Fletch, wanted to say your whole park views are awesome, and the one with sunset skies is amazing, just didn't have time to truly do the comment justice.
Also, can't wait to sit down and actually read the latest park tour from Esterial!
For almost a year, Bonaparte has been the only member of his species in the Park. Bonaparte (or Bony, as he is affectionately known), is a cheerful and friendly dragon who gets along well with everyone. However, sometimes, the wizards have noticed a wistful look in his eye(socket) when he sees other dragons playing with their own kind.
Esteriel's Park is pleased to be able to announce that it was able to secure a second Bone dragon shortly after the first 2012 sightings were reported.
The look on Bonaparte's face when he caught sight of young Bonnie across the lake on the Epic Breeding Island is one that will long remain in the memories of the staff who saw it. For some of them, it may long remain in their nightmares..... but there's no place for squeamishness when you aspire to be a dragon-keeper.
Bonaparte and Bonnie wasted no time in getting to know each other, and in deference to these excited kids in love, the witchvet magically accelerated their egg.
We are privileged to show you the first photographs of Bonaparte, Bonnie and their cute little firstborn - Bonzer.
The Park has turned over an entire earth habitat on Agraria to the new family so they can enjoy this precious time together. We have decorated the area with Jack-o-Lanterns, the Bone Dragon birthfruit, to make it a little bit special, and we have stationed a full-time witchvet nearby to make sure all goes well.
Please join us in wishing Bonaparte, Bonnie and Bonzer a long and happy life in the Park.
Hay Fletch, how do you do the whole park images? I'd love to do one of mine. Fabulously Gay Idea!
Step 1. - Take 8 snap shots of your Park on an iPad, 1 of each island + the EBS/Gemstone Islands. Paste them into a program like photoshop and nudge them into position so the edges match.
Step 2. - Erase the unwanted headers/footers from your images and make sure that no dragons are half covered up or duplicated at the edges and flatten the 8 images into one.
Step 3. - Magic wand all the sky out of your resulting image, find a good background to throw behind it. Place a copy of the background image into the foreground at about 20% opacity and colour grade your park image to match.
Island looks fantastic. Great symmetry and use of trees. Love the Eggsagon. What happens when more eggs come out? I like the Tree of Gemly Wisdom. And yes fewer difficult questions would be good!
Not going barefoot on Pangeia Island, thank you very much! I really like the display eggs near their habitats. Did you decide to do that from the first, or just happen to have a bunch of fails and figured you'd put them there?
Reminds me of SimCity! I like the comments about the dragon poo and how you connected the earth boost with the farming. The island looks really nice. The Library is really set apart. Awesome use of original terrain, too, really nice.
Nice symmetry, looks great. I love how the Seasonal has her own little forest, and the part about keeping it matching her habitat and the medical insurance.
Again, awesome path designs and symmetry. How much do you plan those out, or do you just artistically let them design themselves and simply maintain symmetry? Or was it the optometrist's fault? I like the two ice habitats balanced with the pond. If you have another habitat available, you might consider replacing that pond with a small ice habitat. It only holds one dragon, but it would add animation to that corner. I love the superconducting pond, and the Rust dragon comment.
Celestia Island looks wonderful. It sparkles! Again, the paths are awesome. Loving the LYD versus Equinox comments.
I was gonna conjure fistfulls of gold Morporkian dollars ($AM) and dump them into the wishing well, but I wouldn't want Commander Vimes to try to trace them! Thanks for the tour!
Now I have to redo all mine. Getting inspired is hard work. Sigh.
Step 3. - Magic wand all the sky out of your resulting image, find a good background to throw behind it. Place a copy of the background image into the foreground at about 20% opacity and colour grade your park image to match.
Fletch - you are seriously raising the bar here for those of us with no graphic design skills, no Photoshop, and not quite sure what colour grading an image actually entails. But your pictures look so great, I started paddling around in Paint.Net, which is obviously not in the same class as Photoshop but has the advantage of being easy to teach yourself and above all, free.
Thanks for giving me the impetus to actually see what I could do with layers. I only use them normally to avoid destroying too much of the picture when I make a mistake with erasing things or importing other elements. Well, as it turns out, Paint.Net doesn't seem to have a 'colour grade' tool (or maybe I just wasn't looking in the right place), but in hunting for it unsuccessfully, I accidentally managed to come up with this night-time effect. OK - not exactly, but the closest thing I've seen to night on Dragonvale.
