Submitting skins to the shop

edited November 2020 in Important info
New skins can't be submitted.
After the engine change, the old graphics may be incompatible.


The old content of this post:
When you submit a new skin to the shop, you receive:
  1. A percent of plutonium from each sale of this skin (the more people buy your skin, the more you'll get).
  2. Free use of this skin for a limited time.

The amount depends on the share of your own work in the skin:
  • if you've found a skin in the Internet and made a short description: free use for a week + 3% of plutonium for 1 year;
  • if you've found a skin in the Internet, made a short description, config and testing (if it's required, see below): free use for a week + 5% of plutonium for 1 year;
  • if you've edited a skin: free use for 2 weeks + 5%-10% of plutonium for 1 year;
  • if you've used existing sprites for some sides of the skin and drawn the others: free use for 1-2 months + 15-20% of plutonium for 2 years;
  • if you've drawn a skin from scratch: free use for 2 months + 25% of plutonium for 2 years;

Simple math:
If you find a skin in the Internet and write a few sentences (which takes only a few minutes), you'll receive 2-4 plutonium each time someone buys it, which might result in dozens of plutonium over a year.
If you draw a skin, you'll receive 15-40 plutonium each time someone buys it. Over two years it might result in hundreds of plutonium. If you and 3 other people buy this skin, you virtually get it for free.

Royalties are paid once a week and displayed in the profile:
royalty.png
Counting years starts from the moment the skin is added to the shop for the first time. A royalty may be shared between co-authors.

After submitting several good skins, you get an additional choice of either receiving royalty for new skins or instantly getting them forever. The quantity of submitted skins required to get this option depends on their quality, coolness and share of your work in them. Skins submitted long time ago count too, so old good authors already have this status.

Before making a skin of some character, check if we already have this character in the shop. We can accept alternative version of an existing skin only if it's significantly better or more interesting. If you're unsure, ask about it before starting drawing.

Copyright policy
We do not accept skins taken from other games unless they have a license that permits it.
Currently, we have a license to use skins that come with RPG Maker. However it doesn't cover skins made for RPG Maker by a 3rd party.
Please, don't send us sprites of an unknown origin found in the Internet, almost all of them get rejected for copyright reasons.

Required information
  1. The skin itself (a .png image or an URL).
  2. A working skin config. Config and testing are not required if:
    • you drew a skin yourself, but can't make a config yet (then we'll make a config for you so you can test it);
    • the skin is not edited by you, has a standard layout and came from a source where skins have proven quality.
  3. A short description in English that contains:
    • if it is a character from some franchise - the name of the character and its TV show/game/comics/etc.;
    • clearly state whether the skin is drawn by you from scratch, uses some existing sprites or you submit sprites made by someone else;
    • if you've used any sprites made by someone else - the URL of a page where you've found it (not a URL of an image!) and what kind of license does it have;
If you lie about authorship (present someone's work as your own), all the royalties will be taken back (even if you've already spent them) and you'll lose the right to submit skins forever. In case there is any doubt about authorship, please save a few intermediate versions of your work.
You can send skins to me via the Inbox (if you've partially drawn it, better send it here) or to @Gally (if you find it and didn't edit it considerably, better send it here).
Please do not send letters to skins@gameofbombs.com for now; we have temporary problems with this email and can't reply from it.

You can also make new items for the skin constructor. You'll receive them forever and in addition instantly receive a fixed amount of plutonium (depending on the item complexity and amount of fixing required). Making new items for the constructor requires some collaboration to make them compatible with the existing sprites and quality requirements are also higher than for complete skins. If you're interested, write to skins@gameofbombs.com

And don't forget about an exclusive personal skin :)

