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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> Black and white silhouette pieces
        
(Message started by: Janzert on Dec 1st, 2008, 1:22pm)
Title: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Janzert on Dec 1st, 2008, 1:22pm
I've been wanting a set of black and white pieces for a while. I've even tried creating some once or twice before but they've turned out pretty horrible. The other night I decided to give it another try again and see if I could come up with anything better.

My primary goals are fairly clean, simple pieces that will stay easily recognizable at small sizes.

I used inkscape and started with a traced sillouette from the current piece graphic. I just did the elephant, dog and cat to see how they would look. They still aren't very good but I think I'm getting closer to usable with this iteration at least.

http://arimaa.janzert.com/bw_sample.png

Just wondering what other people think and if anyone else has made any alternate piece graphics.

Janzert
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by The_Jeh on Dec 1st, 2008, 2:47pm
They look nice. Maybe add a few whiskers to the cats so they aren't so similar to the dogs.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by BlackKnight on Dec 1st, 2008, 4:30pm
Very nice, Janzert!

Maybe we could also create a LaTeX font based on your graphics?!
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 1st, 2008, 4:53pm
Tachyon also made some images:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3005/3076106546_3f7503ef73_o.png

I don't think it makes sense to have a checkerboard, because there are no diagonally-moving pieces in Arimaa, as there are in chess and checkers.

I agree with The_Jeh that whiskers on the cat are a must.

I wonder whether the dog should look more wolf-like, another way of distinguishing it from the cat.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 1st, 2008, 4:56pm
Omar also put up some images:

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/graphics/bw/

I don't think shading within the black and white pieces will work very well, though.  At a small scale it makes the pieces look fussy.  I expect what we are after is very simple, very stylized images.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Janzert on Dec 1st, 2008, 6:33pm
Yeah, the way the cat turned out is my least favorite. I tried some whiskers but couldn't get them to work well and they tend to disappear when the piece is scaled down. I think the overall shape needs to change more to help make it distinct from the dog.

Of all the ones I've seen now I think I like Tachyon's the best so far.

Janzert
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by arimaa_master on Dec 2nd, 2008, 4:22am

on 12/01/08 at 18:33:58, Janzert wrote:
Yeah, the way the cat turned out is my least favorite. I tried some whiskers but couldn't get them to work well and they tend to disappear when the piece is scaled down. I think the overall shape needs to change more to help make it distinct from the dog.

Of all the ones I've seen now I think I like Tachyon's the best so far.

Janzert


I like shapes:
Elephant - Janzert
other peaces - Tachyon

but I think that a little close-cut of cats would be even more distinguishable from dogs.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by omar on Dec 3rd, 2008, 6:59am
Wow, I had no idea others were working on this. Karl mentioned to me in the chat room that he was looking for black and white pieces, so I just used photo shop to generate black and white images from the colored images. When they are large, it looks pretty good, but for small images it does get a bit fuzzy.

I also think Tachyon's looks the best so far.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by aaaa on Dec 3rd, 2008, 7:09am
The black dogs of Tachyon are a bit pig-like.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by BlackKnight on Dec 6th, 2008, 8:23pm
I used the coordinates of the Arimaa Dog to design a dog character using METAFONT.
http://www.uploadandgo.com/images/Dog_mf.JPG (http://www.uploadandgo.com/)
It can be scaled easily, and it could be used in diagrams or within the text for example.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Tachyon on Dec 7th, 2008, 2:26am
Ok I have completed a revised set of the Arimaa board images. Here it is

http://www.uploadandgo.com/images/Arimaa_board.jpg

Comments ? ....
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Tachyon on Dec 7th, 2008, 3:54am
I have used the latest design as the basis for an Arimaa font.

This is a board done in MS Word
http://www.uploadandgo.com/images/Font_Board.jpg

Using the Arimaa font and Keys  as follows :

http://www.uploadandgo.com/images/Font_Table.jpg
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 7th, 2008, 6:51am
This is fantastic, Tachyon.  I like the new dog much better; it is not only clearly recognizable as a dog, it is clearly distinguishable from all the other pieces.  I also like how whiskers make the cat more recognizable.

