72hr Jam 2024 "The Great Deflate" achievement icon from cardboard 1
Steam achievement featuring the Balloonicorn made from cardboard
Oh boy. Last year I created the Lost Continents poster and this year I thought I down scaled to something easier. Spoilers: it wasn't easier.
The First Day
I began work immediately when the timer started. But I started on the other achievement icon that I thought I had time for as well, being the Full Spectrum Warrior. I got it to a good start but I realized on the start of the second day that I simply did not have time for both.
The Second Day
The Great Deflate begins. So, you might notice that the achievement is in fact orange but my poster is lime. That's because I own a lime Balloonicorn named "lime colored flying fat fucking horse", description "you probably can't even see his ass". I bought him like that and I have him follow me everywhere. He's incredible.
With that out of the way, our first obstacle of the project is here as well: Higher resolution versions of the Pyromania achievements don't seem to exist anywhere. In the past Valve released 512px versions of achievements but perhaps they just forgot to do that for these. So I recreated the image myself. And that specific angle for the lime horsie came from a screenshot I got in-game. This alone took me two hours or so.
Now we have something to work with. All parts of the pony are in their own layers. In my previous project I had this really inefficient way of getting the virtual thing onto the cardboard. I drew the thing by hand from the screen. Getting the scale right was a nightmare with that. So, this time around I came up with a better method and it's.. tracing!
I taped a piece of paper to my screen and just drew the outline right from the source. I then glued said paper without cutting to the desired cardboard and let it dry. Only then I would cut it to shape.
This was way faster and got me better results compared to the previous method of cutting the template (white thin paper) which I traced to the cardboard. Terrible.
Drinking beer and drawing ponies, can you imagine anything better?
Pony building kit fully drawn, now to glue the parts and cut the horse itself.
Carpet knife and scissors is all I used.
The damn guy curled up like it ate a lemon after I applied the glitter glue to it.
The Third Day
Honestly, not much to add. I continued with drawing, gluing, cutting and repeating.
By the end of the day I had all of the pieces and it sends us to the present time.
Rainbow pieces came out very well.
The Fourth Day
(Because timezones, the Jam began at 7 PM Friday and ends at 7 PM on Monday)
I am writing this as I am assembling the picture, two and a half hours left. Because the damned stallion is so curly I have to go piece by piece, letting the glue settle before moving on. It was rather difficult to get all 9 pieces placed correctly, as if I glued down one piece in the incorrect spot it would be all over.
Mock assembly of the final product - decided to add a black outline to cover the edges.
And that's the whole thing glued and complete.
Ending notes, my favorite part of this is definitely the glitter glue. As you move around the pony sparkles and creates a nice contrast with the white parts. The red rainbow was also a lucky success - I wasn't planning on making it red before I started. Also I did mess up one part. The ear in the front, the white part is too high up. It's supposed to be down to his head but it's around 1 cm too high up. That's the only error.
If you actually read through this, thanks!
And thanks for the JAMS!!
The First Day
I began work immediately when the timer started. But I started on the other achievement icon that I thought I had time for as well, being the Full Spectrum Warrior. I got it to a good start but I realized on the start of the second day that I simply did not have time for both.
The Second Day
The Great Deflate begins. So, you might notice that the achievement is in fact orange but my poster is lime. That's because I own a lime Balloonicorn named "lime colored flying fat fucking horse", description "you probably can't even see his ass". I bought him like that and I have him follow me everywhere. He's incredible.
With that out of the way, our first obstacle of the project is here as well: Higher resolution versions of the Pyromania achievements don't seem to exist anywhere. In the past Valve released 512px versions of achievements but perhaps they just forgot to do that for these. So I recreated the image myself. And that specific angle for the lime horsie came from a screenshot I got in-game. This alone took me two hours or so.
Now we have something to work with. All parts of the pony are in their own layers. In my previous project I had this really inefficient way of getting the virtual thing onto the cardboard. I drew the thing by hand from the screen. Getting the scale right was a nightmare with that. So, this time around I came up with a better method and it's.. tracing!
I taped a piece of paper to my screen and just drew the outline right from the source. I then glued said paper without cutting to the desired cardboard and let it dry. Only then I would cut it to shape.
This was way faster and got me better results compared to the previous method of cutting the template (white thin paper) which I traced to the cardboard. Terrible.
Drinking beer and drawing ponies, can you imagine anything better?
Pony building kit fully drawn, now to glue the parts and cut the horse itself.
Carpet knife and scissors is all I used.
The damn guy curled up like it ate a lemon after I applied the glitter glue to it.
The Third Day
Honestly, not much to add. I continued with drawing, gluing, cutting and repeating.
By the end of the day I had all of the pieces and it sends us to the present time.
Rainbow pieces came out very well.
The Fourth Day
(Because timezones, the Jam began at 7 PM Friday and ends at 7 PM on Monday)
I am writing this as I am assembling the picture, two and a half hours left. Because the damned stallion is so curly I have to go piece by piece, letting the glue settle before moving on. It was rather difficult to get all 9 pieces placed correctly, as if I glued down one piece in the incorrect spot it would be all over.
Mock assembly of the final product - decided to add a black outline to cover the edges.
And that's the whole thing glued and complete.
Ending notes, my favorite part of this is definitely the glitter glue. As you move around the pony sparkles and creates a nice contrast with the white parts. The red rainbow was also a lucky success - I wasn't planning on making it red before I started. Also I did mess up one part. The ear in the front, the white part is too high up. It's supposed to be down to his head but it's around 1 cm too high up. That's the only error.
If you actually read through this, thanks!
And thanks for the JAMS!!