Comments

  • edited January 2017
    Requirements for skins.
    1. A skin and its animation should look good. In particular, when people draw their first skin, it often has a poor animation. We're sorry, but if it's bad, we won't accept it. The skin must be easily visible in the game, not irritating or distracting (e.g. flashing colors), not cause confusion (e.g. it may not look like existing game effects).
    2. A skin consists of rectangular cells (frames) of the same size. The size of the entire skin image is a multiple of the size of one frame.
    3. The size of each frame is usually from 32x32 to 64x64 pixels. The height and width may be different and smaller than 32, but they shouldn't be bigger than 64 without a good reason.
    4. Sprites should be big enough that if rendered without scaling up, a player doesn't look like infected by the lilliput disease (so a 24 pixels high human figure won't do, but some 28 pixels high skins might still be ok). Don't try to meet this requirement by simply upscaling sprites. Small sprites lack details and look low-resolution no matter how you scale them, see below.
    5. When you're drawing a skin from scratch, it's best to make the character size close to 30-32 pixels, so he/she can be rendered in the game without scaling. In that case there will be no visible blur added and it'll look crisp. If the character is rendered downscaled, it'll looks blurred. So a good sprite that is close in size to the game cell will usually look better than a higher-resolution sprite. If the character is rendered without scaling, make height and width of each cell even (if it's rendered scaled, it doesn't matter - you can make them odd too).
    6. Sprites should be properly aligned in their cells, so when a skin moves, it doesn't jerk and jump unnaturally. At the same time, most skins have a slight vertical movement of a head (usually for 1 pixel) while walking, sometimes with a small horizontal wobble too; this is an important part of the animation.
    7. When you compose a skin layout, use either the recommended layout for Game of Bombs or one of the standard layouts used in other games (since you create it anyway, using the standard layout won't take additional time). If you are using an existing skin as a base, you can leave its layout without changes to save time on editing.
      • The recommended layout for GoB:
        - the order of rows directions: top, right, down, left;
        - if sprites for left direction are identical to the mirrored sprites for right direction (including shadows and blinks), don't use the row for left direction (so the order of rows directions is: top, right, down) and use "animMirrorLeft": true option;
      • Other standard layouts:
        - the order of rows directions: bottom, left, right, top;
        - only 4 rows;
        - only 3 or 4 columns;
        - cell sizes only 32*32, 32*48, 48*48, 64*64.
        Look at the examples of different layouts in the skin testing tool below.
    8. There shouldn't be too much unused space around sprites (to reduce the skin size). But the first and last row and column in each cell should be mostly empty (maybe except a few pixels), otherwise sometimes there may be visible rendering artifacts in the game. If you use a layout of an existing skin, it's ok to leave unchanged unless it is really bad.
    Avoid scaling of sprites during editing if possible. This is a typical mistake. Scaling doesn't add any real details, it only makes images more blurry. The game and a browser do scaling themselves if it's needed. And it depends on browser and system resolution options. So it will often result in a double scaling (first by you, then by a browser) and more blur. There are two exceptions when scaling is good or necessary:
    1. Downscale if sprites are too big (> 64 pixels) to reduce the skin size. The skin will still have plenty of details, so quality is not an issue.
    2. Upscale small sprites (< 30 pixels) only if you're going to edit pixels manually after scaling to add details and make them look higher resolution (which is quite a big work). If you're going to do it, it's better to increase their size exactly 2 times with "nearest neighbor" or "none" interpolation and then edit pixels to add real details and make them look smooth.
    You can test skins and create their configs in this skin testing tool. It has examples of all types of skins.

    Unpack the archive and open index.html. Click on any skin on the field and move it by pressing arrows or make it run in place by pressing the spacebar.
    It has examples of all types of skins (images in "skins" folder) and their configs with comments (in "entities.js" text file). Add your own skins to the "skins" folder, copy existing configs in "entities.js", edit them to match your skins, save the file and reload the page.
  • 1 year later
  • Can i make a accessories for this skin https://imgur.com/a/YtzzR ? I want add a sword in hand.
  • 2 years later
  • КУДА ОТПРАВЛЯТЬ СКИН
  • edited April 2020
    КУДА ОТПРАВЛЯТЬ СКИН

    Excuse_Me
  • _xXx wrote: »
    Can i make a accessories for this skin https://imgur.com/a/YtzzR ? I want add a sword in hand.

    if you make it like these

    https://imgur.com/a/2IAn1
  • Excuse_Me
    tells her better not to send skins
  • Gally но она говорит ей лучше не присылать скины
Sign In or Register to comment.