Hm, apparently after he drew the stuff he used photo shop.

Ah, it's pretty common to use Inkscape to do lines, then Photoshop or Gimp to color them in, that's what I do unless I need my final images to be vectors for the purpose of scaling or animation. And yes, feel free to link to examples of your stuff or your friend's stuff that you want to emulate. You can also look at my page if you want, half the examples there are Inkscape only or Inkscape then Photoshop. The top line of images are all Inkscape-only (with the exception of the background texture behind the scales). Also the mecha farther down the page is probably the most complicated Inkscape-only thing I have done, and the monster lineart immediately above the mecha is an example of about the maximum amount of complexity and realism you can get in Inkscape, then color in Photoshop or Gimp.

Also here is a forum thread for a monster breeding game where I did all the graphics, it is 100% lines from Inkscape and colored in Photoshop.

[Edited by - sunandshadow on January 3, 2009 10:55:05 PM]

Here's what I'm aiming for

img103.imageshack.us/img103/1563/f92qk6.jpg

Another style I want to match is that of the Endless Cathedral game made by DTS, it can be found in the help wanted section
and here are some of my drawings:

I have an album on freewebs.com/serpentania, and also made that logo.

Stairs. Simply an isometric stairway where the are dimensions were equal. I chiseled it out of a cube.

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Some strange world. It took me 2 or 3 weeks to make it, with a few hours a day. It's just a world and I was working with terrain, textures, and lighting.

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Isometric grid. Could be useful for an area builder or something of that nate. Possibly good for a strategy game.

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Here's a screen interface I made for an MMO-style game.

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This is my style, all done in paint.

[Edited by - Fuji on January 4, 2009 10:42:33 AM]

All of your stuff could definately be done in Inkscape. You want to get that same style in Inkscape, so import some of those bitmaps and start recreating them.

The first image, your goal, is certainly beyond my skill range in Inkscape, but I believe it could be done with some experience. I bet that would be very well suited to a vector + photoshopping process.

And if you happened to have missed a recent article, read it! The discussion page for it also has some Inkscape-related chat.

Yes, what Ezbez said. [smile] Also here is a tutorial/example set of images for making terrain tiles have shadows that make them look more realistic, in a 3/4 overhead view like your goal example.

1)Where those images made in Inkscape?

2)It wasn't really a tutorial, and it didn't match the quality of Golden Sun (the goal image).

3)How do you do multiple straight lines without bezier curves?

Using the Bezier curve tool, you will get a straight line if you just click the mouse once, move the cursor, then either double click, or click once and hit return. To make the line exactly horizontal, vertical, or a few other angles, hold down the Control key while drawing it. (To get a curve you click and drag instead.)

If you're talking about the PlanetCute graphics, the they are vector art, although I don't know specifically if they were made in Inkscape or Illustrator (the two programs are pretty similar anyway). Their quality is definitely superior to the Golden Sun example, although the style is a bit more cartoony. I am not suggesting you imitate the style, I am suggesting that it's a nice selection of terrain blocks that you could use the base shapes of when making your own, which will presumably be necessary since the Golden Sun example uses terrain blocks. The tutorial parts are here and here, and the example images are downloadable here, here, and here. (The PlanetCute graphics I linked to here are the bitmap versions, he has the vectors versions available but they're in a weird file format 'Expression Design'. The other example tiles were not made in a vector program but could be easily redone as vectors.

Quote: Original post by Fuji
1)Where those images made in Inkscape?

I don't think the Lost Garden images are done in Inkscape, but he might use Illustrator, Adobe's vector editing tool. It certainly looks very vector.

Quote: 2)It wasn't really a tutorial, and it didn't match the quality of Golden Sun (the goal image).

sunandshadow was right in that the tool you use depends on what style you want. Pixel art is different from full-scale raster, and both are different from vector.

Note though that the quality of the shape of the art is down to the skill of the artist. You can do great line art in both the GIMP (raster) or Inkscape (vector). However different styles of lines and colours is better with different tools. Vector art is great for smooth curves and solid colours or simple gradients - think anything by Cartoon Network. With vector, you can also rescale to any degree and not get any pixelisation effects. But if you want to simulate complex artistic textures like paint or charcoal, raster editors will serve you better.

However there's nothing stopping you using both vector and raster together. If you were doing a webcomic you could do line work in Inkscape, then colour it in GIMP, then import the raster image back into Inkscape to add dialog boxes and text. Use the best tools for the job.

For the Golden Sun image you've provided, I'm sure that was done in pixels (which means raster). The shading in the cliff would be hard to emulate exactly using vector art, although it could be done. However, there's nothing stopping you using a slightly different colouring style but the same basic shapes with a vector graphics editor like Inkscape.

Here's a few images I've pulled from my journal. They're a couple of years old and done as experiments in how to colour in Inkscape (I really need to do some more Inkscape art ASAP. And have a better archiving system then just Google image searching on my login name [smile]).

Quote: 3)How do you do multiple straight lines without bezier curves?

You can define line segments to be straight. Use the node selection tool (F2) and select bits of your curve, and there's a button in the top menu bar that turns selected segments into straight ones. You'll no longer have the curve handles on the nodes for that segment.

Alternatively, you can add extra nodes to a straight line segment to split it into two straight segments, and move the nodes around to where you want.

Thanks, the straight lines were a big problem, making it hard for me to get almost anywhere. I'll start trying to trace the Golden Sun scene in Inkscape, do some details, and then do the rest in GIMP and see how it turns out. I'll post it here once it's finished.

Thank you so much for all your advice as I would be nowhere without your help.

One thing that might help is before starting to trace the Golden Sun scene draw some grid lines on it showing where the breaks between tiles are. It's about 16 tiles wide and 10 tall. Then trace one tile, duplicate it as well as you can, then copy and paste it to all the places that tile is used.