Mr Manfranjansen

Wow! Thanks for the encouragement! I'm currently working on the ship cards (please see post called "having trouble creating a "cutaway" in the general section for more information). With Madjik's help (and some help from Ventor...although I still haven't tried his technique) I believe I'll have another prototype soon. In general, I wanted just the outline of a ship, but I wanted to give it a 3D look around the edges as if the top of the ship was cut off and you could see the inside. I'm working on a floor right now...can't seem to get it the way I want, but I'm close. Also, I got a tip from a friend at work that suggested I use the line/curve tool to trace around the edges first. He said that would give it a really clear, tight line so that when I create the 3D effect it'll look a lot cleaner. -Mr. Man-

Hey! Just wanted to THANK YOU, Madjik! I've got my 3D-ish look down to how I like it. Your method worked like a charm! Now I just need to add all the colorful bits (floor, furniture, etc.) to make it look good. I'm gonna go searching for a tut on tiling. Seems I need some practice in this area. -Mr. Man- EDIT: GAH! Looks like there's a tile plug-in! Cool! I'll have to mess with it!

Oh - My - Gosh! That looks amazing! How long did it take you to do that, Madjik? I'm looking at it and I keep thinking, "Why did mine turn out so completely opposite of that?" I guess I need some more clarification of step 4 (even though I know it looks simple). "But I suggest to create the shape of the ship in a transparent layer, duplicate it and use Layer Rotate/zoom to zoom at 0.99 on the layer under. Repeat dup+zoom 6-8 times them merge." So...let's say I've got Layer 1. I duplicate Layer 1 and now I have Layer 2 on top of Layer 1. I Rotate/Zoom and set zoom to 0.99 on Layer 1? THEN do I merge? Which layer do I duplicate? Am I duplicating Layer 1 each time? Do I merge after each zoom, or do I build layer after layer and THEN merge all of 'em? This is really wonderful and I appreciate your time! I also want to try Ventor's technique. By the way, Ventor (I hope you're still watching this). I forgot to mention how much I LOVE the brushed metal finish in your sig! I think I might want to do something like that for the border around the board (with the spacescape board inside.) I think that would look fantastic! -Mr. Man-

Hmmm...thanks for the tips, Madjik. I already knew about the trick of drawing half an image and then duping the layer and flipping it. It's a great technique and it works well. I did that for the ship I posted. Now it's symmetrical. I tried Tip #4, but all I get are thicker lines. I know I'm doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what.

Hi Ventor, This is great! Thanks! I can't wait to get home and try this out. I have to say that your sig looks kinda how I want the inside of the ship to look. You've got a 3D-ish look to the edge of your frame where the cool insides are. Makes it look like you're going "inside" the metal frame...like a portal. Cross section sounds right. I realize that I'm being really specific about what I want to do. I wasn't really expecting to find a tutorial to do exactly what I wanted. I just need some tidbits here and there to build on it. If I get it right, I'll create my own tutorial! Seems like the steps you outlined for me are a good place to start. It is most appreciated! -Mr. Man-

Greetings, all! I've posted a few things here and there and everybody has been super helpful and encouraging. Without repeating myself too much I'll give a brief explanation of what I'm trying to do and where I'm having trouble: I'm making a Sci-Fi based boardgame with my daughter. I'm using Paint.NET for the artwork because even though I can't draw much other than stick figures, Paint.NET allows me to do cool things with existing images and I can create my own, original images without having to know how to draw anything! I've mocked up a couple prototype cards and I have a game board with planets, a spacescape, some space dust and an asteroid field. I put these in the Pictorium. Now for my problem: In the game, the players have several classes of ships they can move around. Each of these ships (depending on size) has a certain number of "hardpoints". These are just places where you can add things like guns, mining lasers, engine boosters...whatever I can come up with. I wanted a way for the players to keep track of their ship upgrades and I thoght I'd simply put an outline of the ship on a card (thick...like chipboard) and drill a hole into the hardpoint location so the player can purchase their upgrade and then mark their ship with a peg. (I hope this is clear) As I said, I can't draw, so I scanned one of the ships and used the outline tool to make the basic shape. I was going to stop there and simply add the hardpoint locations, but then I saw this: Thanks to the folks at Campaign Cartographer for making this. I think it's great and I wanted to do something similar. I think I've got the basic idea down...use layers and layer in each section of the floor, or rooms or whatever, but every time I do it , it looks like a horrible hack job and I get frustrated. I'm at work (at lunch) right now and I grabbed a ship off Google images and created an outline for it. Original Ouline I know the outline isn't clean or proportioned very well. I threw it together quickly so I'd have something to show you. I'd really like to see if I can make the "cutaway" look like you're looking down into the ship...give it a little 3D effect...like an edge to the sides (outline) of the ship. Drop shadow will probably do this (I just thought of that just now...I haven't had a chance to test it, though.) Is cutaway the right term for this? I searched around a bit and I found a few tutorials that were close, but not really what I wanted. Perhaps if I get the right term I can find an existing tut that'll help me hone my techniques. Thanks! -Mr. Man-

I can easily make the d6 bigger and move it, but that's not important right now. I think I've decided that I like the green one. I noticed when I was looking at the red one that I did some weird tweaking to the d6 before I even dropped it into the orb. The red one might look better if I keep it in it's "normal" state and just drop it in. -Mr.Man-

