Shipbucket

That looks sooooo much better than the original bright red hull. For my personal files I've added the new lower hull to the 'Baltic' version. It looks much better also. Well done, maomatic and keep up the great work.

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Keep well and keep drawing,

Monty

In fairness, let's not get ahead of ourselves - the original FF0000 exists to provide new artists with an easy-to-implement shading method for the underwater hull. I fear we are becoming "too fancy" lately...

Let's understand that the original style is always "the standard", and that we are breaking both tradition and technically the style rules by using anything other than a bright red (easily selectable in Paint, hence why it was used) for the underwater hulls.

It's now become very, very difficult to kitbash ships drawn with the new shading styles. While I'm historically a bit "against" kitbashing, I think it's one of the quintessential "facets" of Shipbucket: the ability to reconfigure ships as needed to represent never built designs, AUs, etc. I think we may also be discouraging new artists simply because the standard is now so high - I know for a fact I wouldn't want to modify any of my own drawings without easy access to layered originals in Photoshop...

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

I have to disagree with Colosseum's last post.

It is so easy to adjust the colours in Microsoft Paint and even easier to copy them. One does not need to Adobe Photoshop to make a good drawing.

Ease of pixel-bashing is fine but isn't the more important thing to get the drawings as accurate as one possibly can? Adjusting colours and adding extra shading does not make kitbashing excessively more difficult once you get the hang of it.

I've seen drawings here where members strive to get the correct camo scheme for accuracy's sake and are mainly successful. Then they use that damned bright red hull bottom colour which no warship ever had and turn and otherwise accurate drawing into something that looks like it belongs on a Christmas tree. I cannot see the logic behind that.

Shipbucket has and continues to serve ship-drawers well, but I do not believe it will improve if it does not allow its artists to improve and to be the best they can be.

_________________
Keep well and keep drawing,

Monty

Yes! I agree. And for new artists - color tables by country.


Weisman Worklist
http://www.shipbucket.com/forums/viewto ... 504#p72223

Whilst that idea has merits there is too many drawings on the archive for it then to become standard and will still look odd.I think that should be left to the individual artists which colour he/she uses as it has to look right to us as we draw it.
I can understand why the bright red was standard way back then but times are changed. Just my own personal opinion is why draw a beautiful cammo job with exact well researched colours and then paint the lower hull a totally wrong colour. As to the kitbashing it just adds to the challenge.

I use Gimp only for getting correct size on blueprints, and extract colors from photos. rest is done in paint.

Second that!

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

Well there's clearly no controlling what people do and what colors they decide to pick. I wasn't really stating policy but rather just some observations... after all my most recent drawings use the new hull color themselves.

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

I don't see a problem with colors themselves - even simple Paint allows to "copy" colors.
But I think that Colosseum has touched the significant point of style development vs. it's constraints (rules).
Now, we all know that SB style is evolving (enough to look to the Main Archive, into the Royal Navy WWII - Where Shipbucket Started folder and compare its content with current "production") which is in itself a great thing.
But... it creates (at least for me) a question of keeping with basic, core principles of Shipbucket style.
I think it can be assumed that SB style would - theoretically - stop evolving at some point for two reasons:
1) no more details ("black-outlined elements") could be practically squeezed in at this scale,
2) shading/coloring ("non-black elements") could not be made any more "fancy" (forgive me that word - language barrier).
While the point 1) is something rather natural and obvious (and I think a number of works is close to that point or even reached it already), I see a problem with point 2).
As I understand (correct me if I'm wrong) - one of principles of SB was an use of very "stylized" shading (deliberately "not-quite-realistic" one) - like the the "one darker line" rule for overhangs. Another one was the (not explicitly stated in the "Style Rules and Standards" on the Main Site) rule of not including panel lines on hull, rivets etc. unless they would be clearly seen on a real ship if it were to be seen real-life from a distance at which it would be of roughly the same (relative to viewer) size as on the drawing.
Yet, recently there seems to be a growing number of drawings that - while of course magnificent in their appearance and technical sophistication of the Artist's work - seem to run contrary to these principles - and to the principle of styllistical "interchangeability" ("without the need to do too much adaptation work").
Now, I think that perhaps we should think wether we shouldn't deliberately "cap" the style development at some point - accepting that some things could be done but shouldn't.
Of course that, in turn, would necessitate creation of definitive set of style rules, as since the creation of the "Style Rules and Standards" chapter on the Main Site there appeared a number of not-formally-written but accepted and observed rules that aren't listed in one place. (I already raised that issue to Gollevainen recently, and He confided to me that whenever it was attempted when there was still a Moderators Team, there was always a problem to agree wether some rules actually does or does not actually constitute a core SB rule. Still, I hope that it is possible to create the updated set of style rules. )

Now it seems that this post is bit of an off-top, so I suggest that if the discussion ensues, Admins separate it into a different thread (or delete completely) as they wish.

Why not just have an to style policy: original and the evolved. Where everyone have to have drawn a certain number of ships in original style...


btw. Might I suggest an split of topic.