Hexel Fun

So, I mentioned in my first post I'm making an input manager for Unity3D. I want to release this as an open-beta but I wanted a good platform to do it with. Nothing major just something presented nicely. So I made this blog, but I needed a logo (you gotta have a logo).

I wanted the logo to be hexagonal in nature, since my first planned game (6x Mass Production) is based on a hex grid (plus, I just like hexagons). So hexagonal, clean, and since I'm not really an artist at all, not too complicated so I might actually do a good job of it.

I first tried to use Inkscape to do this, since it was SVG and I could get the clean precision I wanted and it was able to have triangular grids to snap to! First hurdle was that the triangle grids could not be rotated 90 degrees (which I wanted).

Left: Point is up (Inkscape), Right: Point is to the side (what I wanted)

So I tried to pain sideways and although I got something, it wasn't really what I wanted, was plain, and very cumbersome to paint sideways using outline.

Creating hex art with Inkscape, really not what this was designed for... or I was just doing it wrong

I next tried photoshop which was alright, I could get a hex grid as a backdrop and work from there, but unlike Inkscape, it just didn't have the precision I needed, you can set up a snap to grid but only a square setup. It was going alright, but was far too much work to make sure it as precise as I needed it to be.

Enter Hexels!

Hexels Logo http://hexraystudios.com/hexels/

So hex drawing in software not designed for hex drawing is just a simple mission. So I thought I could write a simple hex drawer that would do the job. Seemed like a lot of work, but fortunately someone has done it already! And they've done it pretty damn well! Hexels by HexRay Studios made basically the app I was looking for. It really easy to use if you have basic photoshop/similar experience and their glow aftereffect feature may seem like a gimmick but it really adds a level of vibrance to the images that non-artists, like me, appreciate (since it make us look better than we actually are). After a bit of trail and error, my logo was made. I kn0w the text is a bit wonky so I might revisit it as some stage, but I'm quite happy with it.

This is just the same as the title logo

With this very significant and noteworthy success (lol). I moved on with my real project, making that gamepad input manager. I'm almost done but I needed to write the documentation. But there was a major and all-encompasing, huge, blocky-like problem... ok there wasn't I just need to write up the docs but I wanted some sort of logo or graphic to represent the system! Pictures often speak very well in conjunction with documentation that people will probably mostly ignore anyway (until there's a problem, of course). So I thought I could copy paste a bunch of controllers into photoshop, draw some lines, show whats up, but I though the pictures might be crap, it'll most likely look cheap if I do it... sooooo

HEXELS... yeah so instead of doing important stuff I drew these. Hexels has a nice feature in which you can backdrop an existing image and paint over it. Here are the results of my efforts (with the pics they were based on - I don't own the real pictures, I found them on Google):

XBOX

Playstation

Logitech

So I must disclaim, I am not a trained artist, nor even a practicing one. I think these are OK at least, not fantastic though, but any criticism or advice will help me tremendously if you have. Otherwise I just have to say that Hexels is super easy and fun to jump into! Go to their site and try out the demo!