Okay, Madjik. I can't decide if this looks better or not. Here's the card again, but with a green d6. What do you think? -Mr. Man-

Wonderful! This is great, thanks! Yellowman: I really appreciate your diagram of how bleed works. That helps a lot and when I get ready to print again, I'll be sure to consult your diagram to be sure I get it right. Madjik: Your drawings are excellent! Thanks for illustrating what's going on. I remember going through that same thought process now! (back when I first designed the board). I should've mentioned to you that the planets and everything on the planet-side of each colored border is considered one space. So...if you go back to the board you drew, count the hexes just to the outside of the numbered hexes you showed me. There are seven empty hexes around each planetary space, so everything is okay. I thought about putting the planets in the corners as you suggested, but that makes the approach to the planets limited to only two sides. I wanted more approaches to the planets because I thought it opened up more strategic options for the players. Also...since these are planets, theoretically you should be able to approach from all sides and all angels in three dimensions. The least I could do on this board is open up everything around the planets (which I'll do when I get more playtesting done...this will work for now). Your offer to help with the cards is...well I don't have the words to express how much I appreciate it! I will definitely ask for some help once I've thought up what the cards are going to do! You're right about this not technically being a PDN discussion, so I'll stop here to avoid clogging the Pictorium with an incorrect topic. -Mr. Man-

This is very encouraging. Thanks Helen and Madjik! Madjik: I LOVE the idea of trying a green die! I have to confess that I'm slightly color blind, so what I see and what you see are probably a bit different. This is very helpful to me. My colorblindness is rather mild, though. I can see primary colors just fine. Subtle differences in pastels and other combined colors give me some trouble. The best way to see what I'm talking about is to Google "color blind test". Take a look at the second entry, "Take the Ishihara Colorvision test". The first slide is a "16" with grey dots all around it. I can see that just fine. I see absolutely nothing on the second slide. It just looks like a bunch of pretty dots to me. On some of the slides I can barely make out what I was supposed to see AFTER I see the answer, but without that as a guide they all look like dots. Hmmm...actually...now that I look at it again, I don't think the "16" is surrounded by grey dots...perhaps blue-green? Sometimes I need to see the color I THINK it is, next to that actual color to realize I'm incorrect about what color I'm looking at! Madjik? Would you please explain about the exit paths? I tried to be careful with the hexes to be sure that all planets are the same distance from the asteroid field (each start planet is 2 hexes away). There are seven, empty hexes around each planet. If I overlooked something I'd be VERY interested to see where I went wrong. I wanted to create a LOT of cards. Since each card is only going to be used once, I wanted to create at least 40 cards...better with 60. I wanted each card to be different, but I might not be able to come up with 40 - 60 unique cards. Just for grins, I might only create 20 cards and make 2 of each. Then, as I playtest, I'll take suggestions from the other players and create on an "as I go" basis. Sometimes new ideas will jump out at me as we're playing, so I might be able to swing all the unique cards eventually. -Mr. Man-

Thanks, Dug! I'm going to post where I'm stuck in the General area later today as soon as I can get my head around the specifics of what I'm trying to do. I'm having trouble coming up with the correct terminology, but I think if I illustrate it with enough examples, people will be able to help me. -Mr. Man-

Hello all, I'm a bit nervous to do this, but I guess I'll risk it. I have a post in the introduction forum that explains how I got into Paint.NET and why I needed to use something simple, but powerful. Long story short, I was so interested in the planet and space tutorials that I started making planets and spacescapes. Then I got inspired to create a board game with my daughter and I've been using Paint.NET for all the artwork. So...without further ado...here's a prototype card I came up with: This is 100% PDN except for the hand and the orb. I grabbed that from Google Images, along with the six-sided die (d6 in gamer speak). I simply added the d6 as a new layer and then messed with the transparency a bit to make it look like it was floating inside the orb. The title of the card "Hand of Fate" was done using the buttons plugin, but the button has a cool effect that makes it look shiny. There's a band of color at the top of the button and at the bottom. The band at the top interfered with the text, so I removed it to clarify the text. I thought it turned out fine. It looks great when printed on photopaper with the highest quality. I tried using buttons for the lower left number and the lower right number, but they made the card look too busy, so I removed them and just dropped the numbers there. The number on the bottom left is used to indicate how many times you can use the card. I've decided to remove it because I think it'll be too cumbersome to keep track of card usage during the game. It'll be a source for arguments, so I'm making all cards usable only once (for now...I still need to playtest). The number on the right is a simple explanation of what the card does so the player doesn't have to read the description every single time they pick up the card. This next image is the game board: This took me a long time to make and I won't bore all of you with the details. The planets looked a lot better when they were bigger, but this is fine for prototyping. When printed, this image is 24" x 24". I'm not sure what I'll do with the asteroid field. For some reason, I thought I should keep all the asteroids in each hex, but that makes things look a bit...unnatural..."forced", I guess. I think I might change that and make a big asteroid with some smaller ones floating around it in the same yellow highlighted space. For prototyping, I'll keep things as they are. My printer also told me I should consider...dang...I forgot the term...is it "bleed"? I need to allow some extra space around the image so the printer can cut it properly. Whew! Okay...I hope I did this properly. I'm going to post it now and then attempt to get my own images to see if they worked. -Mr.Man-