The current set is close enough to what I was hoping for that I am starting to think about how it will look printed in a book, as opposed to on a computer screen.  I'm a little worried that gray might not print as smoothly on paper as it appears on the screen, but I don't really know if that is true with modern printing technology.  I wonder who would know.  The reason I'm concerned is that the current white pieces look much better on a gray background than on a white background, so either the printing of gray needs to be good, so we should consider further thickening the outline of the white pieces.

One minor point that strikes me is that the cat head is the biggest image of the bunch.  It's more noticeable now that the dog has shrunk.  Ideally image size would be a cue as to piece strength, in addition to our pre-existing knowledge that elephants are big and cats are small.

Also, I see that you are using capital letters for the dark pieces and small letters for the light pieces.  I think of silver and gold as both being light colors, i.e. neither color is a natural match for being dark, but for black-and-white printing one of them has to be dark.  I propose that we standardize on silver being dark, not because silver is any darker than gold, but because that will correspond to the intuition of chess players that white goes first, and the white pieces are at the bottom of the board, and that white is playing up the board.  Also if the obsolete notation of 1w, 1b, etc. pops up anywhere, it will be handy if we have associated Gold with the white pieces as well as with the capital letters.  We can choose any conventions we want, of course, but since Omar already started us down the path of gold=white=first move=bottom of board=capital letters, we might as well fall in line rather than bucking that trend.

As a final small point, I like how the Arimaa client reflects the silver pieces from the gold on a vertical axis.  This gives us another point of distinction and easy reference without having to do any extra graphic design.  I think it would be a nice touch to have that reflection in the board diagrams and in the font.

Thanks again for creating and sharing these fine piece images!
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by aaaa on Dec 7th, 2008, 7:15am
The whiskers on the cats look a bit weird. Perhaps make them longer and less triangular.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Tachyon on Dec 7th, 2008, 9:10am

Quote:
 I'm a little worried that gray might not print as smoothly on paper as it appears on the screen ...


I know that print is a science in its own right and not one that I am an expert at. The font has really been designed for printing and I can only judge by the results I get on my own little HP Printer. The font used in a printed document looks quite good (I think). Ideally we should elicit advice from a printing service at this point.


Quote:
... we should consider further thickening the outline of the white pieces.


Have you tried to print the word doc ? What does the print look like ? If you still think the outline should be thicker, this is easily done by using bold on the white pieces.


Quote:
... cat head is the biggest image of the bunch ...


Sure ... I could refine the image sizes accordingly.


Quote:
... gold=white=first move=bottom of board=capital letters ...


OK ... If I understand correctly you would prefer to have the Capital letters used for the black font and small letters for white ? ...  I could do this quite easily.


Quote:
... Arimaa client reflects the silver pieces from the gold on a vertical axis ...


Huh ? ... Sorry ... I do not understand this statement ... I have never seen any reflection ???
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Tachyon on Dec 7th, 2008, 9:18am
Being a specialist at usability design rather than art .. I am acutely aware that the ultimate judge of any product is the users themselves. I am satisfied enough with what we have at this point to put it to some kind of test with users. How could we do this ?

Would it be possible to post a few questions about the designs and elicit a voting response from the Arimaa community using the voting tool used by the mob ?
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Janzert on Dec 7th, 2008, 10:11am
Yay, this is really coming out nice.


on 12/07/08 at 09:10:23, Tachyon wrote:
OK ... If I understand correctly you would prefer to have the Capital letters used for the black font and small letters for white ? ...  I could do this quite easily.


Pretty sure he meant black pieces with small letters and correspond to silver. White pieces with capital letters and correspond to gold.


Quote:
Huh ? ... Sorry ... I do not understand this statement ... I have never seen any reflection ???


The silver pieces face toward the left, while gold faces right.

