Quake Skins Tutorial

Carl Kidwell
Chapter 11:
High Color Mode
Page 5

Above we find my completed image rounding off th eflesh tones, adding some 'riddled' muscle mass particuarly amongst his abs to add realism. I have not made this a 'realistic' flesh tone due to the fact we are focusing on having the flesh tones match that of the Quake palette's limitations. This Image is ready for conversion to a paletted image. If you look closely you will find that I have actually created some darker areas where recesses might exist. This is one of the polishing touches that helps make any skin look better and more realistic. It is very important when creating 2 dimensional art to use realistic shading techniques. Your 2D skin will be providing all the realism for someone's 3D model.

Finally I will show you how this image looks with the Quake palette loaded on it compared to the Quake2 Palette.. showing how it can look better having designed it to target the Quake Palette.

Our Image using the Quake 1 Palette Our Image using the Quake 2 Palette

NOTE: All this images are considerably larger than they would be for Quake or Quake2. They have been made purposfully larger to help show you in detail the painting process.

Finally I have here a quick example of how using the Quake palette as I describe above produces images that look more like their high color origins than those that were not done in the method I suggest.

High Color Mode The two dots and top two lines are done with colors selected from the Quake Palette The bottom line is two randomly selected colors.
Quake Palette Loaded Although loss of quality has occured in the two dots, and top two lines, they do look very similar to their high color counterparts. The bottom line is very different from its highcolor mode counter part as it was not chosen from the quake palette.