Sure! Check his image quality..fineeeeee

[Ldsfunaz]

i got this picture here of samus
http://nintenblog.free.fr/wallpaper/ds_Metroid_Prime_Hunters_samus_wallpaper.jpg


it is 1024 x 768 pixels - 84k, JPG image,

IT i wanted to put her on my CPO, she woudld become about 16" x 12"

Im guessing thats pretty crappy, i am thining it would look something like this

[Bones]

Yeah, that pic would not look great but you could print it yourself at the correct size to get a better idea.

[Ldsfunaz]

ooh, i found her in 200 dpi, thats a little better right?

i still dunno if it will work out being that big, maybe, just maybe though
1185X2286

this ones got her legs too,

EDIT: crap, the old one was 200 dpi too, this one just has her legs, oh crap now what am i gonna, heres is about what i am trying to do here, replace the turtle with a Link picture....(if i ever find one)


/Edit

[Goz]

You can get some free Samus Vector Art

With it Vectorized you can obviously make it any size you want without losing quality.


-Goz

[Ldsfunaz]

whoa, thanks alot, but i cant seem to find a link to dl it, i gotta register or something...
Ive been googling forever with no real luck, thanks so much though

[pgielen]

Here is a good picture of link

[Flinkly]

um, after looking at your panel design, why not bridge the visual gap between characters with actual sprites?  mario and luigi are similar in graphics, but samus is a very 3d look while link is very realistic.  if you used nintendo sprites of the various characters, they would even have the same overall theme of the cab, or sprites from another nintendo console.  anyways, your free to do your own thing, just giving some input.

[M3talhead]

If I were you, I'd try to find artwork done by the same artist. It just looks better IMHO when a CPO has images drawn in the same style......

[Abomination]

try this site for artwork http://www.classicgaming.com/mdb/sm/artwork.htm also when you look for metroid artwork...  look for samus aran, thats the name of the metroid girl, alot of stuff pops up that way also.

[Crowquill]

Find strategy guides or maybe even old magazines with the art you want. In most cases you can scan it in at a high resolution and be OK (if the image is big enough).

I agree that the characters don't really match that well. Maybe you could find a Smash Bros. strategy guide that would have good-sized decent pics of all the characters. Somewhere I have the strategy guide to the N64 game, but right now I can't find it. I'll keep looking though. If I find it I could probably send some scans your way.

[Ldsfunaz]

that would be awesome, although I havn't heard of anybody else doing it this way, does it work out pretty good?  I would like to have a "more realistic" looking mario i guess.
thanks so much

mike

[Crowquill]

The art for the N64 game is more cartoony with black outlines around the characthers and mostly flat shading.

The art for Smash Bros. Melee is all rendered 3D. It would probably work out well for you.

Many times strategy guides go pretty cheap once the game is out of the spotlight. Usually used strategy guides at Gamestop were 1.99ea. I've bought a lot of them just for the artwork at that price. Many times they're pretty cheap on eBay and other places. I wouldn't suggest this one though

http://half.ebay.com/cat/buy/prod.cgi?cpid=1084229032&pr=2152460

[Ldsfunaz]

haha, yeah i will stay away from that one..

So even though I will be blowing up the pictures by 200-300% the image quality is still acceptable if i scan them from a strategy guide?

thanks again
mike

[Crowquill]

Shouldn't be a problem. Most printers do well with 200dpi and up. If you can find artwork that's almost the size of a page and scan it in at 600dpi, you've got quite a bit to work with. The only downside to all of this is that it'll end up making huge files. If you don't have that much memory in your computer, this may create a problem in working with the files. They should print just fine though.

[Ad_Enuff]

If I were you, I'd try to find artwork done by the same artist. It just looks better IMHO when a CPO has images drawn in the same style......

I totally agree! If you wish to go down this route of adding various game characters of your choice then you will get better visual results from using one persons art as it will have one style.

ON a personal note, I don't like adding different characters from different games....I prefer a single game theme such as DK or Pacman making it look like the real thing.

But thats my personal choice.....

[Ldsfunaz]

OK, OK, gees, I concede, I'll switch to all rendered type images,

I got my samus i guess,
I found a HUGE luigi which is good,( not the best pose though)
a decently big mario(great pose)

now all i need is a rendered Link Image,
Ive searched for probably a combined 6 hours on this and have come up with nothing.  If anyone can help me out it would be great, I'm gonna check my local videogame stores for super smash strat guide to see If that might have something.

thanks guys

mike

p.s. I have a small problem, apparently I can't get my 48" x 24" adobe illustrator file to raster (or export to jpg) at 300 dpi, I have let it go for 30 mins and still is processing at 100%, so i gave up,  do you guys know if I am going to be able to eventually do it, or do i need to get it on a better comp (this is a p4 2.4 laptop with a normal CPU(not mobile) and 512MB shared ram)

[Ad_Enuff]

I got my samus i guess,
I found a HUGE luigi which is good,( not the best pose though)
a decently big mario(great pose)

Post links coz If I have a chance I'll vector them if they havent been already and they are reasonably easy to do....

