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N4/C1 Token Design Questions

Discussion in 'Rules' started by Lawson, Oct 1, 2020.

  1. toadchild

    toadchild Premeasure

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    Kind of off topic - nanoscreens used to be a 3d marker that only gave cover based on the physical position of the token relative to line of fire.
     
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  2. Lawson

    Lawson Well-Known Member

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    That actually sounds cooler than it just being a reminder token now with 360 degree view. Wonder why they changed it.
     
  3. wes-o-matic

    wes-o-matic feeelthy casual

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    So, this was actually on my graphic design to-do list, but you did a great job with it so now I can just be lazy and do something else instead. Thanks, awesome work. :D

    Some feedback:
    • Excellent job responding to community feedback and taking it into consideration. I've been a senior designer for years and you're doing solid work I'd be overjoyed with in a coworker.
    • There are some contrast issues here and there. It's most noticeable with the small gray text on an orange fill, because they have very similar luminosity—if you look at the NWI/Dogged markers in Photoshop and convert the image to grayscale, the gray text on orange virtually disappears. There are similar issues elsewhere. I strongly encourage having a look at the files in grayscale and noting where your contrast drops out because it's based on hue rather than luminosity—the dark green on the Repeater and Dazer icons is really close to the dark gray of the outer ring, for instance. Generally you want a difference of 40-50% luminosity between adjacent shapes to create adequate contrast for graphics that will be viewed small/at distance.
    • The yellow of the Irregular Order icon clashes with the orange on the Isolated markers, partially because the yellow you're using is sort of desaturated. The official Irregular Order icon in the rulebook is a gradient but it's a brighter, more lemon yellow.
    • The dark red you're using on the NWI/Dogged icons is a bit off for the orange you've selected. I pulled the colors into Illustrator and you might try changing the red to #691800 (CMYK 33/92/100/50).
    • I can't tell from your posted image files, but are you composing the project in RGB or CMYK color? I ask because the red you're using is out of gamut for CMYK, so it'll print darker and less saturated than it looks on the screen. I haven't checked the other colors yet.
    Sorry I don't have less picky feedback, but you've done such a good job with this that all I could think of is the kind of fiddly commentary I normally do before a project goes to press.

    As far as printing double-sided goes, folks might consider the Game Crafter; they do print on demand game pieces and they make double-sided printed products cut to specification. The 1" Large Circle Chit is basically the right size for most Infinity markers: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/publish/product/LargeCircleChit

    What software are you using to put these together? Would you consider sharing your source files once it's done?
     
  4. Nuada Airgetlam

    Nuada Airgetlam Nazis sod off ///

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    Wait, what? When?

    upload_2020-10-11_5-58-19.png
     
  5. Nuada Airgetlam

    Nuada Airgetlam Nazis sod off ///

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    Wes is on-point about the communication above. Great job taking feedback on board!

    I agree the Irregular Order seems out of palette, too "mustard" and dirty. The gray-on-white text suffers in legibility. Switch to black text maybe?

    upload_2020-10-11_6-5-5.png

    "Disposable / Loaded" color logic looks off to me. "Darker / dirtier" color should mean "worse state", thus I'd instinctively expect brighter "grass green" to mean I have three items of "ammo" left and the darkest state is only one left. Also, Unloaded is orange, maybe make it in-palette with the Loaded tokens, the darkest?
     

    Attached Files:

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  6. Errhile

    Errhile A traveller on the Silk Road

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    It gets the job done, which is all I ask for :)

    In theory, there isn't a limit for how high a Combat Groups can go.
    In practice, I don't think anyone plays with more than 3. In my meta, back in N2/N3, it was extremally rare to go with more than 2 (but not all the armies are represented here), and N4 discourages going with more than 2 even more.
    All in all, I believe having desings for 3 would be absolutely enough. And the group #3 can be put on the extraras sheet very, very far away in the order of things :)

    Irregular Orders are owned by individual models, but those models still belong to numbered Combat Groups. And these days, models can have both Regular and Irregular Order at the same time (Tactical Awareness). I'd prefer to have them numbered by group, too.
    Impetous orders are the thing that doesn't require numbering, in my opinion.

    From the technical standpoint? Yup, seems like you've nailed it (unlsee someone comes up with some obscure situation they'd love to have a token for). There might be some minor technical details to iron out, as people here do suggest.

    Apart form that, I believe the next step should be working with Toadchild (well, as soon as he can find time...) to get these designs into the custom sheet generator he did. Which will allow any of us to create a set of tokens right for their needs.

