Newbie ship

Midoriko · Post by **Midoriko** » Thu May 07, 2009 10:39 am

I'm relatively new to the game, and have been doing nothing but making ships for the past couple days. This one is called Anansi, and I'd love some feedback.

I don't know why it's tiny, but if you click on the picture it will hopefully get bigger (maybe...?)

Opusau · Post by **Opusau** » Thu May 07, 2009 10:53 am

Yellow-gold body and dark red legs clash spectacularly badly in my opinion, but other than that, nice looks. What's up with the two bulges connected to the front legs though?

firevikin125 · Post by **firevikin125** » Thu May 07, 2009 10:55 am

Its a good first ship

I like the shape and the colors are good.
The one thing is that there is a bit of repetition.
But other than that it is a really great start.

Kanosint · Post by **Kanosint** » Thu May 07, 2009 11:21 am

It has good parts and bad parts... I can't really put my finger on it, though... Still, for a big ship made by a newb, it's quite nice... The yellow's a bit 'dirty' though, as is the red... Maybe brighten it a tad? It seems there's already some shading, that's good...

The struts at the front legpairs should go, though... Too flimsy for such a bulky ship...

Squishy · Post by **Squishy** » Thu May 07, 2009 11:51 am

The overall shape is good, haven't seen anything like it.

However. the colours are rather dull (but at least they complement) and the section variety is lacking.

Your next steps is to refine your ship by replacing some of the adjacent same sections with different ones, and smooth out the interior. Colours can wait for now.

Danny420Dale · Post by **Danny420Dale** » Thu May 07, 2009 1:23 pm

Shape's kinda weird, colors BLOW ASS (damn near 'Liberate tutemet ex inferis!'), concept is interesting, but it still kinda sucks overall. Start reading the pretty pictures, NOW. Then try smaller ships.

Elias_The_Crimson · Post by **Elias_The_Crimson** » Thu May 07, 2009 1:26 pm

That's really good for a first ship. The shape is quite interesting, almost unique. You appear to have figured out the basics about simulating depth with the use of different-shade colors, which is great!

I suggest you solve the repetition of some sections. The repetition of the Stock22 section looks particularly unpleasant, and the struts connecting the forward wings seem a bit out of place on such a heavy ship.
Try experimenting with similar sections to clear up the repetition. As said before me, better colors can wait.

EriErin · Post by **EriErin** » Thu May 07, 2009 2:22 pm

I generally don't consider multiple shades puke yellow-green and three-day-old scab red to be good fill colors for a BSF ship. They are, to put it bluntly, eyeburning and should be purged with fire.

With any decent amount of lurking you'll find out that most of the good ships on these forums are built around simple gray fill colors. Those that aren't built as such are often built around light pastel colors. Specifically I suggest going for light grays, as such colors will make your ships easier to see overall (and in practice I've found that they're harder for noobs to bork up than darker colors).

The shape isn't too flattering either. The front wing supports are dangerously spindly and look like they would be sheared apart by a sharp turn. Even if the shape were fixed, you'd still have the extreme section cluttering to attend to, since as far as I can see, there is absolutely zero cohesion in the sectionwork that makes up the wings. They're just... tons of shit thrown together to fit into a general shape that isn't too pretty anyway.

Overall eugh. I'll have to say that it looks pretty ripe for scrapping right about now. Try smaller ships-- a smaller amount of space to fill generally improves section usage.

Post by **Anna** » Thu May 07, 2009 2:40 pm

Elias_The_Crimson wrote:As said before me, better colors can wait.

No. No they can't. Better colours cannot wait. Jesus Christ that's just horrible. Those colours are painfully bad. But nevermind them. Just fucking AVOID colours for now. For the moment, I'm going to tackle the ship itself. But first, Midoriko, allow me to take a moment to address those who have already commented on this ship.

Are you lot fucking insane? Has everyone's brains melted in my absense? Have you all been taking fucking heroin or something? I'm not saying we shouldn't encourage people or give them constructive criticism, but god damnit, this would've been considered a sub-standard ship before we got all the new stuff in v0.90. WITH all the new stuff, it's... not worthy of all the praise you guys are throwing at it. Jesus.

Okay, now, Midoriko, I will address the ship itself, and offer as much helpful criticism as I can. Well crap, Eri beat me to it, while I started writing this post and got distracted. Yes, I'm going to have to agree with most of what he said. Much of the design is over-cluttered, and you use lots of bad repetition, and no good repetition. Good repitition is ideal for arms and limbs, if done correctly, leading to a layered-armour sort of pattern.

Bad repetition is... what you did with the old Stock 26 sections. That's pretty horrible.

Over all, I'd very strongly suggest trying for smaller ships, and focusing on not just slapping sections together at random, but placing meticulously and with precise care, to achieve the ideal effect. And stuff.

Cycerin · Post by **Cycerin** » Thu May 07, 2009 3:13 pm

Bad sense of direction, bad section meshing, bad color scheme. The rest is a decent start. Try working with smaller things and look at a color wheel. Or just, you know, pick two shades of gray and a pastel color.

ArcaneDude · Post by **ArcaneDude** » Thu May 07, 2009 10:57 pm

Unfortunately I have to agree with Anna here. The colors...I just don't like. Maybe a similar color scheme *can* work, but by thunder not here.

The section usage isn't very exciting either. Repetition with the circle sector sections, the arms are blobbish appendages of clutter...There is no finesse whatsoever in this ship. Nothing to make it even slightly accepteable. Take into mind the tips of previous posters, and there may yet be hope for you, though.

Danny420Dale · Post by **Danny420Dale** » Thu May 07, 2009 11:07 pm

Also, use PNG, not JPEG. I don't care *how* many angry PMs from the JPEG Fanboys (seriously now, fanboyism for _JPEG_!?! Are you fucking shitting me!?) I end up getting at this point. PLEASE USE PNG. Irfanview is a good image tool for saving PNGs. I also use its RGB-channel swap feature for quick recolors.

@AD: That's probably why the arms look blobby. JPEG compression crap combined with the LIBERATE TUTEMET EX INFERIS colors to make a horrible mess that ended up resembling a degloving injury.

Deltaflyer · Post by **Deltaflyer** » Fri May 08, 2009 1:42 am

F9 in SM screenshots saves automatically as .png anyway, so there is NO EXCUSE for blurry images again. Ever.

The ship is to be blunt, horrible. The colours clash like no other and the repetition is AWFUL. Work on using more varied sections and coulors that do not clash and your next ship will be alot better than this.

Bang Doll · Post by **Bang Doll** » Fri May 08, 2009 4:53 am

I'm thinking that if you made the exact same ship but at one-tenth this size it'd look much better. Like an alien fighter-bomber or something like that.

As it is, the general shape is cool, but the section usage and colors, as others have said, is not. But I must give you credit for not using aegis and not absolutely spamming it with weapons.

For section usage: 26's should be used in small doses and should be well-hidden by/blend in with other section. The middle two 26's do this pretty well, the outer four do not. Additionally, using a bunch of random sections to fill in a general shape tends to look ugly. The dark red you used for the wings hides it somewhat, but the brighter red and yellow make it plain as day. Try using sections that blend well together to make your wings.

For colors: You don't have to do greyscale + pastel for your ships. Go here: http://colorschemedesigner.com/ if you need ehep designing a color scheme. If you want to make the dark red the basis of your ship, the yellow pieces would probably look better as a really dark orange or a vague salmon color. Also, on your wings, try outlining them: take a dark red wing piece, duplicate it, make the dupicated piece bright red and nudge it one or two places out.