I have to admit that I am not quite sure how it all works. I suspect it is just a happy coincidence that my sun, moon and ice habitats are fairly close to the 'light source' and so pick up the most 'reflection', but the Colosseum looks like it has lights around the top. The red tree on the Gemstone Island (not a navigational beacon, despite appearances) is a bit of a jarring note, and I think I'd better be more subtle with the marble paths. If I'm really clever, I might even be able to give some of the dragons fiery breath.....
I need to experiment more but today is Saturday (housework day) and I feel guilty for spending so much time on this already.
I can see from the forums that this community is rich in people with artistic and photographic skills, so I'd love to see other night-time parks - and any hints for an amateur like me at the less-sophisticated end of the graphic software spectrum.
(Sorry if this doesn't quite fit into the 'Dragonvale Tours' topic. Maybe if there is enough interest the admins could start up a Dragonvale Art topic.)
Last Edit: Oct 13, 2012 6:02:02 GMT -6 by Esteriel
I was gonna conjure fistfulls of gold Morporkian dollars ($AM) and dump them into the wishing well, but I wouldn't want Commander Vimes to try to trace them! Thanks for the tour!
Now I have to redo all mine. Getting inspired is hard work. Sigh.
Thanks TommyB. I love that you are also a Discworld fan. I don't want to pry, but your cat does look as though he may be related to Greebo - or was he just in a bad mood for the photo?
I've enjoyed your stories woven around your visits to other parks - inspired, and you have a way with words reminiscent of Sir Terry.
I appreciate your kind and thoughtful comments on my park, and will try to answer your questions.
The Eggsagon is posing a dilemma at present. The Bone egg has thrown the design out and I now have one too many eggs to keep the symmetry. I don't have enough space for those wonderful grids that some people devote an entire island to, unless I get rid of some habitats - but then I'd have to take some dragons off display. Maybe an epic egg display - but then the Eggsagon would lose symmetry through too few eggs. I agree that inspiration is hard work!
I actually started just with eggs beside the relevant habitats - it seemed in keeping with an 'educational park' theme, and I've only recently completed those (seemed to take forever to get my second Gold Olympus and Silver dragons). The Eggsagon did indeed start with fails (and my admiration of other peoples' egg grids), but being a bit OCD, once I started, I had to complete it....
I like your idea of the small cold habitat. I am up to max habitats at present (until BFS takes pity), but I'll see if I can drop one of the Rainbow habitats and rearrange the others in some kind of pattern to free up a new one (I need symmetry in my park to make up for my lack of organisation elsewhere!).
I have two gold shrines, and I've only managed to feed one dragon up to level 20 (the venerable Phydeaux). I'm not sure whether its better to spend all my treats on getting more gold shrines or on getting my other Panlongs up past level 15.
I spend far too much time on this game, but as vices go, I guess it's fairly harmless. I'm also loving this community - such friendly people.
Last Edit: Oct 13, 2012 3:20:32 GMT -6 by Esteriel
Step 3. - Magic wand all the sky out of your resulting image, find a good background to throw behind it. Place a copy of the background image into the foreground at about 20% opacity and colour grade your park image to match.
Fletch - you are seriously raising the bar here for those of us with no graphic design skills, no Photoshop, and not quite sure what colour grading an image actually entails. But your pictures look so great, I started paddling around in Paint.Net, which is obviously not in the same class as Photoshop but has the advantage of being easy to teach yourself and above all, free.
Thanks for giving me the impetus to actually see what I could do with layers. I only use them normally to avoid destroying too much of the picture when I make a mistake with erasing things or importing other elements. Well, as it turns out, Paint.Net doesn't seem to have a 'colour grade' tool (or maybe I just wasn't looking in the right place), but in hunting for it unsuccessfully, I accidentally managed to come up with this night-time effect. OK - not exactly, but the closest thing I've seen to night on Dragonvale.
