How to make a badge for a challenge

[XpertKerbalKSP]

Hello, fellow kerbonauts!

I've posted a challenge recently (Apollo Program Recreation [1.0.5]) and I've been looking at other challenges as well. But others seem to have badges to go with the successful attempts. I want to add a badge myself but I dont know how.

It would be great if a KSP professional could possible tell me 

Thanks!

[Streetwind]

Well, this isn't really about being professional in KSP To make a badge, you need to have basic proficiency in graphics design.

You'll want a capable image editor - GIMP is a free solution that works on your OS of choice. And then you'll need some artistic vision as to what your badge should show. Since it's about the Apollo program, you could use pictures of the IRL Apollo spacecraft, or a KSP recreation thereof - but it can be anything you feel that fits, honestly. You then choose a source image that shows what you decided on (either found online, or produced yourself using KSP), load it into GIMP, resize/rotate/crop it as needed, and then pretty it up somewhat. Give it a caption, maybe an effects filter or better contrast. Maybe you can even cut elements from different source images and paste them together into the badge (like a real CSM picture together with a floating Kerbal). Which of course gets slightly more complex...

Admittedly the simplest solution, for the uninitiated, would be to find someone who's excited about participating in your challenge who's made such a thing before. You'd be surprised - the majority of the fancy badges that other challenges have are probably volunteered by participants, not made by the challenge creator

[Geschosskopf]

16 hours ago, XpertKerbalKSP said:

Hello, fellow kerbonauts!

I've posted a challenge recently (Apollo Program Recreation [1.0.5]) and I've been looking at other challenges as well. But others seem to have badges to go with the successful attempts. I want to add a badge myself but I dont know how.

Well, you have to make your own, and for that you need:

• An idea for the design
• A graphics editor of greater or lesser complexity
• Some knowledge and proficiency in using said graphics editor

Note that you do NOT need any physical artistic skill or talent with a paintbrush or pen, just the imagination to envision the final result.  You can find all the detailed artistic bits on the internet and just paste them in, using your graphics editor to tweak them as needed.

As for the graphics editor, Windows of course has standard Paint, which is bare-bones simple and very limited on features, so can't do anything really fancy.  For instance, the badges in my own sig for Flying Duna and Kerbal-Powered Flight were made with it, and you can see the crudeness.  Fancier graphics editors allow the use of multiple layers, transparencies, etc., which make it MUCH easier to make complex designs, such as in my Circumnavigation badge.  GIMP has these features and is FREE.

 

[XpertKerbalKSP]

On 3/1/2016 at 0:34 AM, Geschosskopf said:

Well, you have to make your own, and for that you need:

• An idea for the design
• A graphics editor of greater or lesser complexity
• Some knowledge and proficiency in using said graphics editor

Note that you do NOT need any physical artistic skill or talent with a paintbrush or pen, just the imagination to envision the final result.  You can find all the detailed artistic bits on the internet and just paste them in, using your graphics editor to tweak them as needed.

As for the graphics editor, Windows of course has standard Paint, which is bare-bones simple and very limited on features, so can't do anything really fancy.  For instance, the badges in my own sig for Flying Duna and Kerbal-Powered Flight were made with it, and you can see the crudeness.  Fancier graphics editors allow the use of multiple layers, transparencies, etc., which make it MUCH easier to make complex designs, such as in my Circumnavigation badge.  GIMP has these features and is FREE.

 

And then, how do I upload it to my challenge?

How do I make it so that the person gets the badge when they succeed?

[Geschosskopf]

Just now, XpertKerbalKSP said:

And then, how do I upload it to my challenge?

How do I make it so that the person gets the badge when they succeed?

Well, you have to upload the image file to some 3rd party site that hosts images, such as Imgur, Flickr, or whatever.  Having done that, copy the link to the uploaded image and paste it into your challenge thread.

Now, for folks to put it into their sigs, I've found you have to right-click on the picture of the image in the challenge thread and CTRL-C, then go to where you edit your sig, position the cursor and hit CTRL-V,  Sigs don't like links to images, they want the image itself.  Then it's up to the user to select the image and add a link to it.

[XpertKerbalKSP]

25 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Well, you have to upload the image file to some 3rd party site that hosts images, such as Imgur, Flickr, or whatever.  Having done that, copy the link to the uploaded image and paste it into your challenge thread.

Now, for folks to put it into their sigs, I've found you have to right-click on the picture of the image in the challenge thread and CTRL-C, then go to where you edit your sig, position the cursor and hit CTRL-V,  Sigs don't like links to images, they want the image itself.  Then it's up to the user to select the image and add a link to it.

Wow, never knew it was that easy! Thanks for the advice!