Janzert
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by BlackKnight on Dec 7th, 2008, 10:45am

on 12/07/08 at 03:54:13, Tachyon wrote:
I have used the latest design as the basis for an Arimaa font.
This is a board done in MS Word

Is the MS Font also based on coordinates? I'm asking because I would like to use an Arimaa font in LaTeX.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Tachyon on Dec 7th, 2008, 11:08am
The MS Font is a postscript font based on vector based images. If we can get to a point where there is broad community consensus that this font is working well. I will be happy to release the source images for the community to use in other projects such as LaTeX
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Tachyon on Dec 7th, 2008, 11:11am
Janzert wrote:

Quote:
Pretty sure he meant black pieces with small letters and correspond to silver. White pieces with capital letters and correspond to gold.


Sorry .. my mistake ... your'e right  :)


Quote:
The silver pieces face toward the left, while gold faces right.


Oh ... OK .. no problem ... I can do that .
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 9th, 2008, 10:57am

on 12/07/08 at 09:10:23, Tachyon wrote:
I know that print is a science in its own right and not one that I am an expert at. The font has really been designed for printing and I can only judge by the results I get on my own little HP Printer. The font used in a printed document looks quite good (I think). Ideally we should elicit advice from a printing service at this point.

Yes, it would good if we could get feedback from someone who knows about printing, by which I mean the production of plates that are put on rollers for the production of large quantities of books.  e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offset_printing

The images can look great on inkjet and/or laser printers, but after a few hundred copies, that kind of printing becomes more expensive than printing with plates.  The appropriate technology depends on the size of the print run, so I should ask Z-man how many he was considering making, but I would think at least a thousand.

I don't think you can have gray with printing plates, unless you make one plate for the black and another plate for the gray, which jacks up the cost.  So gray would have to be a bunch of little dots.  But how fine can the dots be?  Surely not as fine as with inkjet printing?  That is what is worrying me.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 9th, 2008, 10:59am

on 12/07/08 at 09:18:44, Tachyon wrote:
Would it be possible to post a few questions about the designs and elicit a voting response from the Arimaa community using the voting tool used by the mob ?


The Mob actually uses a public voting tool, so any preferential vote you would like to stage can be done there as well.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by clauchau on Dec 10th, 2008, 5:22am
Here is a cat I've just drawn, inspired of one of the many pictures of real cats my wife decorated my office with :)

I find it quite noble. Maybe it's another possible start for the Arimaa cat in Black & White. Maybe the whiskers ought to be thinner. Here it is as a png file :

http://clauchau.free.fr/cat.png

The original svg file is at http://clauchau.free.fr/cat.svg
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by omar on Dec 10th, 2008, 8:20am
Claude, what program did you use to get SVG output.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Janzert on Dec 10th, 2008, 12:12pm
<!-- Created with Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/) -->

The ones I did up were made the same way if anyone wants them as well.

Janzert
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by The_Jeh on Dec 10th, 2008, 1:26pm
Come to think of it, the graphics Arty originally designed for use on iggamecenter.com are good silhouettes.

http://gc1.iggamecenter.com/gml/arimaa/images/set1/gr.gifhttp://gc1.iggamecenter.com/gml/arimaa/images/set1/gc.gifhttp://gc1.iggamecenter.com/gml/arimaa/images/set1/gd.gifhttp://gc1.iggamecenter.com/gml/arimaa/images/set1/gh.gifhttp://gc1.iggamecenter.com/gml/arimaa/images/set1/gm.gifhttp://gc1.iggamecenter.com/gml/arimaa/images/set1/ge.gif

They are, however, not what we're used to. I think I'd prefer graphics that focus more on the heads.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 10th, 2008, 1:46pm
Both Arty's pieces and clauchau's cat look nice.  One think to keep in mind, though, is that we need white and black pieces both, i.e. two sets.  I'm wondering what the black cat would look like that corresponds to clauchau's line drawing.  Scalable vector graphics do allow for filled regions, right?
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by IdahoEv on Dec 11th, 2008, 12:31am
Here are the silhouettes I created for my handmade boards, including the sets used at the tournament I ran at Gateway 2007 and the prize set I gave away to the tournament winner.  