    Back in 2ed, when these were first introduced.
     
  7. toadchild

    toadchild Premeasure

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    Because it’s a pain to actually play with. The marker was a piece of acetate sheet that came with the model, and if you replaced it with something sturdier it had to actually match the size and shape. The modern rule is much more practical. They also stopped including all the acetate sheets for things like nanoscreens and hackers somewhere around the N2/N3 transition.

    [​IMG]
     
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  8. Lawson

    Lawson Well-Known Member

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    Yes, the above are essentially my final steps at this point. Since my previous post I've done a grayscale printout on my laser printer in black-and-white and I'm checking a handful of things. The gray 'helper' text was already at different intensities based on the different color backgrounds to help it stand out, but I haven't pushed it far enough in all instances - also in some cases it is too small for comfort on a 25mm marker, so I'm working on increasing both the contrast and size while trying to make sure it's not so strong that it competes for attention with the main token text - obviously I don't want it to be unreadable but I want the name of each token to be the most obvious feature. Also I'm mildly red-green color-blind so I'm going to use some tools to check various other things before going through with the finals so I don't need to depend on my eyes.

    re: software and etc. I tend to use After Effects for design for a couple of reasons. First of all, as a visual effects artist and title designer, it's something I'm already familiar with. Second, I find that it strikes a good balance between Photoshop Raster image creation and Illustrator's Vector tools, and the fact that it has nested comps and a timeline means that I can essentially have hundreds of images open at a time and do things like animate/increment numbers so that I can easily create groups of tokens. Also, all of its filters are non-destructive, so I can turn stuff on and off at will and create precomps to apply the same basic design to multiple tokens.

    Out of After Effects the results are going to be necessarily be RGB (it doesn't have a CMYK option that I'm aware of). So I need to tweak in photoshop when I do the finals and also correct for photoshop assuming the wrong DPI. I'm exporting the images for print at 300 DPI but they're almost entirely vector so they're theoretically scalable and the comps I'm working with for the 25mm tokens are around 600x600, so it's technically possible to output something that could be printed at 600 DPI. Actually one more thing I'm experimenting with currently is the 'bleed' on the images. The official CB tokens have almost no bleed on them, so if you're not super precise in punching them out, it's very easy to get a white edge. As a result, I'll likely add a bit more border to ensure that everything is easy to cut out.
     
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  9. Lawson

    Lawson Well-Known Member

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    I think the issue may be one of saturation. I did darker green for the deployable Repeater and Dazer, with the idea that they were more 'permanent' than the mines, which were a lighter green. I also did Albedo B as a paler/desaturated version of the blue from Albedo A (to give a sense that your protection is fading away). I think I sort-of lost my nerve on the coloring of the Loaded icons and was worried that going pale might be hard to read, but the result I think I cranked the saturation too much as I lightened the color and as a result it might be unclear in its current state. Will tweak it a bit in the next version and make the darker green more saturated and lighter green more desaturated and that should help sell what's happening better. Also the orange for Unloaded is in line with 'negative' states/effects being orange, so I don't find it necessarily inconsistent to how everything else is currently.
     
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  10. wes-o-matic

    wes-o-matic feeelthy casual

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    I'm a bit rusty with After Effects. Are you exporting a series of large rasters to then PDF them from Photoshop?

    I'd normally swing that kind of multi-object workflow entirely in Illustrator to leverage object styles, global colors, and symbol duplication, and the software's designed to support print document design with CMYK color management and pre-press control. After Effects sounds like the long way around to me, but I've seen people do complex vector-only work purely in Photoshop... Whatever works, works.

    If you wanted to drop the vector versions of the various icons and markers in a Google Drive, I'd be happy to set them up in Illustrator, but I'm not sure if/how After Effects would handle batch-exporting vector elements like that.

    RE: Bleed, it'll depend on whether you're expecting the end user to punch the tokens out with a paper punch, or manually cut them out with scissors. Manual cutting would benefit from zero bleed, but with a punch (or setting up for a vendor using laser cutting) I'd go at least 1/8" bleed all around.
     
  11. Nuada Airgetlam

    Nuada Airgetlam Nazis sod off ///

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    If it's just outer border width, would you be able to provide both variants? With and without additional bleed?
     
