Making Your Stick Pretty: A Custom Stick Art Guide/Tutorial

Since I’m currently stuck on Bayonetta (having trouble on Temperance, on Normal - yes I’m bad at this game), I’ve decided to go and update the second post with a sample art piece and a writeup of how it works using my guidelines.

http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/8076/vegatetemplate.gif

Just a basic Vega template based on this guides advice. Constructive criticism is welcome

Vega looks squished. As much as possible, you should always maintain the original proportions of an image (because people who are OC about such things will immediately notice). Personally, I’d suggest putting Vega on the left (flip him horizontally on Photoshop) that way you wont have to squish him to fit. Also, don’t have the logo too close to the hole for the screw as the top of the screw is going to cover it up.

Thanks for that. I actually didn’t notice that Vega was slightly squished, but I’ll definitely fix it. And I’ll move the logo too.

EDIT:

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9158/vegatetemplate2.gif

How’s this?

Infinitely better, moving him to the left means that not only can he maintain his original proportions, but the fact that he’s not crowded out by the buttons gives the image, for lack of a better term, more space to breathe. However, I noticed that you seem to have cut off a piece of him when you isolated the image (back part of his pants). You may want to fix that as well.

Resized for use as PS3 wallpaper. - See this image on Photobucket.

anyone got that image but scaled correctly for the stick?

When I scale it in gimp, it looks very stretched…

Could I get a critique for this? I kinda wanted to go with the TE style design since I thought it looked nice.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Hiro2/critique.jpg

That’s because the image your using it stretched in the first place. Here’s the original image.

Looks fine, although you might want to try fixing the how you’re blending Ryu (increase the glow effect slightly and move his opacity up a bit). Also, your SSFIV logo has the wrong proportions.

Follow the proportions in this image:

Can I get some critiquing for this TE stick that I have done? :

I don’t know much about Photoshop so far, just the basics, and hopefully, this won’t look bad once I get the finish product for this. I still need to darken Sakura’s hair on the left, and it feels somehow like I need to add the SF logo, but I’m not 100% sure if I wanted to add a SF logo to it. And also, hopefully, if I have time, I will create one for a SFA3 Karin TE.

Thanks for the great tutorial and psd template.

how do i get the art in the correct layer , ie in detail. new to ps

This is my first time making my own artwork.

This is what i got after following your tutorial.

Could I get a critique for this?. Also can i have some help on how to remove these white spots out of my artwork i tried to remove them but they are so close to the character pictures that if i remove them ill just end up messing up the character picture. When i press CTRL+Z in Photo Shop CS3 it doesn’t work when I’m using the magic wand tool.

When you are using CS3, it only lets you undo one action back, so you either have to restart or just be careful enough you don’t have to restart it.
When you are using the magic wand here’s a few things you can do to remove the white spots.
1-Increase the tendancy of the magic wand to get a finer line from the magic wand
2-after cutting it out, use the eraser to erase the white spots. In conjunction with the zoom function, you can erase at a finer level.

As for your stick art, I would:
1-Move Guile. He looks squished between the stick and the buttons. I would either move him next to Charlie, move him to the right of the buttons, or remove him in general. Remember about the rules for the hole hit-boxes. Parts of Guile will be cut out or be hidden under the stick’s dust cover.
2-Re-size the SFIV and Guile. The dimensions looks like they have been skewed. Re-size them to the original dimensions.
3-Capcom Logo. It really feels like you can add the Capcom Logo on the bottom right hand side since it feels like the artwork is too heavy on the left hand side. Either add the Capcom logo to the left hand side or move the SFIV logo to the bottom right hand side.

Other than that it would look fine. Nice attempt for your first try on Photoshop CS3.

OK ill add the Capcom logo but how do i re size the images to the original dimensions?

Fix the distance of the shadows, IMO they don’t have to be that far.

CTRL+ALT+Z is your best friend for undoing.

Also, I’d put the logo on the bottom right and keep it’s proportions - it looks awkward stretched like that. This’ll also allow you more space for Guil who you can enlarge a bit more. It’s okay if the buttons slightly overlap him, just as long as you can see that it’s Guile and that the important bits (head/face) aren’t covered.

When resizing using the transform tool (CTRL+T) hold down SHIFT.

The only way I know how to do this is to:
1- Do it by eye. You can try to eye the original dimension when you are transforming/sizing the image
or
2- Re-do the Guile & and SFIV Logo. This might be time consuming to do, but if you want to keep the original dimensions and if you want more practice, do it over again.

Also, for a side note, when you are sizing/transforming the image, make sure you hold the Shift button, and size using the corners to increase the image without losing the original dimensions.

OK thanks but do you know how i can flip an image to make him look the other way you see how guile is looking to the left how can i make him look to the right?

Never mind i was fooling around with Photo Shop and i figured out how to do it.

OK i held shift while i was resizing my images also i didn’t like my former artwork so i changed it.Also can i get a critique for this?

Much better. The Capcom Logo can be shrunk down a bit. And The SSFIV looks like it’s the wrong dimensions. Use the SSFIV logo that d3v has posted in this forum. It’s on the third post on the second page of this forum. But other than those things mentioned, it looks fine.

If you like, you can add either ink splats to it or a army forest camo to the background. But it still looks fine as is, these are just small suggestions to make it stand out a bit more.

the ssf4 logo on top is proportionally too wide, and the capcom on the bottom could be smaller. a smaller capcom would look better if you replace the solid brown background w/a design.