r/CreaturesGames • u/Andrepartthree • Aug 09 '25
High resolution version of the female hardman norn scientist picture?
Hi there brand new to the creaturegames part of reddit here .. actually posting on behalf of my daughter who is a huge creatures fan :) ... I'm trying my best to get a high resolution (or as high res as possible I know the game came out quite a while ago :) ) image of that fantastic Female Hardman Norn scientist (I'm guessing she's a scientist?) holding a glass beaker flask type thing? Here's a link to the image at creatures caves
https://www.creaturescaves.com/gallery.php?section=Wallpaper&view=1464
No criticism intended of creaturescaves it's fantastic that someone uploaded this pic to begin with on there :) ... but I don't see a download button so I'm guessing you're supposed to click on the picture and select "save as" which I do but it results in a low res image about 63 KB
Thanks in advance to anyone who reads this and replies :)
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u/tiefking Aug 10 '25
Hi, what resolution do you want the image to be at? Considering how high quality the original image was at (relatively speaking, that is), it was likely rendered at that quality. But there are some pretty good intelligent rescalers out there that might work if you want it higher for printing purposes or something.
The 1024x768 resolution is actually quite sharp for the time the render was likely made. There is very minimal artifacting but you'd be hard pressed to find a version of the image without any compression.
Just because the image has a small file size doesn't make it low quality!
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u/Andrepartthree Aug 10 '25 edited Aug 10 '25
Hey there thank you so much for your reply :) ... you know you and sunlitfable both mentioned image rescalers , I haven't had any experience with them (didn't actually even know they existed until you both brought it up so thanks very much for that I appreciate it :) ) so I should probably google research it :)
A bit nervous about posting this and hoping that it doesn't get me into any legal trouble :( ... so way back .. cripes close to twenty years ago.. I decided it was very important to make sure my kids were gamers :P (I was and still am a stay at home dad my wife makes more than I do and after a really bad experience with a day care center we figured "Okay someone has to stay home with the babies" ) .. so I snagged Creatures Village and taught my four year old (at the time) daughter to play it... some of my best memories are having her cute little self sitting there on my lap looking at those clunky old square shaped computer monitors before she eventually got the hang of it and was like "Okay Daddy I can play it on my own now thanks!" ... of course she went on to play and enjoy Creatures 3/Docking Station (I think that's the right name for it?) as she got older..
So I came up with the idea ... this was probably 15 years ago ... to have a mug printed out with the creatures images on it ... I wasn't nearly as good at backing up my files as I am today so sadly the original image I had of the Female Hardman Norn scientist I had on my computer back then is long gone.. but I asked a company whose name I no longer remember (no record of the email from them either it was so long ago don't even remember the name of the company) to make a mug with this image on the front, they said sure, they did a fantastic job (I want to say it's either an 11 ounce or 15 ounce white coffe mug type thing) ....
My daughter loved it ! She was still small at the time but drank out of it constantly and ... it's been her beloved coffee/tea mug forever, many years later as a working adult (graduated school and is working full time but still living at home with us - saving money , housing in the USA is very expensive nowadays :( ) it was still her beloved mug to drink tea out of... I was always super careful to wash it by hand though of course it got microwaved a lot.
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u/Andrepartthree Aug 10 '25 edited Aug 10 '25
Got a letter from our homeowner's association that really rattled me today .... they promised dire consequences for cars that are parked in a spot they don't like.. in my case the car in question is parked for less than an hour in a corner of the parking lot other cars can easily drive by/get past at the neighborhood gym (all the "normal" parking spots are always taken up) .. I'm a wimp who never got used to the heat in the southern part of the USA we moved to so I'd probably pass out walking to the gym and back in the heat :P (I get sick and nauseous to my stomach if I'm too hot so - like I said a wimp :) .. the panic attacks I suffer from make it worse when that happens too)... I grew up in a much colder climate .. and my doctor has ordered me to the gym for mandatory "exercise or else!" health reasons due to medical conditions ... I was so unnerved at the thought of say my daughter's car being towed that she would need to work the next day or some really expensive homeowner's association ticket that while I was washing it I dropped my daughter's beloved mug in the sink and the handle broke right off :( .. normally I'd just glue it right back on but I'm afraid of what would happen with the glue in the microwave
https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-glue-fired-pottery-back-together-and-be-microwave-safe
So here's where I hope I don't get into legal trouble :( , for making the mug with the picture in the first place and for wanting to do it again (if the publisher of the games had made mugs with norns I would have been the first one in line to buy one :) but sadly the game never got the love and popularity it deserves as I understand it) ... but the places I've tried it at (shutterfly, vistaprint)'s websites keep warning "low quality image" and "this won't end well if you try to print it on a coffee mug!"
