The Rusted Colossus 02: | How to make Art Assets Without Being An Artist
By JimmiWazEre
Opinionated Tabletop Gaming Person
Now then.
Alongside other life things, the Rusted Colossus has been ticking away steadily in the background, and the greatest advances forwards have been in making art assets for the adventure, so that’s gonna be the topic of today’s dev diary.
Before I begin though, If you have no idea what the Rusted Colossus is, I strongly suggest you start with this article and then come back to this. I’ll wait - it’s OK :)
Now I want to make it quite clear that I’m not an artist, nor do I have the kind of talent of GOZR’s creator - JV West. However GOZR’s art style is simple enough for me to be able to produce something that hopefully doesn’t look too out of place. Albeit with a process that takes time and research.
So, if it doesn’t sound too presumptuous of me, I thought I’d share my process today for creating art assets. Maybe it might be interesting and informative for some of you folks? And, who knows, maybe an actual artist will read this and be able to dish out some advice if I’m making any glaring errors.
Pencil and Paper, in front of the TV with the Dog
If you’re like me, then you can’t hold mental images in your head for longer than a couple of seconds before they start fading and blurring away like sand falling between your fingers. Maybe that’s normal, maybe it’s not? All I know is that it’s my normal, and we all work with what we’ve got.
To combat this, I like to start by looking at lots of pictures, particularly if its something really complicated. The titular Colossus for example, involved looking at lots of Gundam, Warhammer 40k, and Battletech art and miniatures - grabbing all the ones I liked and then keeping images of them to hand on my phone.
Then, typically sat in front of the TV with the family, I crack out my mechanical pencil and my recycled paper A5 notepad and I start free hand transferring those basic shapes to paper, tweaking and making my own changes as I go.
Drawing lightly, and using an eraser frequently, I’ll eventually come up with something pretty sketchy which works for me. At this stage, it’s just simplistic shapes and forms really.
I found an early image of my Sand Shark, and I’m hesitant to share it because at this stage in its lifecycle looks like such garbage - but transparency is king haha.
Accomplished artists would probably have something to say about technique here I suppose. Seriously, look at that thing! Do I seem like a guy that has anything valuable to say about techniques?
Black Lining and Juicey Details
This is my favourite step actually, I like to use a Tombrow double headed water based marker (purely as it’s the cheapest one I could find in the art shop that looked suitable). Using the fine head, I very steadily and deliberately start going over my lines. I’m not copying them exactly at this point, but rather taking the time to add texture, gribblies, and the little bumps and ridges that kick an illustration up a notch.
I enjoy this step so much because it’s really not difficult, and the difference it makes to the illustration is like night and day in terms of quality.
I also like to add the heaviest shadows at this stage too, assuming the ‘sun’ is in the top left usually. Normally because I’m digging the process by this point and getting a bit too carried away and ahead of myself, but any mistakes can be resolved later.
I also added some of the accompanying text here too, but more often than not, I like to draw separate elements of an illustration on a separate sheet.
Getting It on the Computer (The Digital Bit)
I have a combination printer/scanner which I use to import my illustrations on to my computer, and an old copy of Photoshop (before they went subscription) where I do my editing.
If you’re looking to follow my methods and you lack these things, you could use freeware like GIMP instead of Photoshop, although you’d have to do your own research on how it works. Likewise, instead of a scanner, you could take a photo of your art and then email it to yourself.
Using Photoshop, like a Noob
OK, I’m not a Photoshop guru by any stretch. I picked up a copy years ago, and I used it for the absolute basics. Typically, I end up learning how to do something cool with it, and then not needing it for months at a time and forgetting everything. The joys of getting old.
Some absolute basics that you need to understand before any of this will make sense are:
Brushes
Transparency
Opacity
Layers
Transformations
For this, I’m going to have to point you elsewhere, this free Photoshop course I just found might be worth a punt.
The subheadings below cover what I’m trying to achieve.
