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Center Ice logos with Paint/GIMP


Jkline3

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Here's a step-by-step of what I do to make center ice logos. Compared to the team selection logos these are a lot more difficult because they require you to fit everything into an even smaller graphic.

Would love to hear any other tips/tricks from anyone on improvements that they have made.

1. I use sportslogos.net for the majority of the base artwork. Another great resource I've found is thefaceoff.net which is a great reference to check what teams have used as their center ice logos over the years.

2. Using Paint, I resize the 150x100 .gif image that I downloaded from sportslogos.net to 48x32. Since these are the same proportions as the original image sometimes you get lucky and only need to shrink with no cropping necessary. Save that as a 24-bit .bmp image.

1.jpg

3. In order to make this next step work you must already be done setting the team's uniform colors as the home unis are going to give you the colors that you have to work with. There are 16 colors in the palette, 10 of them specific to the team and 6 "standard" colors used for everyone (ice, skate/blade, stick, face, shadow). Many of these colors will probably repeat depending on the uniform style. The trick is to force your center ice logo to use these colors prior to loading into TM. The automatic color choosing feature in TM can be nice but also very frustrating on some of the "busier" logos with some weird results. Open your ROM with NOSE so you can view the palette.

NOTE: I use my own sprite edit so this may be a little different for you but the general idea is the same.

2.jpg

4. Open your image in GIMP and open both your Colormap and Palettes windows. If these don't automatically open for you they can be found in the Windows > Dockable Dialogs> menu.

3.jpg

5. Next step is to create a palette that only uses the colors that you chose for your team uniforms in NOSE. Create a new palette, create a new entry (color) and then edit that color to match one from your team uniform.

4.jpg     5.jpg     6.jpg

6. In the color edit screen you will need to input the RGB values of your uniform colors in the HTML notation field.

7.jpg     8.jpg

To determine your color codes you can hover over them for a 3-digit code or check the color preview in the sidebar. In this case navy blue is 420 (or 4B, 2G, 0R). The easiest way I've found to convert them to HTML format is to just reverse them and input necessary zeroes. In this example navy blue would be 002040. Repeat this process to add all of the colors from your uniform into the palette and save. I always also include black (000000) and light gray (c0c0c0) from the skates. Most teams will end up with 5-7 colors in their palette.

Not to get off on a tangent, but you may also find it useful to add some of the other standard colors from the stick, face and shadows to substitute for a color not in your uniform but that may be in the logo. As an example, the pink for the face makes a passable red at such a small scale and the tan can fill in as a yellow or flesh tone.

NB.jpg

I DO NOT include them unless they would have a place in the logo as more colors just confuses the color selector in TM more.

6. Now you're going to want to convert the image you opened into one that only uses the colors from your uniform palette: Image > Mode > Indexed

9.jpg

You're going to use the palette that you just created.

10.jpg

You'll end up with something like this but don't panic, yet...

11.jpg

7. Last step in GIMP is that you're going to save your file. Choose 'Export As', I keep the image as a bmp.

12.jpg

SUPER IMPORTANT - make sure you check the 'Do not write color space information' box or your image will not be usable in TM.

13.jpg 

8. Open your ROM in TM and paste your logo in the proper spot. Because the colors in your logo should match exactly with colors in your palette TM will not modify anything. 

14.jpg

Add your ice color...

14b.jpg

Here's where you can let your OCD run wild... You've already got a good working base but most logos can be improved with a little manual cleanup. Text will always be very difficult to make readable because of such a small scale but it can usually be sharpened up a bit so that if you squint your eyes you may be able to make it out...

15.jpg

Sorry if that was super long-winded but it took me a ton of trial and error to come up with a system for making new logos that were usually passable in-game. Any time you need a pick-me up, go back and look at the logos from the original game...

Hopefully that made sense :lol:

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