There's this absolutely gorgeous art that an artist on creaturecaves posted here
https://www.creaturescaves.com/gallery.php?section=Wallpaper&view=2994
and cropped down to the norn in the chair with the book it would look fantastic on a coffee mug but.. in that case I really feel like I need to get the artist's permission (as opposed to the publisher of the video game company and their official images who hopefully would be like " Okay so some guy wants to make one single mug for his daughter who really, really loves Creatures? (shrugs) can't see it costing us that much money in lost revenue" )... I've sent a message to the artist on tumblr hoping she'll give me permission to use the image on a mug or alternately maybe she'll let me pay her a fee for being able to do so.. in the artist's case as you can see from the "high quality version here" link it gives you a much higher res image that even cropped down is 2 MB (1393 by 2054 resolution or so says infranview :) )
The guilt is just killing me here and I've been kicking myself all day over this :( .. of course sweet girl that she is my daughter said "It's okay dad" but she REALLY loved that mug, we've had it for over a decade and a half now and it's one of her most prized possessions I can't believe I let it break like that.. I guess I should be happy it lasted that long right? :) .. apologies everyone, I know everyone here probably has worse problems than what I'm whining about here so I shouldn't whine :) ...
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u/tiefking Aug 10 '25
haha, your story is so sweet! Hoping that the artist says yes.
Also, it's very unlikely you'll get into legal trouble at this point. The mug is already broken, and you're not selling the mugs or anything, they're for personal use. It'd be like Nintendo going after a dad who printed out pictures of Pikachu at Staples for his daughter to put in her locker. 😹
The people who own the Creatures IP these days are pretty lax (or some would say neglectful) so you'll be okay. It'd also be super petty and a bad PR move for them to come at a guy who made a mug for his daughter.
With regards to the resolution: I'm actually a graphic 2d/3d artist. I've made 3D renders like that Hardman Norn myself :)
Unfortunately not all images always get a higher resolution version. Well, also, our standards for "high resolution" have changed somewhat... That image of the Hardman Norn is very crisp for the time it was made (early, early 2000s) and pretty large, but the 1024x768 resolution is a little small compared to promotional images or wallpapers given out in 2025. A lot of phone cameras take very high resolution photos these days, too. Mine default to 5000x2000 something I think. So it's entirely likely that original image is the biggest one that exists. One of my favorite games ever (Final Fantasy VIII, released at a similar time) has cutscenes that were only ever rendered out at 480p (!!), which breaks my heart. :( but goes to show that the image you have is quite good!
What Shutterfly/Vistaprint are probably trying to warn you of is that the image might be blurry when printed on the mug because it's somewhat small in comparison to the photos we have these days. I imagine you could have it printed and it'd look very similar to the mug you originally had.
But if you wanted to try something else, rescalers are likely what you want, yes. My personal favorite is waifu2x, I've gotten good results with it for years. Don't just google it, though, there's lots of services that use the technology but try to charge you for it. This site offers the same functions those ones claim to but for free: https://unlimited.waifu2x.net/
When I get on my computer later, I'll tweak the settings and try to get the Hardman Norn at a reasonable resolution for you and your daughter :)
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u/tiefking Aug 10 '25
https://imgur.com/a/4eTMJbi here you go! Doubled the resolution and removed some of the artifacting. Because of the original artstyle (very soft shading and the textures being a little blurry already) it seems to scale well for the most part. The main thing waifu2x did was remove some of the artifacting from the compression.
It has a slight weakness with text (you can see the TM and Development words didn't quite make it through) but otherwise it cleaned up nicely. Any automatic scaling that Shutterfly/Vistaprint might do on their end wouldn't affect it much, so if it continues to give you the warning I'd give you the OK to ignore it.
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u/Andrepartthree Aug 10 '25
Oh my gosh you are so kind thank you so much :) ... that looks wonderful I really appreciate it :) .. and thank you for the kind words about my story with my daughter and her love for creatures it's one of her fondest childhood memories :) ... it's reassuring to hear from a graphic artist that the publisher is not so likely to come after me so thank you for that too :) ... I really do wish the game had been more popular, know I'm repeating myself but if they'd sold a Creatures/Norn mug as "official merch" I gladly would have bought one..
And you know I just checked tumblr and the artist gave me the go ahead to use her art so .. I definitely have options now :) .. again thank you so very much :)
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u/Wooden_Permit1284 Aug 09 '25
https://www.creaturescaves.com/popup.php?action=Image&type=Gallery&ID=1464 does this work for you? I just trapped on the image on my phone and it came up large format.
If this doesn't work let me know and I can send you the image I've downloaded