My design criteria were:
  * shapes should be clearly distinguished, i.e. cat can't be easily confused with dog
  * stronger pieces should have increasing linear dimensions, aiding recognition
    * stronger pieces should fill increasing fractions of the disc, further aiding recognition
 
  I found that empty "white" silhouettes didn't show through the glass gems I used for pieces very well, but it wasn't necessary because I made the pieces by laser-printing them on either gold or silver metallic art paper.   With the colored paper, solid black silhouettes worked fine, though I did right-facing gold and left-facing silver to match the orientation of the pieces on the online game.

http://arimaa.idahoev.com/images/arimaa_silhouettes.png

You can download PDFs of both the right-facing gold pieces and the left-facing silver pieces in two different sizes at my arimaa site (http://arimaa.idahoev.com), if you like)
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by clauchau on Dec 11th, 2008, 3:59am
Wow, Arty's and Idaho's are splendid as far as whole bodies are concerned.

We may also try designing simple heads similar to Adobe Chess figures below :

http://clauchau.free.fr/AdobeChess.png
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Tachyon on Dec 11th, 2008, 4:37am
OK Here is what the Arimaa board could look like using the gold=white=first move=bottom of board=capital letters standard.

I have also re-scaled the size of the cat slightly to bring it more in line.

http://www.uploadandgo.com/images/Arimaa_Board.jpg
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Tachyon on Dec 11th, 2008, 5:36am
I have also incorporated all the changes into the Arimaa font and created a PDF document using it. This way you can download and print the document and see what the print version looks like.

Here is the link.

http://www.2shared.com/file/4436444/42f5d5ef/Arimaa_Font.html
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 11th, 2008, 5:33pm

on 12/11/08 at 03:59:24, clauchau wrote:
We may also try designing simple heads similar to Adobe Chess figures below :
http://clauchau.free.fr/AdobeChess.png

Ah, thanks for that chess example, clauchau.  The hatching for the dark squares relieves some of my concerns about printing for my book.  The stripes would be printable even at low resolution.  I was worried that the shading would run into the pieces themselves and give them indistinct edges, but I see that is solved by giving each piece image a white halo, which doesn't show on the white squares, but keeps the shading at bay on the dark squares.  So even if the printing process can't give us a nice gray, we have a solution for the trap squares.

If my book has to use hatching instead of having a decent grey, then I will probably lean against having the non-trap squares shaded at all.  The non-trap squares would probably have to be white, which makes it extra important for the white pieces to look good against a white background.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 11th, 2008, 5:41pm

on 12/11/08 at 04:37:57, Tachyon wrote:
I have also re-scaled the size of the cat slightly to bring it more in line.

I like the smaller cat; it's not nearly as scary somehow. :)
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by 99of9 on Dec 11th, 2008, 6:50pm

on 12/11/08 at 17:33:33, Fritzlein wrote:
If my book has to use hatching instead of having a decent grey, then I will probably lean against having the non-trap squares shaded at all.  The non-trap squares would probably have to be white, which makes it extra important for the white pieces to look good against a white background.

I agree with that.  In fact I dislike the hatching so much that I suggest not even using it on the trap squares.  If you are unable to get grey, then perhaps a thicker border around the trap would suffice.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by 99of9 on Dec 11th, 2008, 6:55pm
Nice work Tachyon.  My main remaining complaint is that the camel and horse are still way smaller than the cat (and dog).  Any chance of making them use more of the square?  Ideally I'd like to see the area of each piece increase monotonically with the piece value (but I don't mind if they're all similar size).
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by aaaa on Dec 11th, 2008, 7:00pm

on 12/11/08 at 18:50:38, 99of9 wrote:
I agree with that.  In fact I dislike the hatching so much that I suggest not even using it on the trap squares.  If you are unable to get grey, then perhaps a thicker border around the trap would suffice.

How about instead denoting a trap square with a cross inside of it?
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by 99of9 on Dec 11th, 2008, 10:46pm
Yes, that's possible too... the cross would have to extend across (almost) the whole diagonal to make sure it was visible from underneath a piece.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Tachyon on Dec 12th, 2008, 8:58am
Did anyone have a chance to print and view the pdf document with the arimaa font ?

