Token Art: Special Effects *Outside* the Creature Footprint? (Poll / Advice!)

I've started painting my first pack of monsters for Roll20.  I'm considering adding some extra drama to some creatures by adding design effects outside the precise square, rectangle or other area that the creature occupies in a tactical sense. For instance, the Chain Devil is a Medium Humanoid, but he's got these great chains, right?  Would it be confusing to players / GMs for me to add trailing chains behind this creature, even if those chains dragged behind the square that the creature would occupy as a miniature on a traditional game board?  I'm committed to pushing the drama of my figures, but I don't want to create a situation that makes them pretty, but less usable for their intended purpose. Thoughts?  Thanks, all! Back to painting...

If you use a grid they get resized to fit the square anyway. You can play with dimensions but then they don't line up anymore. When i made my own token i made in a square work area so there would be no distortion.  I find a lot of the tokens distort and find it annoying, so pushing clean non distorted tokens with lots of drama would go over well with me and likely be purchased. 

I've been able to save with a transparent geometry that avoids that 'squishing', at least in my tests so far.  I've seen the effect with other tokens, but a locked transparent underlayer seems to keep them in proportion.  Thanks for the response--I'm really hoping to be able to up the drama and avoiding keeping my creatures locked in an obvious "box" when they could be much more dramatic. Again, thanks!!!!  :-)

Best not to try and make art that sticks outside of a square, due to the way tokens snap to the grid and such.  They only work well if you don't use a grid.

Jonathan, I've been making rectangular test designs and importing them into the map--they snap just fine at 1:2 and 1:3 with zero distortion.  I wonder if I'm doing it incorrectly now.  Does the processing of the Marketplace after the images are submitted cause this distortion? I've seen what you're talking about with, for instance, horse tokens I randomly searched for and pulled out from the sidebar while in Roll20, but my own images don't do that when I drag them in, even if they're at the same ratio. I'd hate to get started and have all of my work get crushed into funny shapes upon being dropped on the board...!  *haha* Hm...maybe more research is necessary...

If it proves to keep proper proportions, I'm cool with detail and minor overflow. Proper dimensions of a token absolutely trumps all else imo. I made this for my campaign in MS paint in about 5 mins cuz all the other tokens were getting on my nerves, NPCs are one thing but my character has to be in proportion. The point is i opted to cut off the head of the flail over minor distortion, I'm kinda anal about it. PS anyone can use that token if they want.

Depends on if you're dragging them onto the map layer, token layer, or snapping to grid.

Fred Lang, the problem you will run into is that if one token occupies a 1x1 'game' space but takes up 3x3 image space then another token will have to be on top or below it to stand next to it.  If you need a demonstration PM me and I can supply one. :) - Gauss

I'd certainly try to contact a dev to find out definitively, it would suck to have your work crushed.  

Voth, I totally agree.  Keeping the proportions correct trumps all.  Any solution would have to have that.  I certainly don't want to create "the most aggravating tokens in Roll20 history"...!  :-D

Gauss, I've been dragging tokens on top of each other all day with no problems.  They're all on the same level, so having them close / far / on top of one another doesn't seem to affect them.  I feel like I may be missing something HUGE, but I have yet to have a token bumped by another on the same level.  Weird!

Well what format are your tokens? pngs support transparencies and such, but jpegs and other formats take up less space. If in the process of going on the market it gets swapped to a space friendly format, game over.   Also there is the idea of simply eyeballing it. I can tell if a token with be proportional at a glance, with lots a frill it may be misleading. You can have the most descriptive sentence possible about your tokens keeping shape, but no one reads lol. TLDR is not acronym for nothig.

Fred Lang the issues I can forsee are as follows: 1) The hitpoint bars will be oddly placed.  2) Occassionally, the tokens will have to be organized on the z-layer (to front or to back).  3) Occassionally, selecting the proper token may be an issue.  I do not see any of these are being so critical that they make the idea unworkable. Just things to consider. :) Edit: 4) As Voth stated, people misusing the token and not changing it to the proper sizing. Thus making the token look squashed. :) - Gauss

I don't want to make anyone have to adjust for the figures.  Dang it.  I'll have to create some "dummy" versions and see what you're talking about, Gauss!  Thanks!

(Note, none of this is true with the Hex grid! :)) No distortion will happen if you just keep to the 70pixel/inch.  So if you want to make a token that is 1 square by 2 squares then just make sure you make it 70 pixels by 140pixels.  You can even make it higher dpi if you like as long as its always a multiple of 70 pixels since you can set the dimension of a token in Roll20.  So you could make a horse that was 140 by 280 pixels and then the user just has to resize the token to 1by2 later in roll20.  I haven't run any test to see if the token actually looks better by using a higher dpi and using Roll20 scaling or just doing the token at 70pixel/inch, will try it out in the next few days. So in the example above you could make a chain devil token that is 1 square by four squares, the actual chain devil is only 1x1, but his chains go out another 3 squares.   One problem with these tokens is rotating, it won't rotate the way you might want them to since they aren't "square".  I've made some fireball, cone, and line area of effect templates.  The sphere is easy of course since its just a square with transparency.  The cone and line won't rotate nicely around the origin of the effect since rotation only works at the moment at the centre of the token.  So all I do is double the size of the token with a bunch of transparency padding.  Its hard to explain, here is a screenshot.  You can see the cone actual token size is very large.   One problem with doing lots of transparency is if the token is above all the other tokens you can't select any tokens under it even though it looks like you are only selecting the token you want to.  So in the above screen shot, if the cone token was above the monk fighter in the Z order of things then you couldn't ever select the monk unless you moved the cone out of the way or just moved the cone to the back. Sorry for the long reply :), but I hope that helps someone! Konrad

Note the same thing applies when creating maps.  Just make sure your map is a multiple of 70pixels per inch and you won't have any problems aligning it to the grid.  So if your map is 10 squares by 10 squares, just resize the map to 700 pixels by 700 pixels and it will fit perfectly on the grid.  And if you want it at a higher dpi then just set it at multiples of 70 pixels.  so instead of 700 by 700 you could do 1400x1400 and then set the size of the map in Roll20 to 10x10 units and it will fit perfectly.

Konrad, all of my experiments are multiples of the 70 that the FAQ for creators specifies.  This will, then, eliminate the squishing, right?  It has in the tests I've been running for two days on variations....I keep thinking we're all talking past one another.  I want to very specifically establish that nothing magically wrong gets recalculated by the Marketplace once I submit my artwork in the fashion described in the FAQ. Continued thanks to everyone responding in this thread...!!!!!!!

Fred, there are 2 distortion (squishing) issues at work here. 1) Tokens which are not sized to multiples of 70px. These will be squished when dropped into Roll20. On this you are doing things correctly to keep the token a multiple of 70px. 2) User generated distortion. If a person uses a token that is intended to be 1x2 but the user needs it to be 2x2 they will distort it. What you are discussing will probably result in a lot of user generated distortion as they will take your larger token and squash it to fit a single square not realizing it is intended to be larger. - Gauss

Okay, cool.  User-generated distortion is 100% outside my control, so let them stretch away.  Just so long as my product isn't a mashed-up mess when they spent good money on it!  *haha*

Fred, my point about what you are proposing is that it may result in considerable user-generated distortion since many people will probably not understand what you have done with the tokens. I would make sure (somehow) that they understand.  - Gauss

Yup.  Maybe I'll attach mattress tags to all of my figures, Gauss!  *haha*   /salute!

*laughs* I like that! - Guass