I've been wanting to do a little graphics project for my blog...and today I wnt ahead and did it. Basically, I wanted a "mood meter" graphic I could add to posts. I've hinted at this sort of thing in shell chat before but the final vision came together in my mind a few weeks ago.
What I wanted was a White Mage facing a Black Mage, and some sort of scale between them. Adjusting the scale would indicate my mood, in the same fashion that various forums/Myspace/etc. do it. It needed to be simple, recognizable, and fun. In other words, 8-bit style!
Google Image search failed to produce a simple image I could use, so I rolled my own. Using a cross-stich pattern for the FF1 Light Warriors found here, I opened trusty Photoshop and prepared to skill up.
First I cut the white mage out, pasted her into a new image, blew it up and flipped it so she faced right. Then I made another new image sized 20x30 and hand-built my copy:
I repeated the process for the BLM.
Then I tried finding a simple crystal graphic I could use for the scale. Finding none, I made my own after a few experimental drafts. I made a green Wind crystal and a gray Dark crystal. If I get bored I can use the replace colors tool to make other kinds.
Finally, I made a new image, 90x30, and pasted in my new elements. Inside this .psd I have both mages and a row of 5 dark, and a row of 5 wind crystals. After arranging the layers, I can hide green crystals to get the different combos I want. This is a similar trick used for my Gamercard and its 30 layers so I can easily access each job's layer-pair. Here's the final results.
This was one of the most fun diversions I've worked on in some time, and I picked up a few points in my PS skill too ^^
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