[REQUEST] and advice on faction symbols

[Hannibal Smith]

Hi

never posted here before but have dropped in a few times I thought that this may be the best place to look for help. I'm trying to make faction symbols for my Gallic Wars project. Verrix Toutatis a researcher I'm working with has found some images of coins from which I thought I'd try to develop a faction symbol.

My idea is to retain the coin design/idea but add some other elements to make it recognizable from a distance.

Original coin

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

My symbol mock up



Ive mocked up the coin but its a similar design.

Has anyone got any ideas on how I could make this look better? The bevel and emboss parts of my mocked up coin, I think look a bit fake.

Has anyone got any tips on making gold and silver texture look a bit more realistic?

Thanks in advance

H Smith

[Ishan]

Very nice work HS, i also did something similar for a medal proposal in which i made a few medals:

Bronze


Silver


Gold

If your aim is to give it a shield look then i think the current style would look great with a few tweaks with the colors and contours. If you wanna give a coin shape then the inner figure should be embossed\Raised. Also on the edges you can apply a gradient for uneven distribution of light so that it gives it a some realistic look.

As for Gold text style, would this suffice?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

If you want then i can PM you the .zip file containing the style, you would need photoshop for copying it.

[Hannibal Smith]

Very nice work HS, i also did something similar for a medal proposal in which i made a few medals:


If your aim is to give it a shield look then i think the current style would look great with a few tweaks with the colors and contours. If you wanna give a coin shape then the inner figure should be embossed\Raised. Also on the edges you can apply a gradient for uneven distribution of light so that it gives it a some realistic look.

Thanks for the reply I don't really understand what you mean by "apply a gradient for uneven distribution of light". How would one go about that?

As for Gold text style, would this suffice?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

If you want then i can PM you the .zip file containing the style, you would need photoshop for copying it.

The metallic texture looks great, I would certainly appreciate it if you would send the file to me .

I've been thinking about logo's some more this morning and think that maybe my plan will not work Some of the faction logos are very small and at 48x48 I dont think my design works.



The design is too small and there is not enough contrast with the background of the coin to see anything.

I'm a decent draftsman but I'm no artist can anyone help me come up with a new design? I'm relatively confident that I can reproduce the style for the other symbols.

Or better still is there anyone who would like to join our humble little team if you want to see a small part of our work you could have a look in the wip thread.

[Joar]

I'm certainly no expert on any of this, but my advice when making faction icons is to work with smaller sized images from the start. The largest size of the icon that one will encounter in the game is the 128x128 ones, so even though one often see these types of very large and detailed ones in previews and so on, it's really a waste in many ways.

Now, when it comes to the one you're working on now, my advice is to ask yourself: is it the motif of the coin you want to depict, or the coin itself? In the example below, I've removed the background of the coin, keeping only the motif which appears, from my point of view, to be a man doing something probably illegal to a horse... Kidding aside, I've kept the man, the horse and that "dead angel" thingy at the bottom. Then I've put it against a dark red background. It should now be more clear what the symbol is.

Another advice, which takes longer to do, but will pay off in the end, is to reconstruct the "essence" of the symbol. Here we have a man who's mounting a horse ( or at least that's the way I see it ). I've made my own interpretation of that motif, which I now can use for all sorts of things from faction icon to battle standard to shield motifs etc.

Please note that these are "WIP", as they say, and just to exemplify what I mean.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[blur!]

looking good mate, keep up the good work.but you can dark it a little bit.

[Hannibal Smith]

Thanks for the replies guys.

@Joar

I totally agree about the background, I had come to a similar conclusion myself. My coin was a reconstruction and not an image of the original (it was missing pieces) so I can copy it to other things. The image is quite common on Veneti coins and depicts a man riding a chariot pulled by a human-headed horse.

Here is my latest efforts



I'm still thinking that its not right. I think that the boarder is too large at least on the menu buttons (2nd and 3rd images). That would allow the symbol to be larger. Most mods seem to use the same image for each button, however I'm starting to think it would be better having a different image for each one maybe removing parts of the design each time. If the buttons were tied to the colour scheme the smaller button don't even need to have a design on.

[Joar]

I think they look OK.

About the rim, if I remember correctly, you don't see the rim of the icon when in strat map mode, 'cause then it's the rim of the interface that shows. So it's basically only when selecting a faction and loading a campaign that the entire icon show. At least that's what I think...

[Ishan]

I have sent you a PM, with those text effects you can create gold and silver style objects\text, whatever.
For Eg:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Hope that helps you somewhat.

@Joar
Rims are visible on campaign map also, for eg when we click next turn and we see all the COAs on the centre top of the screen.

[Hannibal Smith]

I have the file and it does help, thankyou I'll have a little play around with it later today

[Joar]

@Joar
Rims are visible on campaign map also, for eg when we click next turn and we see all the COAs on the centre top of the screen.

No, the rim of the interface is used there as well, hiding the rim of the icon.

[Ishan]

Ah i see what you mean now, the outermost rim, i was confusing it, & actually one can make that visible too he just needs to use the original icon with an extended alpha channel over the actual pixels he wants visible.

[Hannibal Smith]

@Ishan

Ive used a modified version of the layer style you sent me to make the following



Again its still not perfect but I think its getting better. I think the greater contrast works better when the image is reduced to make the buttons.

Thanks again

[Ishan]

Yeah it was improved a lot from the first work, looks cool now.

[Joar]

Ah, yes. These look splendid!