Speculative Graphics Showcase

[St Leo]

Shame on you males who don't share doing dishes and cooking.

[Dr. Nick]

I can cook, but I'm lazy.

Dishes... I wish I could buy a dishwasher.

[Palaiologos]

Sheeps also ACTUALLY generate an income to the holder.

Women on the other hand specialise in amasing debts.



And anyway why would even someone bother choosing between sheeps and women?

You can buy a Russian girl on the market for only 4.000$, and she will do your dishes, housework, keep you company at nights and thank god she knowing only Russian will keep her bloody mouth shut.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Palaiologos
Question:The man-sheep relationship is always on a strict male shepherd-female herd animal basis, or open minded and progressive highlanders feeling comfortable with their manhood have no problem mating with members of the same sex?

WTF?!!

Originally posted by William Keenan
Nice convert Catfish but where is the chainmail bikini?

Thanks, mate. This must've slipped under the radar (clears wool from eyes). The bikini? Can't you see it? It's obscured by the full-body beard, but if you look hard enough...

BTW, what filters did you use to shade that purple vampire? It's a nice effort. I'm on a steep learning curve, myself. With guys like Fairline and Mr Oobir, asking for tips, I feel I've got to put something together about making units.

I'll probably start a new graphic-making thread where everyone can throw in tips, tutorials and links to resources for making graphics. This way I can just add stuff as I stumble on new methods.

[curtsibling]

Good call, Catfish!

In the interest of veering this thread away from disturbing wool-related talk,
I present a 'Death Striker' flying machine from my Bitterfrost efforts.

[tanelorn]

The last issue of National Geographic has an article on modern slavery. Sadly, this is true in the Balkans and beyond, for the last decade or so, assuming someone is pathetic and immoral enough to choose something like that (meaning it doesn't necessarily carry racist or misogynist connotations, it's rather a fact).
Go see "Birthday Girl" with Nicole Kidman as the "Russian Girl", in the UK.

I mean, what of ones Christian conscience (we are not all Christian, I know- his human conscience if you will) or dignity as a man, if he stoops that low? More importantly, what of the other person?
What the previous posts implied is at least at par, moraly. We are all making jokes, ofcourse.

[Palaiologos]

BTW dudes because my knowledge of English is quite limited when i wrote

"or open minded and progressive highlanders feeling comfortable with their manhood have no problem mating with members of the same sex? "

i meant if shepherds actually discern between male and female sheeps when doing......stuff......




As for what Tanelorn said it is sadly true. Many, many men in Greece usually of old age seek their last companions in the market. In most instances such a "purchase" backfires in that these women are usually the source of more misery than happiness.

But in many cases there is a mutual deal between these Russian women and their to-be husbands. "I'll take care of you, but i'll inherit your money when you die" sort of deals.

[William Keenan]

Originally posted by Catfish

BTW, what filters did you use to shade that purple vampire? It's a nice effort. I'm on a steep learning curve, myself. With guys like Fairline and Mr Oobir, asking for tips, I feel I've got to put something together about making units.

The shading was inherent in the image I just raised the saturation to bring out the color. Then I broke the image into seperate parts, body, head, sword, and hair. This prevented the colors from bleeding into each other during the reduction and allowed me to easily use different sharpening filters on each section.

Before I get into filters, I should say I use Corel Photo-paint 11. I'm not sure that the same filters exist
in PSP, which most people here use.

On the body, hair, and sword I used a sharping filter called adaptive unsharp. I almost exclusively use this sharping filter in reduction work like this because it enhances edge detail without that grainy-pixilated effect that a standard sharping filler tends to create.

For the head/face I used the standard shapen filter because it creates good contrast in the facial features.

If I have any trick to impart it would be in the anti-aliasing process.

After sharping I create a mask from object.

Then I use a mask outline tool called remove holes. This ejects from the mask the pixels at the edge of the object that are mostly transparent. Then crop the oject to the reduced mask.

Duplicate the object eight or ten times then combine the duplicates to eliminate any remaining transparancy.

Then *POOF* the anti-aliasing is gone in under 20 seconds.

Originally posted by Catfish I'll probably start a new graphic-making thread where everyone can throw in tips, tutorials and links to resources for making graphics. This way I can just add stuff as I stumble on new methods.

A new graphic methods thread is a good idea and maybe a sheep thread in Off Topic area for all the flocking shepards.

I hate to risk starting another avalanche of OT discussion but I'm wondering how St. Leo knows the price of Russian chicks!

[curtsibling]

Gah!

I have a problem!

I promised to help Cyrion make the three riders of the apocalypse, from Terry Pratchett's books...but I just cannot get them to look right!

We need a fat guy, and sickly guy and a hungry guy all on horses and with the same unit square.

Individually I could crack them, but I just cannot get them with any panache inside the cramped unit square.

Anyone wanna give this mini-project a try?

Perhaps a fresh outlook may help!

[Catfish]

Originally posted by tanelorn
I mean, what of ones Christian conscience (we are not all Christian, I know- his human conscience if you will)

I find this comment a little bit patronising, despite its good intentions. You should've just used the statement in parentheses. I'm an atheist, for example, but probably share a similar moral viewpoint to you.

A fair number of documentaries have been shown in my country about the slave trade of mainly eastern European women in central and western Europe, and also women and children in south-east Asia. You have people from comfortable lifestyles exploiting desperate people. There is no excuse for this. As for the actions of the poor and desperate, I cannot really judge them, for I have never been there myself.

Originally posted by Palaiologos
i meant if shepherds actually discern between male and female sheeps when doing......stuff......

Too much information, man. Too much information.

Originally posted by William Keenan
The shading was inherent in the image…

Thanks for the info, William. Raising the colour saturation gets good results for me, too. I only use PSP’s Unsharp Mask on a pretty mild setting – standard sharpness filters produce the results you describe. As for removing anti-aliasing, my methods are fairly clumsy at present – I often do a manual clean up - I’m going to investigate PSP’s Selections menu. For PSP users, I generally stick to the Adjust menu – I have little use for Effects.

Originally posted by William Keenan
I hate to risk starting another avalanche of OT discussion but I'm wondering how St. Leo knows the price of Russian chicks!

This reminds me of a comment I saw on another board once:

Post:
A Russian that can afford a computer and an internet connection? I'm impressed.

Reply:
He bartered for it... I think the Russian economic scale is:
Computer = 12 cases Vodka = 18 yr old sister = 1 roll of toilet paper.

I know it’s hard, but we really should be staying on topic - before all these great unit showcases become smothered in spam. I’m guilty, too.

[Mr. Oobir]

Originally posted by Catfish
we really should be staying on topic

Indeed.

I got a bit filter-happy and ToT-ised many of the units in my eternally-in-development scenario. Here is a sample.

[curtsibling]

Mr. Oobir, they look excellent!

[William Keenan]

A serious graphic infusion is needed!

Originally posted by Catfish
He bartered for it... I think the Russian economic scale is:
Computer = 12 cases Vodka = 18 yr old sister = 1 roll of toilet paper.

For those of you with 18 yr old sisters for trade, I have toilet paper.

[fairline]

This has become easily the most consistently high standard graphic thread; Curt / William Keenan / Catfish, these units are just beautiful!

As for all this talk of sheep interference and mail-order brides, I think that just confirms my worst fears about fantasy fans . Only kidding, before some deranged Dungeons and Dragons-obsessed 12 year-old decides to mail me a letter bomb / curse me with a level 12 spell..

Catfish and William: how about that 'how to convert / reduce graphics' advice thread?

[curtsibling]

Bwah!

I'm gonna fire a 'magic missile!'