61
Challenges & Activities / Re: The Daily Sketch
« on: September 05, 2014, 07:29:14 am »
I made this much more quickly than I thought, in only two hours from a friend's concept art
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I made this much more quickly than I thought, in only two hours from a friend's concept art
62
General Discussion / Re: Modern day pixel art?
« on: September 02, 2014, 09:47:08 am »
Lol Habbo Hotel
I would agree with more styles being the better. I find that being an artist with multiple styles, while some of the more gimmicky "pixellated" styles might get some attention, it will also bring more attention to other things in your gallery that might not have the same mass appeal as your other stuff.
Though, maybe this may happen on a larger scale too and not just the individual. When I was starting out with pixel art, I once found PixelJoint but my tastes in art back 4 years ago when I was 18, and I was heavily interested in anime. I think most of us know PixelJoint, and I found almost nothing in the hall of fame that interested me. In a way, expanded my horizons that there's a world of art that I haven't appreciated yet.
Sure, I would not be surprised if most forum-goers here knock off these styles for the reasons we have, but they will indirectly bring more attention to the best of what pixel art can be.
I would agree with more styles being the better. I find that being an artist with multiple styles, while some of the more gimmicky "pixellated" styles might get some attention, it will also bring more attention to other things in your gallery that might not have the same mass appeal as your other stuff.
Though, maybe this may happen on a larger scale too and not just the individual. When I was starting out with pixel art, I once found PixelJoint but my tastes in art back 4 years ago when I was 18, and I was heavily interested in anime. I think most of us know PixelJoint, and I found almost nothing in the hall of fame that interested me. In a way, expanded my horizons that there's a world of art that I haven't appreciated yet.
Sure, I would not be surprised if most forum-goers here knock off these styles for the reasons we have, but they will indirectly bring more attention to the best of what pixel art can be.
63
Pixel Art / Re: [Critique Request] Canine Run Cycle
« on: August 01, 2014, 09:25:40 am »
Looked pretty good from a quick glance though staring at this. Looking much closer, I found something that the right front paw doesn't seem right with how it's spaced. Other paws I looked at seem fine though
I tracked the location of his right front paw and found that the frames space the locations very unevenly
I can't perfectly trace the path of motion of that paw right because I have poor control of my wacom tablet without SAI's stabilizer, and GIMP is much more handy with analyzing animations since they import them as layers
Spacing like this would make more sense to me:
Though analyzing the positions of other paws, I found that my way of spacing the frame is actually not that accurate to how legs move, if the other paws are better examples
I tracked the location of his right front paw and found that the frames space the locations very unevenly
I can't perfectly trace the path of motion of that paw right because I have poor control of my wacom tablet without SAI's stabilizer, and GIMP is much more handy with analyzing animations since they import them as layers
Spacing like this would make more sense to me:
Though analyzing the positions of other paws, I found that my way of spacing the frame is actually not that accurate to how legs move, if the other paws are better examples
64
General Discussion / Re: Pyxel Edit pixel art editor
« on: July 31, 2014, 07:33:11 pm »
Hey, just got a new email about the newest version.
Gonna bump this thread to let people know that this is apparently still in development
Gonna bump this thread to let people know that this is apparently still in development
65
General Discussion / Re: Uncanny Valley/Cuteness in relation to pixel-art
« on: July 25, 2014, 09:28:22 pm »
I've been trying to look into this deeper, knowing that I basically set up a false dilemma to simplify the situation. There's cute, then there's realistic, and there's a fair number of things in-between. For the sake of argument, I'm going to set up a sliding scale from cute to realistic.
*Pardon if I come off as bullshitting. These are just my obervations while I'm trying my best to look into this*
Searching through deviantART for what is popular there, I found some things that actually challanges my thinking.
Tier 1, I will stick anything with chibi-proportions into this tier. This is a 'pony', but stylized to an extreme that it doesn't look anything like the original animal: http://fav.me/d7q8v9e However, there is not very many pieces I can stick on to this extreme
Tier 2, which I'll stick in your usual 'anime' style. The face is stylized to exaggerate youthful features, but with *relatively* realistic body proportions: http://fav.me/d7qey6q
Tier 3, moving closer towards realism, I'm a little confused here, but in this tier, I and will stick both this Japanese style http://fav.me/d7obm2l , and this western style in the same tier: http://fav.me/d7rym4n
Tier 4, i'm going to stick here, something I'd call 'real' but cautious knowing that proportions are still highly stylized: http://fav.me/d7qvjg1
Tier 5, is what I'll stick as a reasonable extreme for a realist painter, but an actual painting took a while to find among photomanipulations: http://fav.me/d7qhwkf
First, a word of caution that my experiences on deviantART will put a clear bias towards more realist styles since it's full of artists - people are more likely to appreciate the work put into a realistic style. Again, I found these mostly from what's popular on deviantART in the past month, but what I was surprised was I found a lack of art on the cute extreme, but also on the real extreme as well.
