For the last couple of weeks, I've been working on a tutorial on how to create Gamespace banners. But today I decided to pretty much scrap the whole thing. Instead, I'm going to publish a series of walk-throughs describing how I created my Gamespace banners that were accepted by the GameSpot Staff.

In this first edition, I will show how I created the banner for the PC RTS game Ground Control II. It is a simple banner consisting of a single screenshot from the game with a black gradient. I should note here that in this and all future tutorials, I will be using the GIMP, which I highly recommend you use yourself. It's free and open-source software, so while I suppose it can be argued that the GIMP is not the equal of Photoshop, it will be in time...

First off, there are some points that you need to know about Gamespace banners.

(1) Your banner must be 760 pixel wide by 140 pixel high, no more, no less.
(2) And it must be saved as a JPEG (.jpg).
(3) Your final image can be no larger than 30 kilobytes.
(4) The left-hand side of your banner must be dark enough to accommodate the game's title.
(5) The title will be added by GameSpot, so there is no reason for you to include the title in your banner.
(6) Finally, remember that there will be tabs across the bottom of your banner, so don't put anything in that space that you don't mind being covered up.

That pretty much covers the administrivia, so now I'll jump right in to the walk-through.

Step 1: Select source art
When searching for source art there are a couple points that I think you should take into consideration:

(1) Since you are making a 760 x 140 pixel image, you should find source art that will fit into this frame without much resizing. Of course, you can always shrink an image without much distortion; it will just (possibly) appear slightly blurred. But you should never try to enlarge an image to fit your banner.
(2) Personally, I think that 9 times out of 10, if a game's graphics are good enough to be used in a banner, you should use them. If not, look for concept art.

Now, this first step of selecting source art is a critical step for creating any Gamespace banner. You should decide what you want your banner to look like and then find images that fulfill your design. In this case, the part of GCII that really defined the experience to me was the artillery units. In GCII, the artillery, unlike artillery from every other RTS game, actually fire waaay up into the air, and after a few moments, the shells come crashing down to the battlefield. Fire for effect! :P

So I went to the GCII Gamespace and searched for any images that showed off the cool artillery fire I wanted to have in my banner. And I found this (click to see the full-sized version).


Step 2: Add the screenshot to the banner
Now that I had found an image to use in my banner, I created a new 760 x 140 image and filled the background with black. Then, I copied the GCII screenshot, pasted it into the banner, and made it a new layer.



Step 3: Size the image to fit & position it
Because the image was too large to properly fit in the banner, I used the Scale Image tool to resize it to 60% of it's original size. This scale allowed me to frame the portion of the image that I wanted (of course, I came across 60% by guessing and a little bit of trial and error). After I had scaled the image I positioned it in the frame.



Step 4: Create a gradient
Finally, I created a new layer and filled it with black. This layer is used to create a gradient to get rid of the hard, vertical line that separates the screenshot from the black background (as shown in the previous image).


To create the gradient effect, I used what is called an alpha mask, which is a gray-scale image that hooks into the alpha channel (opacity) of a layer and defines what is and is not visible. In the alpha channel, white represents complete opacity and black represents complete transparency.

So, initially I set the alpha mask to be completely white (or completely opaque). But then I used the gradient tool to create a white (visible) to black (invisible) gradient for the visibility of the solid black layer.


It is important to remember that the white portion of the alpha mask should extend to the right of the vertical line between the screenshot and the background. Otherwise, the vertical line will still be visible behind the gradient.

Complete
And that's it. The banner shown below is the banner on the Ground Control II Gamespace.


That's all that it takes to create a simple banner for a Gamespace. Find an image, fit it in the banner, and add a gradient. Of course, you can make your banners as complex as you would like, with multiple layers and alpha masks. In the next tutorial, I will show you how I created a little more complicated banner for the game Giants: Citizen Kabuto.

In the meantime, try making some banners using the techniques from this tutorial. And of course I would appreciate any feedback on this one. Let me know if anything is unclear.