure you it isn't that dark.

how's this in comparison? Needa fix the back ironsight for sure though. i forgot i never added any detail to it in the initial shape drawing stage and i just now noticed

http://i.imgur.com/RuKQAjs.png



http://i.imgur.com/LH074Qd.png


A few small improvements, i left the other one up for comparison, thoughts?

I think your gun looks great, keep up the good work :)

I'm working on trying to find a way to add more detail while keeping it really rusty looking. i'm not really sure how to go about it honestly. it just feels really bare since it doesn't really have actual "shading" per-say due to the rust.

Looks perfect!

Well the line art is okay but your shading still needs work.
The side views are still done in the wrong perspective and look flat as a result.
I would still suggest choosing a light source and shading accordingly.
You need to have much greater contrast between the different hues or shades you use. This is why some people have said it looks too black. You should try increasing the brightness difference between the various hues/shades.

I'm far from done with the 10mm its still a work in progress. I've applied the rusty look to it, now i just need to find a way to shade it while keeping the rust effect. And i still don't know how one would go about conveying a perspective like that from a side view. ive looked at a bunch of different gun models and aside from shading it differently i see no other way to convey that. But either way it's still a work in progress and has yet to truly be shaded. Gonna experiment with a few things. Also i think too much contrast is a bad thing, if it jumps too drastically it looks weird, i always stay within 2 brightness values of the last pixel. most i'll jump is 4

You can do the perspective correctly mostly through shading. This is what I mean by choose a light source and shading accordingly. The top of the weapon should be done in a brighter shade than the side. Perhaps study pictures of pistols in the perspective you are trying to achieve. Here's a decent example:
http://www.ultimate100.net/airsoft-i...guns-32527.jpg

Also your 2-4 brightness value rule is a very bad rule to have. This will make your work look flat. It will be impossible to give it any form. As a general rule I tend to ensure at least 15-20 brightness value difference between shades. My advice is to increase your contrast in this way and to also choose a light source.

Also, I think this is the best pixel art tutorial for beginners available: http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/foru....asp?TID=11299
I think you might benefit from it.

http://i.imgur.com/ooFjqWE.png



http://i.imgur.com/5rpoxCH.png

finished the shading for the left and right models today before i went to work, i think i'm satisfied with it. Just gotta do the up and down now. And i still stand by 15-20 being a little too drastic. This gun still has to look really old and rusty, if i go too bright at any point it will ruin that effect.