From experience, art styles leaning on the extreme end for cute runs into several issues.
That might explain why I found less 'extreme-cute' than I thought there would be. Most of the art that makes it up high in my search results actually falls somewhere in the middle from cute to real.
However, cuteness at around tier-2 is still hugely popular if you have entire imageboards catered to the otaku subculture, such as this: https://danbooru.donmai.us/explore/posts/popular [warning: explicit images!] I also don't take much interest in anime, but I'll tell you that I think that the art found there is pretty damn generic.
I wanna say that I find most potential around tier-3 where I stuck in western-style illustrations, particularly styles that enjoy a great deal of creative liberties with face shapes and cuteness is not always a goal. However, cuteness is still highly possible with the given art styles, just that not every character has to be cute.
I'm still looking into this, but this is where things have brought me. Cute is good, but going for cute comes with its own challenges
*Pardon if I come off as bullshitting. These are just my obervations while I'm trying my best to look into this*
Searching through deviantART for what is popular there, I found some things that actually challanges my thinking.
Tier 1, I will stick anything with chibi-proportions into this tier. This is a 'pony', but stylized to an extreme that it doesn't look anything like the original animal: http://fav.me/d7q8v9e However, there is not very many pieces I can stick on to this extreme
Tier 2, which I'll stick in your usual 'anime' style. The face is stylized to exaggerate youthful features, but with *relatively* realistic body proportions: http://fav.me/d7qey6q
Tier 3, moving closer towards realism, I'm a little confused here, but in this tier, I and will stick both this Japanese style http://fav.me/d7obm2l , and this western style in the same tier: http://fav.me/d7rym4n
Tier 4, i'm going to stick here, something I'd call 'real' but cautious knowing that proportions are still highly stylized: http://fav.me/d7qvjg1
Tier 5, is what I'll stick as a reasonable extreme for a realist painter, but an actual painting took a while to find among photomanipulations: http://fav.me/d7qhwkf
First, a word of caution that my experiences on deviantART will put a clear bias towards more realist styles since it's full of artists - people are more likely to appreciate the work put into a realistic style. Again, I found these mostly from what's popular on deviantART in the past month, but what I was surprised was I found a lack of art on the cute extreme, but also on the real extreme as well.
From experience, art styles leaning on the extreme end for cute runs into several issues.
- It is more difficult to create something memorable with more extreme cute art. My sister told me of a moe-style artist who got away with tracing for so many years, and I was not surprised. The face style they traced were done in a popular (but IMO highly generic) moe style, allowing the tracing artist to get away with art theft for years.
- Cuter art styles are arguably pretty over-saturated as a result too, if said artist got away with tracing for THAT long. Might also be why the only 'extreme-cute' art happens to me MLP fan art, and not those little chibi dolls you see all over pixel artist circles on dA
- Limited on striking compositions, animations, and costuming with the most extreme chibi proportions. This might explain why there's more tier-2~3 art that's popular on deviantART because there's a larger body size that gets you far better potential for good composition
That might explain why I found less 'extreme-cute' than I thought there would be. Most of the art that makes it up high in my search results actually falls somewhere in the middle from cute to real.
However, cuteness at around tier-2 is still hugely popular if you have entire imageboards catered to the otaku subculture, such as this: https://danbooru.donmai.us/explore/posts/popular [warning: explicit images!] I also don't take much interest in anime, but I'll tell you that I think that the art found there is pretty damn generic.
I wanna say that I find most potential around tier-3 where I stuck in western-style illustrations, particularly styles that enjoy a great deal of creative liberties with face shapes and cuteness is not always a goal. However, cuteness is still highly possible with the given art styles, just that not every character has to be cute.
I'm still looking into this, but this is where things have brought me. Cute is good, but going for cute comes with its own challenges
66
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] [Newbie] Voltorb
« on: July 24, 2014, 02:49:00 am »
If it's pixel tech you're focusing on, I think this is the right amount of AA. I think this is a fine size to draw as well.
