"Skyships! Project Pages" Topic

Finally made a web page for this….

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Excellent.

If this is a game you're going to market, consider doing a web site (or sub-site of scalecreep.com?) in a "Victorian newspaper" theme, the way you started your postings on TMP. This web site on the Russo-Japanese War shows how nice that might look, and it looks like little more than a drab newspapery color scheme, some fancy gothic fonts fonts the titles, and period etchings/engravings. Instead of stock period art, you can just take photos of your ships against a scenic backdrop, convert them to black and white, maybe smudge in some clouds, and voila! A reconnaissance photo snapped over the North Sea!

Or you could do it in sepia tone for that "really old" look:

Too much fun.

- Ix

Seriously. A little photoshop can go a long way. We did the Victorian Theme for Bay Area Yards a while back.

Every ship in these pics is a 1/600 model. (click on each cover for full story!)

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That's brilliant! I would have used those as an example if I'd known about them. Are those links collected into a web site or sub-site somewhere? I go to BAY all the time, but I've never run across these before.

I like the wakes. Were those photoshopped in, or somehow in the photo? I tried adding smoke to the stacks in those photos above, but I didn't really like the outcome.

- Ix

Aside to Extra Crispy: in the photos above, the shadow of the hull on the marble table totally looks like a black-painted hull underneath. Now you know what that would look like if you modeled it on. :-)

- Ix

In my background/fluff a rare copper isotope creates lift if you run a current through it. So hulls are all copper lined.

Also creates a strategic/campaign "scramble for copper mines" type setting. So I can do Colonials with Skyships! in 6mm land – air games.

Are those links collected into a web site or sub-site somewhere? I go to BAY all the time, but I've never run across these before.

They were once upon a time, but as I got busier I never finished the story and eventually I took them down.

I like the wakes. Were those photoshopped in, or somehow in the photo? I tried adding smoke to the stacks in those photos above, but I didn't really like the outcome.

Wakes and smoke are photoshop effects.

To get a REAL period newspaper/magazine feel, you should photoshop them to a coarse grain dot image or (if possible) engravings.

I can't find a way to do that easily. For the above photos, the color (B&W or sepia) were done in seconds, the clouds took some time but were amazingly easy.

By contrast, all the filters I've tried to convert a photo into a "drawing", "engraving", "oil painting", "comic", etc. looked like crap, and not at all like a real engraving or coarse grain image. I'm sure it can be done, but it's probably not a quick-and-dirty click-and-publish effort.

- Ix