Do people like the new idea for the forum banner I've posted up?

It's basically a composite of a few HH novel covers, just flexing my Photoshop skills to be honest! I've done some colour correction, and re-matted it to look like an original watercolour... but I'm not sure it's as striking as the old one.

Comments?

I like it Shroud, makes me think of the Istvaan 3 betrayal.

It certainly looks more chaotic and aggressive than the old banner... plus I like the (unintentional!) way that it looks like no one knows who to trust, guns firing this way and that...

I like it! The name of the forum is the great crusade and that banner depicts marines around that era so it gets a thumbs up from me :D

Is it uploaded or linked? I could code you a rotating banner if the latter :)

OOOOH! Rotating banners with composite novel covers!! ^_^

Please!! (Although leave DoA out of it :P )

Love this one as is though

They are linked - I fill out a form including the FTP address of the image, in this case a GIF. Is it do-able to have rotation?

WOAH!!!! I'm loving it Shroud!!!!!!!!!!
I like the good old DG there, and it gets that idea of Brother Against Brother down excellently. Amazing work!

*Meh Mode*
Meh, it's cool, indeed, but I think our board looked more "unique" and personnalized with the old one, designed by us only, with nothing from the official artworks.

At the most, we could have one of our talented drawers mak a really unique banner, then color it, imho.
Would be cooler.
*/Meh Mode*

I like it,It really fits in with the era of the novels! :D

I'm going to incorporate our logo I think... probably bottom right.

I was just looking for a way to make the plain field logo look more impressive - since all the flag animations I did looked terrible in web colours.

how about on the center top u add in our logo


and itd be better if there was some yellow in it :P

Centre top is no good, it would block the eyelines of all the characters and render them all as 'background'...

That's the bit I'm not happy with - the text looks shabby next to the imagery. :rolleyes:

I think that the new Forum Banner is an extremely poor subsitute for our previous one.....In short I hate it.

The former Banner was created by a culmative effort on the part of many members on the old forum. It was stylish, instantly recognisable, distinctive and its form perfectly fitted with the forum layout itself.

Furthermore it is these very qualities that the Forum itself was imbued with. The old Banner was based on very careful consideration of the background and other details. It therefore was a symbolic representation of our collective selves, of our aims and aspirations.

The new banner is cluttered, messy and to be honest has been seen before on many book covers. Because it is made from several elements that are taken from the book covers, it lacks the identity and clarity of the old Banner.

People may also mistake us for a Black Libray specialist if they see the artwork plastered everywhere. Furthermore it makes very little sense to use the one thing that we all moan about, as a representation of our Forum: in other words the highly innacurate and misleading novel cover artwork.

We strive for accuracy and an informed understanding of the Horus Heresy, so why use a Banner that does not meet the same high standards that we adhere to; and are becoming more and more renowned and respected for?

It will serve us well to remember this aspect. Bring back the old Banner!

These few sentences have perfectly summarized what I meant.

Thank you Vespasian for helping and rephrasing a poor froggy like me xD

I've received a "friendly reminder" from GW urging us to patrol our pages for unlicenced artwork etc, so I think that may be a precursor to more legal crusading on their part... so I guess that decides for us! :rolleyes:

I am going to re-jig the banner slightly soon, but this was just to test the proverbial waters. I'm hoping to come up with something more inspiring than the marble background that we have now, but it seems in the absence of a really amazing sci-fi artist among us to knock something together, we should stick with what we have.

The banner has now been used as my sig instead, so people can still give me opinions etc. Is there anyone with ideas on how we can update the flag banner thing? What would make a good background?

Thankyou for reopening the thread Shroudfilm.

It will be great to hear people's opinions.

Well, I have a few ideas, but only if someone else could do them (I'm not a good artist). Perhaps the Vengeful Spirit and the 63rd passing over a planet or star? I have it kind of worked out in my head, but I don't know if anyone else knows what I'm talking about. Anyway, we could have just Terra (not present-day Earth) in the background, as the light coloured planet would provide good contrast for the dark logo.
Another idea is that we could gather up some pictures of particularly good models from the forum, set them all in the same picture, and use that, although that may be too busy for a background.
For simpler ideas, I thought that the flames worked quite well, although it is a bit unoriginal.
Well, that's all I can think of at the moment. I'll try to come up with something more coherent later on.

I'll put together the banner in Photoshop, whatever we decide on.

I thought of having our logo emblazoned on a ship's prow actually, just not sure how big that would be...

Good idea, Shroud. I think that if you could find a picture of some ships in orbit with the flagship of the group having our logo on its prow, it would totally be awesome.

What limits do we have on art? Obviously we can't use other peoples art without permission, but are we allowed to stick our name over a blatantly 40k IP picture drawn/created by ourselves?

I'm a digital artist.. perhaps I can BUILD us a ship to stick the badge on?


Just a sample of some old work..



(or a tank)

What 3D program do you use?

AFAIK, no one can stop us producing original artwork as long as we don't claim the IP is our own. It's the same as posting pics of our paintjobs/conversions.

I *think* we can use copyright artwork as the basis for new original work too, like the montages of GW art that some websites create...

At work right now, but plenty around on the web.

Spoon?
http://3dsmodels.com/downloads/spoon_download.html

Thread pruned!

Yes, .3ds works fine. Right, here's the thing... can you do us a 3D model of a 40k Imperial Navy ship? (something from BFG with a blade prow)

Sure thing. Can someone post me pics of an exact one ( regarding PH accuracy) for me to sculpt from? :)

Emp class?

Duuuude... :D

Some of the ships in the CCG are similar to that, best to check the artwork and see from there?

Seems like those Death Guard have the biggest fleet of battle barges in the Imperium! They've got like 5 in the card game!!

I took a class on multimedia design during the year and created some cool stuff with photoshop. Nothing Warhammer 40,000, but I got the idea down. If only there were a free photoshop, I might be able to offer some assistance!

Have you tried GIMP?

Whats GIMP Horn?

It's a free piece of software to make graphic.... something like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro....

Oh, alright, thanks! :)

Using the new GIMP tool, I tried my best to make a test model for a possible banner.




Any comments and criticisms on my job so far are welcome. Also thinking of adding some smalller fighters around this big boy and mabey some blue turbine exhaust.

Try to work on the lighting. It looks like there are two suns or something. Try to make it so it isn't a blatant copy and paste job if you can. Add some fighters in for sure. Maybe even a drop pod assault with some other landers? Love the work though. It looks great. Keep it up.

The two images don't match and make a cohesive whole. It just looks like you've cut an image out of a magazine and then pritt-sticked it ontop of another picture of the moon.

With regards to Luna (and if it is indeed Luna), don't forget that it needs a deep central trench all the way across it, to fit in with the 31st Millenium background of the books.

Thanks for the suggestions. Just to clarify, this is my first attempt at working with GIMP so it isn't a finished product by any means.

That looks nice Kharn, but I think it might do better to have the ship on a completely horizontal flight plain, rather than at an angle. I looked at this, and it reminded me of the old black & white Flash Gordon series where the ship bobbled along up and down, with the strings clearly visible :)

Perhaps knock it out of focus slightly and blur the edges so there is less foreground and background seperation. For a first try though, this is great!

hums red dwarf theme to himself

:lol: That popped into my head too... Looking good so far, though I personally can't add any more suggestions than have already been made..

I could lend a hand on 2d art alhough I'm not that good with vessels.

I think we're basically waiting to see what Horn comes up with, 3D artwork-wise... I have been working on some great skins to apply to the CGI models, and I've prepared a background which I hope will suffice.