I have to admit that I am not quite sure how it all works. I suspect it is just a happy coincidence that my sun, moon and ice habitats are fairly close to the 'light source' and so pick up the most 'reflection', but the Colosseum looks like it has lights around the top. The red tree on the Gemstone Island (not a navigational beacon, despite appearances) is a bit of a jarring note, and I think I'd better be more subtle with the marble paths. If I'm really clever, I might even be able to give some of the dragons fiery breath.....
I need to experiment more but today is Saturday (housework day) and I feel guilty for spending so much time on this already.
I can see from the forums that this community is rich in people with artistic and photographic skills, so I'd love to see other night-time parks - and any hints for an amateur like me at the less-sophisticated end of the graphic software spectrum.
(Sorry if this doesn't quite fit into the 'Dragonvale Tours' topic. Maybe if there is enough interest the admins could start up a Dragonvale Art topic.)
Fantastic stuff. I like the paths, actually. Sort of look like landing lights guiding the dragons back home.
Thanks for the info on creating the full park shots. I've been messing around but lack skills. As soon as I get something put together ill publish! Thanks again
Step 3. - Magic wand all the sky out of your resulting image, find a good background to throw behind it. Place a copy of the background image into the foreground at about 20% opacity and colour grade your park image to match.
Fletch - you are seriously raising the bar here for those of us with no graphic design skills, no Photoshop, and not quite sure what colour grading an image actually entails. But your pictures look so great, I started paddling around in Paint.Net, which is obviously not in the same class as Photoshop but has the advantage of being easy to teach yourself and above all, free.
Thanks for giving me the impetus to actually see what I could do with layers. I only use them normally to avoid destroying too much of the picture when I make a mistake with erasing things or importing other elements. Well, as it turns out, Paint.Net doesn't seem to have a 'colour grade' tool (or maybe I just wasn't looking in the right place), but in hunting for it unsuccessfully, I accidentally managed to come up with this night-time effect. OK - not exactly, but the closest thing I've seen to night on Dragonvale.
I have to admit that I am not quite sure how it all works. I suspect it is just a happy coincidence that my sun, moon and ice habitats are fairly close to the 'light source' and so pick up the most 'reflection', but the Colosseum looks like it has lights around the top. The red tree on the Gemstone Island (not a navigational beacon, despite appearances) is a bit of a jarring note, and I think I'd better be more subtle with the marble paths. If I'm really clever, I might even be able to give some of the dragons fiery breath.....
I need to experiment more but today is Saturday (housework day) and I feel guilty for spending so much time on this already.
I can see from the forums that this community is rich in people with artistic and photographic skills, so I'd love to see other night-time parks - and any hints for an amateur like me at the less-sophisticated end of the graphic software spectrum.
(Sorry if this doesn't quite fit into the 'Dragonvale Tours' topic. Maybe if there is enough interest the admins could start up a Dragonvale Art topic.)
Well done! Really like the hot highlights! You did very well!
Hay Fletch, how do you do the whole park images? I'd love to do one of mine. Fabulously Gay Idea!
Step 1. - Take 8 snap shots of your Park on an iPad, 1 of each island + the EBS/Gemstone Islands. Paste them into a program like photoshop and nudge them into position so the edges match.
Step 2. - Erase the unwanted headers/footers from your images and make sure that no dragons are half covered up or duplicated at the edges and flatten the 8 images into one.
Step 3. - Magic wand all the sky out of your resulting image, find a good background to throw behind it. Place a copy of the background image into the foreground at about 20% opacity and colour grade your park image to match.
I've got a question : how do you make the larger images ? I did my park nearly the same way as discribed above too, but the resolution is bad. When enlarging the picture to have a closer look at the dragons they are pixelated. Next idea was to take pictures of the enlarged islands ( several screenshots for one island). But this seems to be very difficult because of all the flying dragons, that have to be taken care of to merge. In addition it's very time- consuming to eliminate the sky background ( even with the 'magic wand'). Did you really make the larger images with more screenshots and then eliminate all the sky again ? Or is there an easier way? And one more question : what's the best way to get the screenshots from the ipad on the PC ? I just appended them to emails. Another way could be photobucket or something like skydrive or dropbox. I think when appended to mails they loose quality. ( but that way was the first which came to my mind). Thanks for any tips.
dragon list (last dragon : Gatren) DV friend id: Crumble#7733 friend link coop friends always welcome, but all my gems are spoken for
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