[Star Trek] Paper Miniatures Online...

[Scarecrow]

This may not be much use to you guys but you might still find it interesting. I've just uploaded what I hope will be the beginning of an ongoing project that will allow you to construct your own Star Trek paper miniatures online and print them out.

Star Trek Crew Replicator

I have provided a variety of skin colours, optional heads (for Humans, Vulcans, Andorians and Bolians) and uniforms from all periods of Star Trek (except the pilot - no reason, I just forgot), along with a variety of accessories (phasers, tricorders etc).

As it stands only the males are currently done with females to follow shortly and as yet the artwork is a little ropey but it's a start.

Regretably the page only works properly in IE5+ I am extremely sorry about this but there's nothing I can do about it as yet.

As I say, I will soon be adding female equivalents of the male pages. I will also be adding more alien head variations, more uniforms to all pages (such as admiral uniforms and dress uniforms and captain's variants etc) aswell as the TOS pilot uniforms - as and when time permits.

Any feedback will be warmly welcome

For now enjoy,

Scarecrow

 

[KrasnyKot]

This one's really cool. Specially the TMP uniforms could very well be used as some Shipboard/Duty uniform for a passenger liner.

 

[The Oz]

That is some excellent work, Scarecrow. I can think of many uses for such things.

 

[Mythmere]

NICE work, Scarecrow! Takes a while to bring pieces up from the bottom, since the screen doesn't scroll by itself, but WELL worth visiting. Excellent way to staff a starship or a starport riot!

 

[Scarecrow]

Yeah, it'd be much more convenient if it scrolled. Someone suggested snapping into place aswell.

However the most interesting comment on the user interface so far was the suggestion that merely clicking on the pieces could make them jump to the correct location. That'd be much better and I think that's easily do-able with similar script. I dunno. I'm not a coder, sadly =(

Crow

 

[Tanuki]

Very nice!

Can you package it up as a downloadable zip file so that it can be run locally?

Have you seen the Lego Minimizer at http://www.reasonablyclever.com/mini/ ?

 

[Scarecrow]

Well, there's nothing stopping you picking your page and clicking Save As... in your browser. All relevant pages and images will be saved for use offline!

Scarecrow

 

[Scarecrow]

Just a wee note to let you know that I've added the women.

Regards

Crow

 

[powerboy]

You've done a fantastic job with these minis!
I would love to see more genres as well.

 

[stofsk]

Indeed. I put forward my vote for a Star Wars theme.

Can you tell us how you went about making the site?

 

[Scarecrow]

Well, in a nutshell, I drew out and scanned in a basic human shape at around 680 pixels high. No particular reason, that's just the height it was when I scanned it.
In photoshop I set about drawing outlines of all the various uniforms, hairtstyles, props bits and pieces on seperate layers. This was so that whilst I could keep them seperate, I knew they fitted exactly on to the basic human shape. I used a 6 pixel brush at 70% hardness for outlines and a 3 pixel brush for details (this came in quite late in the males section and is more prominent in the females section). I Coloured them on seperate layers which also meant that I could use the same outline for all colour variations of the different uniforms. Once I was happy with what I had, I shrunk the whole PSD file down to 166 pixels in height (which is roughly 28mm when printed at 150dpi). I then set about exporting each element (outline and colour) as a seperate 256 colour gif file with retained background transparency.
With the elements in place, I wrote out the HTML page using tables to position everything. The 'drag' script was free from the site I linked to on the front page. I just copied and pasted that in.

That's it essentially. If you want to see images of the various stages of creating the uniforms in Photoshop then see this thread:

TrekRPG.net thread

Start at the very bottom of page 1

With regards to other genres, yes I would love to do Star Wars and Fantasy but I want to perfect the Trek ones first =)

Regards

Crow

 

[daryen]

Scarecrow,

Rather than doing Star Wars next, could you do Traveller? (Obviously, after your Trek effort is done.)

Also, if you want some good bridge diagrams, go to (http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/gallery/bridges1.htm) on this (http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/index.htm).

Granted the diagrams used that skewed-overhead view to get a 3D perspective, but I am sure you could handle that ...

 

[theSea]

Scarecrow--

SWEET!

let me echo the call for a Traveller version... although I'm sure that would be a lot of work!

--michael

 

[Scarecrow]

Daryen,

Cheers! Actually Ex-Astris is where I got the reference images for the uniforms. Those bridge diagrams are very very nice. Scanned from the Star Trek weekly collectable mag thing. I'd love to do some Trav deckplans like that.

As for Traveller minis. Well, yeah. I do want to do them but first a big question.

What are the most popular costumes in Traveller?

See my problem?