[Ldsfunaz]

Thanks a lot, here are the links:

a few notes though,
1) im not sure I want to go the vectored route,  because I like the detail of the rendered look, but feel free to vectorize them anyway because I or most certaily someone else would use them.
2) Because of my 12 hours of searching, I have no idea where the origional links are, so i hosted them on my own webspace.
3) watch out for samus, she is an 8mb BMP file
4) thanks again
5) the last link is to show just how good i am at vectoring

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ldsfunaz/bigmario.jpg
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ldsfunaz/luigi-HUGE.jpg
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ldsfunaz/samushuge.bmp
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ldsfunaz/vectoredsuck.JPG

[Ad_Enuff]

The vector of Ken is rubbish....I'm sure someone has a far better vector image in the library you could use


Check here: http://localarcade.com/4images

[Ldsfunaz]

oh, i dont want to use it, I was just showing you how crappy of a job i did when i tried to see how hard it was.   

I am not planning on using a ken, (for this project)

thanks again
mike

[Ldsfunaz]

This should probably be in it's own thread, but i feel like I'm flooding the board already, so here I go.

If i resample a picture to 250 dpi, and to the correct size, lets say 12 by 16.
 and  then i use the zoom button to get the image so when i use a ruler on my screen, it is the same size, is that what the image would look like printed out?

I have a feeling I am doing a terrible job at getting my question across.  But i think its almosttttt intelligible 

thanks guys

[Ad_Enuff]

First of all, if your working in raster ie Photoshop, dont muck around with the dpi you will lose detail and the final product wont be as polished.

Secondly, if your just working on a single character not the whole piece, and again if your working in Photoshop click the top menu select Image then Image Size and a pop up options will appear.

Set the size of the image you want it to print to in the PRINT SIZE option field.

It doesnt matter if you zoom it or not.....its down to the print size option how big or small it prints off.

[Ldsfunaz]

Yes, I did mean that i edited this print size, so does my origional question hold water?  If I set the print size to 12 by 16.
and  then i use the zoom button to get the image so when i use a ruler on my screen, it is the same size, is that what the image would look like printed out?


thanks alot
mike

[Ldsfunaz]

I am going to assume this is true,

I have Up-scaled Link (using Bi-linear (in Fireworks MX), because it looked the best)  to 300 dpi and print size to 12 X 16  its like 3000 x 2000 pixels or something now.

Then i went in and smudged out some of the artifacts that were created. 

Then i took some samples from key areas and pasted them in a 6 by 6 image, and I plan on printing that out and seeing if my theory holds any water.  I just cant possibly see why it wouldn't look like that my screen, if they both share the same physical measurements.   Only thing i cold think of that might mess this theory up is my screen's resolution might throw it off, i dunno, wish me luck .

LDS

[Ldsfunaz]

I just wanted to let you guys know that I tested out my theory and it worked perfectly. 

If i have a 300dpi image zoomed at 28% on my screen.  Then that is what it will look look printed out. 

This is GREAT news, because now i know all my images will look good after i blow them up with Bi-linear Re-sampling.  After a little retouching, with my trusty smudge tool, It should look nice,

ill post some pictures when i get farther along with my CPO.


LDS

[Ad_Enuff]

Of course if you created a vector image in the first place you wouldnt have such a nightmare.

[Ldsfunaz]

Of course if you created a vector image in the first place you wouldn't have such a nightmare.

Actually If I created a vector image, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Link, Mario, or a 3 foot Swedish midget in a nurses outfit.

[Ad_Enuff]

I thought you were using vector art files?

Which is why I made the comment above...why not stay in Illustrator to create your work when your using vector files?

To be honest I was surprised you did this by taking AI's and importing them into PS.....

I'm sure someone could have helped you with that bit.

[Ldsfunaz]

Hmm, we seem do be miles apart so let me try to clear up this whole process.

I started out in AI
I started out using a vectorized cartoony Mario and Luigi, with rendered raster Link and Samus.

The i took a lot of heat from board members (rightfully so) for not having the artwork mesh together, mixing cartoons and renders together. 

My next task was to ditch the vectored Mario and Luigi's and find some nice rendered ones.  I found a huge Raster Luigi render as you can see above. and a pretty big Raster Mario render. 

Now that they were all Raster Renders , they seemed to mesh really well.
From here on I moved to FreeHand MX 
Only problem was they still weren't high enough quality to use, especially at the size i wanted.  That's when i started playing around with the Link Render, because that was the smallest image of the 4.  I tested out different Re-sampling settings, (i.e. Bi-Cubic, Bi-Linear, Blurred, Nearest Neighbor) Turns out Bi-Cubic and Nearest Neighbor are terrible,  Once re-sampled to 16X12 and 300 dpi, they were totally pixelated and flat out bad looking.   But Bi-Linear and Blurred Looked great, Almost as good as the original image.  I chose Bi-Linear because i thought Blurred had a negative connotation to it, although the looked virtually the same, it was just principal  .  So anyway, Now I checked out the images and they looked good, they just had a little j-peg artifacting where 2 different colors meet up, ( links green hat/white background.   This was easily taken care of with the Smudge tool.

Here is a little snippet so you can check to make sure my quality is up to snug


http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ldsfunaz/link-face-qualitycheck.bmp


-LDS-

[Ldsfunaz]

I am not bitter 

[Ad_Enuff]

The image of Links face looks very soft to me.....try unsharp mash in PS to see if you can make it a bit sharper otherwise its all going to look a bit too soft for my liking.