Potential box and artwork for custom box?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Vagari, Sep 18, 2020.

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  1. Vagari

    Vagari Avatar

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    Hi all!

    Back at the beginning I did the digital founder on the Kickstarter... cause I'm an idiot. Since finding my old Ultima games disappeared from my parents house while I was living in a place with no storage for a long while and moving into a new house I started replacing them.

    In doing so I got not only a box for Shroud, I got one of the higher tier bundles with some of the extras.

    Meanwhile I've gotten a few extra miscellaneous materials of the Ultimas along with a few CIB versions. Using a blank box from Board Games Maker.com and some printed stickers for the "sides" I created an extra box to store the extra materials alongside the rest of the games on the shelf.

    I'm thinking when I order a second one soon (the first is full) it might be nice to create a slightly larger Shroud box to put the game box (it's still sealed since I have access digitally) and the extra materials into to put it along side the other games.

    Does anyone know if there's any source of Creative Commons or non-copyrighted artwork that could be used? I'd like to see how it comes out if the Board Games Maker place prints directly. But I'd also be OK with doing a similar sticker paper solution like I did the first time. I just think it'd be cool to do a little more than I did the first time, it's an all white box with "Ultima" and "Box of Sorting" on the side.

    I know it's a long shot. But if anyone has any insights I'd love to hear them. Thanks so much!
     
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  2. that_shawn_guy

    that_shawn_guy Bug Hunter

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  3. Vagari

    Vagari Avatar

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    Thanks @that_shawn_guy! Hopefully I can find enough materials to come up with something usable for print. I do see some large images, but all very digital oriented. Perhaps if I keep it simple (more texture and text than full graphics) I can figure something out. If I'm lucky there won't be too much reconstruction. My previous box includes a tweaked U6 based "Ultima" on the sides I did in Affinity Designer so I could scale it. Even the SVG graphics I found online looked like auto-traced images that had aberrations on some letters (extra "pen" points and quirks in the curves). I can get a bit OCD and take too much time tweaking and never being satisfied. *shrug*
     
  4. Vagari

    Vagari Avatar

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    It took me a while, off and on, but I believe I've finished the box design. None of the imagery was large enough (high res enough) to use for a box, other than a copy of the map I found. But since I've always enjoyed maps, that worked for me. Most of the artwork came from the fan site creator kit. But I got a few things from other places, for example, the copy of the Portalarium logo. And I almost recreated it in Illustrator, but found a higher quality copy.

    https://imgur.com/gallery/D8zOgxY

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  5. Vagari

    Vagari Avatar

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    Crossing my fingers boardgamesmaker.com doesn't have an issue with printing a single copy of this.
     
  6. Elwyn

    Elwyn Avatar

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    That's pretty good using the map as the background. I also see this is a hard box, rather than a folding box, they store on a shelf much better.

    And you could maybe print the minimum and share with others.
     
  7. Vagari

    Vagari Avatar

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    Thanks @Elwyn, it is in fact a hard box (assuming I get your meaning), similar to the base Shroud box and old school boxes from the 80s. And the good news is the minimum order is 1. The single price is $15.90 so not too bad. Shipping is about the same so ~$33 total.

    I was debating sharing the artwork, and if it all works, I may still do that. Then others could order their own box. I guess doing a bulk order might be an option. Looks like 10 would be almost half the price per unit ($8.75). So if there's a demand for that we could try and figure out what it would cost to ship them to me (or someone willing to distribute), and then back out to others.

    I had some issues converting the Illustrator file to an older version (even the artboards got messed up), so I ended up converting to a PDF. We'll see what the end result ends up looking like. But the order has been placed. I'll post an update when it arrives (said about 2 weeks).
     
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  8. Vagari

    Vagari Avatar

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    Hello again all,

    Been busy with work, the box arrived a couple weekends ago and I got some pics this past weekend. Everything fit perfectly. Though I got my set second hand, so I could see an issue of someone needing to tweak the design to make the box a little deeper if they have more materials.

    I'm not sure exactly how to share the files. Usually it's pretty simple to share some code or smaller images. But even the smaller PDF that I uploaded to be printed (see previous post) is like 30 MB if I remember correctly. Not the type of thing that goes on Github or Bitbucket... If others are going to use it, I'd like it saved for posterity somewhere it won't disappear in a year. I'll ponder it a bit, and if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears. =) We should also probably get it OK'd by someone higher up I imagine. Thanks for the support everyone and pointing me in the right direction when I wasn't sure where to get started.

    Here's the gallery: https://imgur.com/gallery/hyaTYiB

    [​IMG]
     
  9. Greyfox

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    Impressive! Looks so good, I'd buy it just for the design.
     
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  10. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    I havn't posted anything to the Digital Lycaeum in a long time, but we could add this to our repository, or possibly even to the Ultima Codex itself. We have things like Dame Lori's fonts available for download there.
     
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  11. Warrior B'Patrick

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    Greetings Vagari
    I recommend using Google Drive for storing and sharing the artwork for the box. You can even create a new Google account for the main purpose of storing and sharing the artwork. Many people on the forums have done this with user created resources like Spreadsheets and videos. I have one that converts $ to Coins to COTOS. You can see it here. Currency Converter

    Here are the steps to do this.

    Send a link to a shared file
    If you’ve set a file, folder or Google Doc to "Anyone with the link" or "Public," you can send the link to another person or post the link and they’ll be able to access and download it.

    1. Create or login to your Google Drive account at drive.google.com.
    2. Upload the 30 meg Artwork file {Google give you 15 gigs to use for all the stuff you store in google drive like email, pictures, files, etc. If you create a google account for artwork sharing only you would have the full 15gigs )
    3. Check the box next to the file or folder you'd like to share.
    4. Click the Share icon [​IMG].

      OR

      Click the More menu and select "Share..."

    5. Copy the link at the top of the sharing settings.
    6. Send the link to another person or mailing list in an email or chat.
    7. Go to the forums and create a post about the artwork (you already have that) and post the copied link for the file in Google drive in the post.
    At that point you would never need to go back to that account unless you wanted to add more things and it would always be under your control.

    Edit: @Browncoat Jayson you beat me to it again. I agree that it would be better off in the wiki than just in a post. More visibility. Think of my suggestion as an additional way of sharing the files.
     
  12. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    Very cool!!
     
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