Well, okay. I guess what I'd do is make some generic sci-fi clothes. There's enough reference material to do Imperial stuff, but visually Traveller is very vague so that nomatter what I do, people will say, 'well it isn't quite what I had in mind.' That's why the Star Trek one is so easy. There is a limited number of uniforms and a lot of reference material. In short, there is a right way and a wrong way of doing it. This is not so with Traveller.

Anyway, I'm not thinking about that just yet. I'm up to my elbows redesigning the Trek ones. I think I've gotten the formula pretty much sorted this time, so it'll be a piece of cake to add new stuff to it without having to redesign everything from the ground up again (I've done it three times allready!!).

I'm basically redrawing almost everything. The artwork on the men was very ropey. The women were much better because I set a standard for my brushes and also painted on to a transparency rather than a white background. So I'm redoing the men in a similar style.
I've swapped the bodies around so that the front and back face away from each other rather than towards each other. This is because the character's right arm never extends away from the body. It either hangs down by their side or folds across the body. This means that the space opposite the arm from the body never changes. It therefore makes sense to have this space between the two elements. This means that the character's left arm can do whatever it likes because it extends away from the body elements and doesn't overlap.
When this change is implemented I will be able to add in phaser rifles and arms that are raised to shoulder height for aiming hand phasers etc. The left arm can also be made to hold phasers for left-handed characters and even a phaser in each hand for gung-ho jar-heads!
I'm hoping that these revisions will be final allowing me to relax and add elements at my leisure and not have to redesign the whole thing from scratch every time I think of something I've forgotten. Once I'm happy that I've done enough then I'll move on and do other genres. This will be made easier by the fact that I will already have bodies and arms and other bits and pieces readily available and also a formula in place so that it's all nice an uniform when I create new pieces.

Rest assured. It might be some time but I definately want to do Traveller minis. Think of the Star Trek ones as a practice run so that when I do the Traveller ones, they'll be perfect =)

Regards

Crow

 

[theSea]

Traveller references:

Traveller's Digest Issue 20 has an article on Vilani fashion. IIRC TD13 also has an article on Imperial Marine uniforms of the Terran occupation.

Forbidden canon to be sure and not necessarily everyone's idea of Traveller. But it might be fun as a jumping off point if you ever get around to it.

Somewhat more canon would be the foldable paper mini's that came with the Seeker Gaming Systems deck plans... Black and White line drawings that fold up the same as the Trek mini's on your site. I'm pretty sure that the art is by WH Keith which is probably as visually Traveller as you can get.

Steve Jackson games also released several flats of Cardboard Heros - both as stand alone products in the 80's and with their deckplans for GURPS Traveller.

And don't forget the obligatory Vargr in the hawiian shirt As opposed to the Vargr in the naval jacket with the big gold epulates standing next to Dennis Quaid on the cover of the T20 book....

One thing I did notice playing around on your site.... the male set had the two halves of the image (front and back) moiving together while the female set had them moving independantly... I liked the former better.

Anyways - nice work both with the Character Replicator and on your personal site.

--michael

 

[Scarecrow]

Originally posted by theSea:
One thing I did notice playing around on your site.... the male set had the two halves of the image (front and back) moiving together while the female set had them moving independantly... I liked the former better.

Yes, this was done for reasons of space and spacing. I intend adding in Phaser Rifles and this would require the bodies to be further apart than they are so I seperated the female elements so that they could be positioned as the user saw fit. It also got rid of all those empty spaces between the hairstyles and props etc.
However I've now redesigned the elements to face away from each other so that spacing is no longer an issue and when I update the site next, the female elements will be joined, same as the males.

Future updates will also include:

> All secondary uniforms such as dress uniforms, duty variants and away team kits.
> TOS Pilot episode uniforms
> Phaser Rifles
> Fully customiseable arms
> Extra race heads such as Klingon, Ferengi and Trill.
> Extra Props such as Visors, Klingon Honour sash and prop variants such as holstered phasers.
> Catsuit duty uniforms such as Troi's, Seven's and T'Pol's
> EVA Space Suits
> Much more as and when I get round to it

As for Traveller reference, well a lot of it requires hunting downa nd purchasing old supplements which I'm afraid I'm not prepared to do. However, it's not too difficult to find Traveller images online and I do have a large ammount of Traveller books anyway and they'll do fine. Traveller fashion seems to consist primarily of jumpsuits or 19th century naval officers uniforms so it's not too difficult =)

My main concern is that, as you mention, Steve Jackson Games allready sells paper (card) miniatures for Traveller so I might have to just make generic sci-fi minis and not actually use the name Traveller or someone might get upset - especially if it affects sales.

Crow