2D Artist Guidelines

A collection of sources, tips, and styles for 2D Artists.

Tools

• Game Icons, a site with free game icons of any kind! Very useful!

CoA Guidelines

• Coat of Arms Modding, a full guide to adding new CoAs for dynasties or titles.
• To make sure your CoA is visible, try to fit (so it touches the black borders) it in this mask. At the same time, it should be centered around the image center.

Mask

• Every CoA has 3 colors: blue, cyan, and magenta defined in HSV format, NOT RGB. You're free to change V, the value, it will allow you to create shadows and light.
  • Blue, 240H, 100S, 50V, the 1st color.
  • Cyan, 150H, 100S, 100V, the 2nd color.
  • Magenta 330H, 100S, 100V, the 3rd color.
• To make a title CoA work in-game you should add this template in common\coat_of_arms\coat_of_arms\00_wc_landed_titles.txt:

Template

k_gnomeregan = { #Put title name from common\landed_titles\01_landed_titles.txt
	pattern = "pattern_solid.dds" #Plain background
	color1 = rgb { 80 60 125 } #Background color
	colored_emblem = {
		texture = "ce_gnomeregan.dds" #Name of image file
		color1 = rgb { 210 155 115 } #"Blue" color
		color2 = rgb { 75 55 65 } #"Cyan" color
		color3 = rgb { 120 80 110 } #"Magenta" color
	}
}

• To make a dynasty CoA work in-game you should add this template in common\coat_of_arms\coat_of_arms\wc_dynasties.txt:

Template

10000 = { # Put dynasty ID from common\dynasties
	pattern = "pattern_solid.dds" #Plain background
	color1 = rgb { 80 60 125 } #Background color
	colored_emblem = {
		texture = "ce_gnome_eagle.dds" #Name of image file
		color1 = rgb { 210 155 115 } #"Blue" color
		color2 = rgb { 0 255 144 } #"Cyan" color
		color3 = rgb { 120 80 110 } #"Magenta" color
	}
}

Save Formats:

• .dds: DXT5 compression, with mipmaps

Styles:

Lifestyle Tree Background

In GIMP choose Colours > Levels...

Images

Click Auto Input Levels, set White Output to 125.

Images

Open Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur, set Size to 25.

Innovation Icon

In GIMP choose Filters > Artistic > Oilify.

Use Default resettings except for Mask Radius set to 2.

Images