  12. Stiopa

    Stiopa Trust The Fuckhead

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    Would it be possible to get a blue Camo (-6) marker set? There's still space on the camo sheet, and I bet most PanO players would be happy ;)

    Some more order tokens would be nice, especially Irregular, Impetous, and 2nd combat group ones (though if toadchild will be using those for his marker sheet creator it won't be an issue)
     
  13. Lawson

    Lawson Well-Known Member

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    It's undoubtedly the long way around no matter how you slice it, I think. I've just got years of experience in AE and comparatively much less in Illustrator, and the project started out as just something I was fiddling with to make my own mine tokens and then took on a life of its own after I zoomed in on the official N4 token pdf and saw what a disaster it was - so I didn't really think it through until I was fully entrenched. But, like I said, AE has some tools as well that simplify things so it worked out.

    It will take a little work for me to output everything just because I tend to fly through things sort of sloppy and then circle back around to clean it up later - so I need to fix some layers and naming and stuff, but I should be able to export everything after that in a way that makes sense and can function in illustrator. I could also export PSDs with layers that would make it easier for people who want to just re-color stuff the ability to do so.

    Yeah, even with punching with a hand-punch, the bleed is kind-of a double-edged sword because it's harder to be 'centered' on the token without something to line up to. Really I'd want a Cricut or something like that to really make it work ideally (or send away to get them professionally done by someone like Gamecrafter like you said @wes-o-matic; I've done this before for other tokens and it turned out pretty good). My final exports will likely include the ability to turn a bleed on and off as necessary
     
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  14. Lawson

    Lawson Well-Known Member

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    I figured any of these pages could be printed multiple times to get the right number of tokens, but if I have to add numbered irregular tokens anyway I may need to tack on another page. I'll see if I can get blue camo on there as well.

    And yes, I think the ultimate solution will be to get these to @toadchild once they're finished because obviously no one has the exact same needs in terms of markers.
     
  15. Stiopa

    Stiopa Trust The Fuckhead

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    Yeah, I'm a big fan of his marker creator. I've made a whole magnetized set using his creator, adhesive paper, and a whole lot of round bases, and I'm really looking forward to creating an N4 version :3

    [​IMG]
     
  16. I love the whole project.

    Just a small request, would it be possible to make mimetism markers keeping the official TO colors?
     
  17. Nuada Airgetlam

    Nuada Airgetlam Nazis sod off ///

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    Oof, tell me about it, mate. I feel you, for me it's the editing and DTP of the C1 and N4 rulebooks. Same feelings.
     
  18. Lawson

    Lawson Well-Known Member

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    Can you clarify what you mean by this? TO camo seems to have been replaced just by Camo w/ -6 mimetism in N4.
    Are you referring to:

    1) the violet and yellow color choices I made for the -6 Camo
    2) the color of the circle with the MOD in it, for which I've used Red for -3 (same as the N4 tokens) and a deeper red for differentiating the -6
    3) the actual 'digital' pattern for the -6 camo?
     
  19. I haven't explained well (english is not my native language), what I would like to keep is the pattern of the official -6 markers (which is the same as TO markers in N3)
     
  20. Lawson

    Lawson Well-Known Member

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    Wow that's a lotta bases. I actually have a question related to the design of these. I'm planning to mount mine onto Litko 1" round acrylic circles but I've been having problems finding a hole punch of the right size. I thought maybe if I could get a true 25mm punch, the slight difference between 1" and 25mm (just a fraction of a mm) would ensure that the printed circles wouldn't overlap the edges, but the problem I'm currently having is that I've bought a couple hole punches marketed as 25mm and the cut circles always come out to actually LARGER than 1". I have a set of electronic calipers that I'm measuring everything with so I can guarantee it's the hole punch that's the problem and not the bases.

    So now I'm looking for a 7/8" punch to guarantee that there will be no overlap, but I've been having a little trouble finding one. It seems like my only option is something called the Carl Crafts CP-2 (https://www.amazon.com/Carl-Craft-P...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TYQJQDM02K8E5CE63Q7V), which is supposedly 7/8" (just a hair over 22mm), but I'm a bit nervous to pull the trigger now because I've had so much bad luck so far.

    Another option is something like this: https://www.amazon.com/VViViD-Trans...rds=circle+cutter+paper&qid=1602442445&sr=8-9, which is adjustable... but I'm worried that this is something designed for cutting out clean pieces of paper where the positioning doesn't have to be precise, and it might be very difficult to center a token for a cut.

    The third options is a hollow punch like is used for leather working: https://www.amazon.com/Utoolmart-Le...words=hollow+punch+22mm&qid=1602442557&sr=8-2. I have no idea whether such a punch would effectively cut something as thin as paper, though.

    @Stiopa do you (or anyone else) have any advice?
     
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