My Latest Game Graphics

[AllTim]

My day job is a librarian, but my night job is as a graphics designer for wargames.  I thought this might be a good spot to show off what I up-coming projects I am currently working on.  Right now I am nearly done with the counters, map, and cover art for a game from HFD called "Succeed or Die: The Battles of Rafa and El Arish June 5-6, 1967".  If all goes well, it will be released sometime in May.

[Barthheart]

Looks cool! 

[Tolstoi]

Hey! Happy to see another librarian join the Dragoons. 

The map and counters look great. Can you tell us if this will be a 2 player game, or a solitaire game? I know Paul Rohrbaugh designs both, just curious to know what kind of game might be offered up in May. I'm curious, what tools do you use for your work?

Looking forward to whatever else you can share with us in the future.

[judgedredd]

That looks cracking 

[AllTim]

Thanks.  This will be a two player game.  Some of his games use a deck of cards to figure out who goes first and how many of your units to activate in a turn, but with this one you roll a die.  In terms of the graphic look, I was inspired (at least for the counters) by the old game Panzerblitz.  I always loved those black tank silhouettes.  The three numbers on the counters are (left to right) combat, range, movement.

[Tolstoi]

Excellent, thank you for the info about the game.

Do you use a vector graphics editor, or a raster graphics editor? I've been thinking about learning how to use GIMP and Inkscape. I'm curious what you use to create such great maps and counters.

[AllTim]

I work in Photoshop, so its all pretty much raster based.  But fonts are of course vector and Photoshop has a "shapes" tool which also is vector.  I make as much use of military vector fonts and shapes as I can.

[AllTim]

I tried out Gimp for a while.  Its very powerful and very close to what Photoshop can do.  And I have heard good things about Inkscape.   But I also found Gimp to be as hard to learn as Photoshop was, and after 10+ years of learning I still feel I am barely scraping the surface of what it can do.  Actually a lot of the problem for me was trying to un-learn Photoshop so I could use Gimp.  I knew how Photoshop did things and was constantly frustrated when Gimp did it differently!  Somebody approaching Gimp with no knowledge at all of Photoshop would probably find it easier to learn.

[Tolstoi]

Thank you for the info about the graphic tools you use and your experience with them. I've never used Photoshop, so I can approach Gimp without any expectations. Also, since Gimp is open source, that makes it very affordable. 

Looking forward to seeing your other projects when you are ready to share them.





 

[bob48]

What size are the counters?

[AllTim]

.625 and the map will be two 11x17 sheets for 22x17 total.

[bob48]

Thanks 

[AllTim]

Another game that is 99% done is a game called "Volters Lead the Way!" by Hermann Luttmann.  This is in the same style as his "In Magnificent Style" push-your-luck solitaire games, but with a SciFi setting.  I must admit I found doing the graphics for this game quite challenging to make up as it needed original artwork for two sets of counters as well as cards, two maps two player aids and the box cover.  This is just a small image from Steam where Hermann has been playtesting the game that will give you and idea of all the parts needed.  I probably put way too much time into detailing the counter art, and you can't see it here, but I am hoping it will look great once actually printed out.  The game will be on a 22x17 map, with both 1 inch and .625 inch counters and standard sized cards.  There are actually two maps- one on Mars and one on the Moon.  Watch for this one to come out in the not too distant future from White Dog Games.

[W8taminute]

Replying in order to follow this thread.

[bob48]

His Franco-Prussian game 'At Any Costs' is one of my favourite games of all times. I really like the 'Blind Sword' system.