General Category > General Discussion
Hello. Looking to get started
PrimeGoat:
Hello,
I'm a new member here. I have recently discovered this community and would like to get involved. Based on prior experience in a slightly different field, I know I'll be able to provide high quality covers both digitally and for physical sale, and help others with the creation of high quality work.
I'm interested in knowing what I need to do in order to get started. Here's a list of what I think I'd need:
* Things to read, things to know, things to learn about this community and the activities involved that I'd need to familiarize myself in.
* Things to download. For example, Shenske's template(s)? Where would I get this?
* Sites to bookmark
* People to talk to, to get to know?
* Anything else you can recommend
Thanks in advance! I am very excited to have found this community. Aside from loving video games, I also love reproducing graphical prints, and have done this before but in a different capacity. I will be posting an overview-level guide on how to make top quality covers shortly. Afterwards, I will work on a more detailed set of instructions, and am hoping other members will contribute to this. I believe I have some knowledge and skills that can help people out.
Arseen:
Welcome to the site, nice posts you made.
* Things to read, things to know, things to learn about this community and the activities involved that I'd need to familiarize myself in.Guides section altough it needs cleaning http://www.thecoverproject.net/forums/index.php?board=11.0
Raws section on the boards http://www.thecoverproject.net/forums/index.php?board=5.0 has some good raws.
The old actual raws area is dead and gone.
I scan using cheap Canon Pixma MP3550 printer/scanner using Canon's own scan software with only descreen option on.
It does decent job.
* Things to download. For example, Shenske's template(s)? Where would I get this?Original "official" templates are in this topic: http://www.thecoverproject.net/forums/index.php?topic=1610.0
Some others have made their own templates that are floating around the boards.
* Sites to bookmarkI don't know, maybe https://www.nintandbox.net/index.php/en/ has some as it has raw material that can be used in a pinch to make quite decent covers.
* People to talk to, to get to know?Me maybe as I hang around here quite much and answer and help as much as I can.
And of course anyone else who chimes in.
* Anything else you can recommendPatience as things tend to move slowly, and silver tongue as some people (mostly new comers) get pissy easily espesially if their half assed covers aren't approved immeadly or are guided even so gently how to better them. (I can take it straight so no need to sugar coat the things you say to me).
We aim to help others to help us to better us all on cover making.
So oncew more welcome to the site.
PrimeGoat:
Thanks for the welcome and for the info, man. I made my first cover as an experiment, you can check it out here:
http://www.thecoverproject.net/forums/index.php?topic=27409.0
Are you familiar with the business of retro games? I know that they're selling covers, boxes, etc. My friend told me about this as he's been paying his rent refurbishing games and selling them. That's how I ended up finding this site. For example, he would buy the cartridge, take out the circuit board, clean up the enclosure, put a new label sticker on, package it with a reproduced box + manual, and end up selling it for twice the amount of money he spent to get everything needed.
I'm interested in finding out about what other ways there are to do some business in that regard. I'm definitely interested in doing what he's doing, along with making top quality boxes, manuals, covers, etc. Just wondering what else there is to be done that could make some money in this field
Arseen:
--- Quote from: PrimeGoat on April 14, 2020, 05:19:52 AM ---I made my first cover as an experiment, you can check it out here:
http://www.thecoverproject.net/forums/index.php?topic=27409.0
--- End quote ---
I did see that...
I kinda liked the moire look of the picture of the original (altough would need some TLC) as the un-moired gets easily kinda soft looking as the process removes detail from a image that has not nuch of it in the beginning.
The work you did is right on the edge of great and bad.
Would need to print the decide.
We have this cover for the game: http://www.mediafire.com/download/9l2h0bmhkr9r786/Art_of_Fighting_SNES.jpg where I think the artist got the balance pretty much perfect.
--- Quote from: PrimeGoat on April 14, 2020, 05:19:52 AM ---Are you familiar with the business of retro games? I know that they're selling covers, boxes, etc. My friend told me about this as he's been paying his rent refurbishing games and selling them. That's how I ended up finding this site. For example, he would buy the cartridge, take out the circuit board, clean up the enclosure, put a new label sticker on, package it with a reproduced box + manual, and end up selling it for twice the amount of money he spent to get everything needed.
I'm interested in finding out about what other ways there are to do some business in that regard. I'm definitely interested in doing what he's doing, along with making top quality boxes, manuals, covers, etc. Just wondering what else there is to be done that could make some money in this field
--- End quote ---
I don't know that much about business (except that people like to download covers of our and sell them as their own...).
But I do like well crafted replicas as long as they are sold as replicas and not as originals.
I have plenty of reproduction games.
And I have some great quality (If I may say so) scans of manuals: http://www.mediafire.com/folder/fxle20na9u98i/RAWS (including NES PAL Stadium Events) that need just bit of cleaning.
I do have many other SNES manuals I can scan.
One of our members started producing his own plastic cases for carts that are superior to Universal Game Cases... ;)
PrimeGoat:
My descreening process doesn't remove detail. If anything, it retains pretty much all of the detail that exists in the image. It starts with a fourier transform algorithm, which preserves as much detail as possible.
The second pass, a carefully-tweaked surface blur, smooths out the gradients while leaving the important details unchanged. This is capable of losing detail, but I tweak the settings carefully to target only the smooth gradients.
The third pass is a manual run with the blur tool done by hand. I completely avoid the detailed areas in the third pass.
Getting the gradients as smooth and soft as possible is important because any moire that's left over for the printer's raster image processor to process results in a dithered mess. Putting scanned halftones into a RIP that does its own halftones always results in a mess. This isn't ideal unless the desired texture calls for such an effect.
The print came out very nice, considering the printer is a low-end Brother MFC-J805DW. It would look a lot better on a high-end photo printer. Here's a 1200ppi scan of the print, with select portions showing the unedited original for comparison:
Full-size here: https://i.postimg.cc/KGD24r7V/snes-aof-1200out.png?dl=1
I'm going to print it on high quality settings now to see if there's a noticeable difference.