Creating Images for Webpages

You've seen the legal disclaimers all over my site and maybe other people's sites. This is because some people - out of either not knowing better or not caring - have taken images from sites and put them up on their own, without asking first. People work hard to make their sites look nice, and hate to see their work being used by other people who didn't even ask. You don't know how to make images and want some for your webpage? It's not that hard. Here are some suggestions.

For regular site-decoration images like buttons, you can try sites like Free Images. I got mine at Windy's Fashionable Page Designs and Bimsan's Free Web Graphics.

You can get some images from the "Free Stuff" section of the official Creatures 2 website, but please be sure to read their usage guidelines first.

You should get an image editor if you don't already have one. You can find some for download at TUCOWS if you use Windows (there are sites for Mac software out there, but I don't know where). Go to the image editor section, and you can find a whole range of graphics programs to try out. From there, it's trial and error, which is how I learned.

You could download LummoxJR's NornPose from The Norn Underground (it's in the downloads section). You can make norns or grendels to decorate your site that way, by following the directions that are included with it. I made the two grendels on the front page using it. After that, use your image editor to edit the file if you want, and then definitely save it as a GIF or JPEG - web browsers can't read the BMP format that NornPose saves in.

To put images from the game into your page, there are different ways to do it. You could use the Owner's Kit photo section to take a picture of one of your norns, then hit the "Save Photo" button. This will save it in BMP format; use your image editor program to save it as a JPEG or GIF.

While playing the game, you could also take a "screenshot" by pressing the "Print Screen" or "Prt Scr" button on your keyboard if you have a PC. (It's just above the Insert / Delete / End keys.) Then open up the Paint program that comes with Windows, which is probably under Accessories on the Start menu. Use the Paste command on the menu to paste in the screenshot, then save it as a BMP file. It can only save as BMP, so that's why I said you need another program too. Open your image editor, outline the area you want to keep, and use its "Crop" command (see the help file that came with it, but it's probably listed under "Edit" in the menus) to cut it down to a manageable size. People won't want to visit your site if your images take forever to load. Then save it - JPEG will probably be best for images like this that have a lot of colors.

In the Creatures 2 help file, there are lots of little images of plants, animals, etc. You can right-click on them to save them in BMP format, then convert them later.

Legal info: This page is © 1998, 1999 Denise L. Voskuil. These COBs, other files, and images are all © their respective creators. I am distributing them through explicit permission only. If you would like to post them on webpages or Usenet, or even just put an image up on your webpage, contact their creators and ask first. Do not link directly to any of them as an alternative to putting them on your own server. If you have problems with a file, contact the creator of it; I have given contact information for each. Green page decoration graphics are courtesy of Windy's Fashionable Page Designs, except for the base green rectangular button design, which is from Bimsan's Free Web Graphics.

Last updated April 7, 1999