Would like to hear some comments on the printed version ...

Here is the link again ...

http://www.2shared.com/file/4436444/42f5d5ef/Arimaa_Font.html
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by IdahoEv on Dec 12th, 2008, 2:50pm

on 12/12/08 at 08:58:38, Tachyon wrote:
Did anyone have a chance to print and view the pdf document with the arimaa font ?


Mostly looks great - good work.  

Error:

  • The black elephant shows up on the screen for me, but does not print.  (OS X 10.5.5 w/ HP inkjet.   Tried both Adobe Reader 8 and Preview.app).   All other characters fine.

Comments:

  • I'd like to see the horse and camel a bit bigger, cat and dog a bit smaller.   Dog is currently the biggest / blackest piece other than the phant.
  • I think the outline on the white-outlined ones is a bit too thin; at print sizes it makes the lines look a tiny bit patchy in places.
  • It would be great to have a second version of the font where both sides are solid (not outline), but face opposite directions.   This would allow the examples on the second page to look a bit better.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 15th, 2008, 5:12pm

on 12/12/08 at 08:58:38, Tachyon wrote:
Did anyone have a chance to print and view the pdf document with the arimaa font ?

Would like to hear some comments on the printed version ...

Thanks for making a pdf, Tachyon, since I wasn't able to get the fonts working in MS Word 2003.

I agree with IdahoEv: for the white pieces on white backgrounds the bold outlines look better.  Significantly better in my opinion.  The only drawback of the bold pieces is that the already-somewhat-large cat eyes get even larger.  But the thin outlines on the non-bold pieces are just too faint to make the pieces stand out.

On my laser printer the best-looking white pieces are the photo-negative of the black pieces set against a gray background.  However, I don't believe that format will still look good in a printed book where no decent gray is available.  Someday I'll get in touch with a print expert and clarify what sort of gray is available for black-and-white printing from plates.

Thanks again, Tachyon, for all your work on black-and-white piece images.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by clauchau on Dec 17th, 2008, 3:51am

on 12/10/08 at 08:20:57, omar wrote:
Claude, what program did you use to get SVG output.


I first scanned the real picture as a pdf file (tiff file was possible too). Then, I imported the picture with Inkscape - Janzert is right - added a layer above it and sketched the outline and main lines with Bezier curves with as few dots as possible.
Title: Re: Black and white silhouette pieces
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 19th, 2008, 11:29am
I did a tiny bit of research poking around on the Web, and learned a couple of useful things about printing books.

First, for print runs of under 500 books, the overhead costs of offset printing are large enough that even professional printers will use a high-quality photocopier rather than plates.  If I am not mistaken, this means a good gray will be available, which makes it a real option to have white pieces with no outlines, i.e. just with the gray of the background square providing a border.

On the other hand, for print runs of over 1000 books, offset printing is cheaper, and the economies of scale can hardly be ignored.  For a large enough run, a paperback book my size (~200 pages of 8" x 5.5") could retail for $9.99.  Because I'm not in this to make a lot of money, I will gladly take any opportunity to drive down the price in whatever way possible, to increase sales and thereby further awareness of Arimaa.  If this includes white piece images that need a thick outline to show up well on a white background, so be it.

Thus the important question is the size of the print run.  I certainly hope Z-Man intends to print more than a thousand.  If he isn't going to use his gaming contacts and distribution muscle to get the book out there, then there's not a lot of advantage to printing through him rather than self-publishing.  But maybe he will see it differently, and not want to take a risk on a large run.  Or maybe he will be so busy (as he has been the last couple of months) that I will get tired of waiting and eventually self-publish anyway.

If I self-publish, I will use a print-on-demand service and distribute through Amazon.com, so that I don't have to worry about inventory or shipping.  That probably drives up the cost of my paperback to $15, because I will be trying to recoup up-front costs with a small volume, but at least the book will be out there.  Also that will give me editorial control over everything.  (And my up-front costs will include a small gratuity to the piece designer. :))

I'll update further as I learn more.


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