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[Kagus]

Considering it has an anticoagulant compound, not sure if you'd want that in your drink.

Maybe it could have some medical purpose, though.  Unless I'm confused about what an anticoagulant does.  Improves blood flow, right?

Anticoagulants prevent the blood from clotting, or at least lessen the extent/speed that it clots.  Currently, the most pressing issue is to stop wounds from bleeding out all over the place...

..hey, wait a second.  Maybe this is why all those dwarven adventurers seem to bleed to death from cut lips.  Plump helmets have the same chemical compounds!

[Corona688]

I had to think about the Blood Thorn...  specifically, why it's bloody and thorny, and why it's the densest kind of wood.  An underground cavern might not have a lot of wind to spread spores, and the third-layer animals that could do the job instead aren't exactly friendly.  It might do the job itself.



On the left you see an immature blood thorn just beginning to split open its 'egg' after years of dormancy.  Observe all the sticky spore-coated filaments.  In a matter of hours the woody core shoots to full height, snapping the tough filaments one by one and in the process flaying the surrounding area with sticky red spore-bearing rubberbands.  An obnoxious thing to suddenly appear in your dining room.

[bmaczero]

I have to admit I was a little short on ideas for the blood thorn...I based it off yours.

I love it.  It looks truly sickening.

[Corona688]

Glad you like it.  Sometimes I get an idea and just HAVE to draw it, y'know?  An unfortunate circumstance given my poor art.

[Mr_Ham97]

If you're looking to improve your art skills, a huge thing you can do is to never save your art as a .jpg. That's why there are all sorts of artifacts in that last image. Save it as a .png instead; it's just a little bit bigger filesize, and the compression is much better than a jpeg. Really, the only things the jpeg format is good for are photographs.

That said, I really like that concept! It's kinda like that one early X-Files episode where the fungus from beneath the earth infected the people and grew inside them until it burst from their head in a shower of spores.

[Interus]

An alternative view of the bloodthorn is that it actually looks like that other mushroom that people have been talking about, which happens to look like it's bleeding and has a bunch of spikes on it.  The only major difference being that it's big enough to be useful in construction.  Or maybe they just grow on top of each other or something.

[Corona688]

If you're looking to improve your art skills, a huge thing you can do is to never save your art as a .jpg. That's why there are all sorts of artifacts in that last image. Save it as a .png instead; it's just a little bit bigger filesize, and the compression is much better than a jpeg. Really, the only things the jpeg format is good for are photographs.

It was a two-meg multilayer xcf until I reduced and jpeg-ed it to upload it.  png does not compress well for color illustrations with gradients and shading.

[bmaczero]

PNGs are excellent for things like DF screenshots that only have like 16 colors in them, but I've been chewed out on a few occasions for posting "giant" PNGs by people on 56k connections 

[Corona688]

PNGs are excellent for things like DF screenshots that only have like 16 colors in them, but I've been chewed out on a few occasions for posting "giant" PNGs by people on 56k connections 

Twits, a jpeg would be bigger for that.  :p  Convert them to indexed color for even further space saving.

[smjjames]

Yea, I've been told in the past to use .jpeg/.jpg for images since they load faster. Now that wireless and high speed are slowly making 56k extinct, its probably now less of an issue.

[Mr_Ham97]

PNGs are excellent for things like DF screenshots that only have like 16 colors in them, but I've been chewed out on a few occasions for posting "giant" PNGs by people on 56k connections 

Twits, a jpeg would be bigger for that.  :p  Convert them to indexed color for even further space saving.

Yep. .gif's, for example, are perfect for DF screenshots.

Also, I just tried an experiment: With that plump helmet picture I made, I saved it as a .png, a .jpg, an uncompressed .tif, a jpeg compressed .tif, a .tga, and a .gif.

Image quality results:

Code: [Select]

.png  .jpg  un. .tif  jpeg .tif  .tga   .gif
High  Lower   High      Lowest  Highest  Low
Compressed file size:

Code: [Select]

.xcf (control) .png     .jpg     un. .tif  jpeg .tif  .tga    .gif
    122 kb    48.7 kb   6.01 kb    479 kb     14.3 kb  146 kb  23.7 kb
So yeah, if you want a fast loading image, .jpg's are your best bet. If you want good quality with a medium loading time, .png's are the best. However, if you don't mind only having 256 colors to work with (255 if it's transparent), .gif's are better in quality than .jpg's and don't have much higher of a compression-to-quality ratio.

This is a bit off-topic now, so my next post here will be some sorta fungus picture.

[Mishy]

Did someone say plumphelmet men?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Check out www.hasslefreeminiatures.co.uk for other awesome minis.

[bmaczero]

If that site has an elk bird, they win the internet.

EDIT: Nope...but the search for "bird" did turn up something that looks suspiciously like a dwarf .
http://www.hasslefreeminiatures.co.uk/pack.php?pack=2036

[Mishy]

Nah ive never noticed and bird creatures.
They have a lot of hot adventurer models though. Some are even naked.

[bmaczero]

Nah ive never noticed and bird creatures.
They have a lot of hot adventurer models though. Some are even naked.

Call me crazy, but I'd rather see something weird like an elk bird