Restoring your scanned image to pure black and white
The first issue to resolve is that your need to clean up your images, and this is a lot easier to do if they start from pure black and white.
To do this, you need to use the Threshold tool, found under Adjustments. This opens up a little graph enabling you to select a position upon it where you’re happy with the balance between white and black. As you slide the threshold left and right, your image will change, so find a point where you’re happy.
One of the unwanted consequences of this tool is that all your line work will have lost it’s soft edges, and you’ll be left with nasty pixelated lines. Not to worry, we can fix this too.
With your Threshold layer selected, go to Filter > Noise > Median and set it to about 3. You can adjust this to taste, but the effect will be that your lines get a number of new pixels added around them, fading them into the background to make everything appear smoother.
If I’m happy, I’ll merge my layers at this point. so I’m just left with my black and white image which I’ll call the Lines layer.
Delete the White
I use the manual Lasso Tool to draw around my piece, then right click, Select Inverse, and delete. Then I use the Magic Wand Tool to select any white areas that remain and delete those too. It can help to hide your background layer, as this makes it easier to see where you have areas of white remaining.
The reason that I do this step is so that when I’m making selections or using the fill tool later on, I don’t get any weird surprises caused by hidden white bits.
Making tweaks
This is a great time to bring out the eraser and brushes tool to start making any tweaks to your work. I don’t bother with a tablet for this, just a mouse and a very steady hand does the trick for me.
For me, one of the key things to look for is that any lines that started close together and have since blurred into one, are once again defined separately.
Adding light values
I come from a miniatures painting background, so I have obtained a pretty good understanding of light values over the years, if you’re just starting out - this tutorial on light and dark looks good.
In Photoshop, I start of by creating a new layer underneath my Lines layer called Grey. Then I go back up to my Lines layer, and using the Magic Wand Tool, I select on the canvas, outside of the subject I’ve just drawn, and the right click and select inverse.
It’s important not to get rid of that selection as now I return to my Grey layer, and with a mid grey selected I use the paintbrush tool to fill everything inside of it.
I then create two more layers between Grey and Lines, called Light and Dark. Keeping that selection in place from earlier to prevent us from colouring outside the lines, and selecting an appropriately lighter or darker grey, I then use a suitably sized brush to add highlights and shadows to the piece.
This is all first pass stuff at this stage, and throughout the process I go back to these layers and add more light and shadows as seems appropriate.
Sometimes I even add a lighter grey highlight on a new layer. Just keep going until you’re happy with it.
Adding Colour
When adding colour, I sometimes like to create a layer per shade I use, but it’s not strictly necessary. The important thing is that for your colour layers, to set the layer opacity to around 50% - Not the brush opacity.
That way, with your colour layers above your grey layers, 50% of the shading beneath comes through as you paint the fresh layer.
The effect can be subtle, but it’s really important to do this as the way that the light volumes interact with the colours is what gives the image depth.
Importing Additional Elements, Moving and Resizing
Mimicking the hand written aesthetic of JV West, I tend to import these extra elements as separate layers. I don’t worry about the the light values steps, but I do take the opportunity here to select little elements and move them around with the transformation tool, including resizing and repositioning them.
If you compare the coloured Sand Shark image below with the one from earlier in the post - you’ll see that the text has been moved around and resized.
Adding Effects
I think the header text tends to look good when it has a coloured Stroke effect applied. You have to make sure that the element you want to effect is isolated on it’s own layer, and then select FX and Stroke. In the subsequent menu, I can affect the colour and width of the stroke to taste.
Ofcourse, you can also use FX to add drop shadows and other wizbangs if you like!
Here’s my current iteration of the Sand Shark. It’s probably ready to be used, but I make no promises that I won’t fiddle with it some more later!
Conclusion
Do you feel up to giving it a go? If you’ve got experience yourself - do you have any tips and advice for a noob like me? Have you got any art you want to show everyone on Bluesky by linking me in it?
Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.
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