Looking For: Raven in Flight

[ladiestorm]

I'm looking for a symbol that can be plugged into cc3+. What I'm looking for, specifically, is a raven in flight, but NOT a top down version. It doesn't have to be 3d, it doesn't have to be realistic, in fact, I would prefer something that looks painted or drawn...

What I'm trying to do, is create a regional standard for a 2nd edition D&D game I'm playing in. My character is creating a standard for a region that up until recently, didn't have one. The name of the region is Ravenscar, and the standard my character has created, is the image of a raven in flight, holding a dagger in it's claws.

Only problem... the 3 raven symbols I have, are not in flight, and are top down versions, meant to look like live birds for maps. I don't have anything that looks like it could be painted on a shield, or piece of armor.

This standard I'm creating won't be posted anywhere, this is just for my personal use to give to the NPC/GM for a visual reference, that's all. So if anyone has something like this I could work with, I would greatly appreciate it!

[Redrobes]

I have a couple of photos of Ravens but they usually fly quite high and therefore are top down or actually bottom up. I am sure there must be a lot of Tower Of London photos of them too but all of mine are wild ones. Thing is tho, that aside from their tail, they look almost identical to large crows so you may be able to use any similar corvid.

[rdanhenry]

What types of file can cc3+ read? Do you mind if it is cartoony? Do you need it with the dagger in its claws? (That last one would be a real killer, I think. Google image search on "flying raven dagger" turned up one with a dagger, but the raven head is a skull and it is wearing a top hat.) If the files are suitable, I think a couple of the images here - http://clipart-library.com/raven-sil...-cliparts.html - would look good on a shield, though no daggers are included (and the page has several images that are clearly not ravens).

[ladiestorm]

@redrobes - that's fairly true, when in flight, the crow and the raven do look very similar, since they are from the same family. The main thing I'm looking for, is a 2d representation. I actually don't want it to look 'real', because this is something that's supposed to be sewn onto a tabard, or painted on a shield. What I really need is one that is either flying toward the viewer, or perhaps across the viewer's field of vision.

The other idea I had, if I can't find an image I can use of a raven grabbing a dagger in it's claws, is to have two daggers crossed below the raven, or two swords crossed behind the raven.

@rdanhenry - cc3+ symbols are all .png format. And all of them are on a white background that disappears when you place the symbol on the map. Oh, and I looked at raven clip art. I even downloaded quite a few that I thought might work. I then turned them into .png's so that I could use them as symbols. And ran into a major problem with every single one of them - their white backgrounds. Normally, when an image is turned into a .png on a white background, then used as a symbol, the white background disappears. But not with those images. Each and every one of them that I downloaded, retained their white background, so that when I placed them on my 'map', I would see a box of white around the symbol, and that just won't work. I appreciate the thoughts though!

[rdanhenry]

The .png format supports transparency, but it needs to be added when converting from formats that do not. An image viewer may show transparent areas as white, but they really aren't. A .jpg needs to have any unwanted background replaced with transparency before saving as .png. Most graphics programs should do this fairly easily, if the background is a solid color. Let's take this cool raven .jpg from the page I linked to

a_raven.jpg

Now, I open it in GIMP and export as a .png file.

a_raven.png

It has a white background. If used as part of another image, this background with obscure anything beneath it.
So, I open it again. This time I use "Color to Alpha" to remove the white background (the Alpha Channel has the transparency data; without it, no transparency). Then I export, being sure to have the option to save transparency information on.

a_raven_in_the_clear.png

This one should work in any program that works with .png files, with no background obscuring the area around the bird (or through his eye... if you want to keep the background color in some areas of the image, you need to add an alpha channel, then manually remove the color in the areas you want clear, which is doable, but takes a bit longer).

[ladiestorm]

that's one of the ravens I downloaded that didn't work, before. But it should work with what you have done with it. Thank you!

[KMAlexander]

Photobash has a new raven set and it's $6.

Link 4 U

(I really like them, fwiw. Loads of good and affordable content.)


EDIT: Just realized you're looking for an illustration. Sorry!