If you're making a sprite, you probably do not want to apply AA on the outer edges since the AA works only on a super light background
I also tweaked the proportions to more closely match official artwork of voltorb - larger eyes, smaller irises, triangular eyes, and bulging brows. Pokemon sprites are easier to do than other things, though we still need to pay attention to details like how big the eyes are if you want to capture the likeness of various pokemon. This will get more important later on if you're trying harder subjects too
67
General Discussion / Re: [Question] High quality small images?
« on: July 22, 2014, 08:12:06 pm »
From experiences of having images shrunken down to size, I would also like to emphasize strong, clear value contrasts. Shrinking an image will generally lower its contrast, so a strong contrast helps maintain clarity when an image becomes smaller. (Mathias' images does have plenty of contrast too 
)
)
68
Pixel Art / Re: My game's characters, feedback needed!
« on: July 22, 2014, 05:04:34 am »
I think there's a lot more possible with what we're given
Not just eye shape, but also size, spacing between the eyes, and the placement of the mouth.
Not just eye shape, but also size, spacing between the eyes, and the placement of the mouth.
69
General Discussion / Re: How do you make your games?
« on: July 12, 2014, 04:44:51 pm »
My coding experience is mostly limited to GML but with a wee bit of AS3 and Javascript (which I am currently learning to make web games)
GameMaker has plenty of documentation to help you learn how to use it, and it simplifies some things to make thing easier. For example, you do not need to declare a variable type as an integer, floating point, boolean.
No matter what you do, you will have to spend time to learn how an engine works so you can use it. The more time you spend, the more quickly you can produce results and the less time you spend looking things up to figure out how it works. I could say things about how much easier GML is from AS3 or Javascript but anything I can say cannot be really fair because I only have so much experience.
GameMaker has plenty of documentation to help you learn how to use it, and it simplifies some things to make thing easier. For example, you do not need to declare a variable type as an integer, floating point, boolean.
No matter what you do, you will have to spend time to learn how an engine works so you can use it. The more time you spend, the more quickly you can produce results and the less time you spend looking things up to figure out how it works. I could say things about how much easier GML is from AS3 or Javascript but anything I can say cannot be really fair because I only have so much experience.
70
General Discussion / Re: How do you make your games?
« on: July 12, 2014, 04:46:39 am »
I first found GameMaker back when its logo was a red ball and a hammer in the center. I used it as an elementary-school-aged kid, I watched it grow over time from a tool for non-programmers and now it's become a heavily marketed tool sold to aspiring game developers.
From working with a MonkeyX programmer, I found that actually, GameMaker comes with a lot of features that makes game-making easier. For example, GameMaker has a room_restart() function which simply removes every instance in a given room (except for instances with a persistent flag set to true), and then reload the room from scratch as normal. GameMaker also provides collission functions for you, and plenty of other functions I am surprised to hear has to be manually coded if working with MonkeyX.
Unity for 2D is weird being 3D with orthographic projection, in the past, there have been issues with setting a strict resolution in pixels. Unity is also annoying if you plan on recycling assets (e.g. recolors, or multiple variations of the same monster that has the exact same monsters), because their animator tool can only make absolute references to animation frames rather than relative references. Compared to GameMaker, it's structured so you can simply change the sprite_index variable and you can very easily have palette swaps more easily than what Unity provides.
Unity's animator also comes with modular animation tools, which may or may not be what you want.
Either way, you're always going to be using to some degree, some middleware so you spend less time making an engine, and more time creating actual content. No sane game developer is going to be making code entirely from scratch.
But as far as ease of working goes.... I've had iffy experiences with Unity programmers. However, every GML programmer I've worked with gets the job fairly quickly. 3 out of my 5 finished games are GameMaker projects (though, two of them were mine and all of them were very small projects), the other two being coded in Actionscript 2.0 or 3.0.
http://pix3m.deviantart.com/art/Robin-Steele-the-Waifu-Thief-V2-0-465750323
^ This game was originally made in GameMaker in 48 hours and added more content before handing the project over to said MonkeyX coder to translate the source files so it can be ported to flash and android for free. If you want an idea of what I managed to code in GameMaker in 48 hours....
That, and despite the magnitude of this 48-hour-project, I was able to create all the graphics needed for this. I stayed up till 4 AM in the morning though
IMO, it's not a matter that GameMaker doesn't have enough features to make a complete game, it's just a matter of knowing how to approach a goal with code. There are other engines that provide even more features (e.g. RPGmaker2000), but they also put constraints on game mechanics you can add to the game, but others that provide less training wheels may require you to code more stuff from scratch. That, and there will be engines freely available so you can have all the GML ncessary to make a solid platformer game on GameMaker. Find a balance.
From working with a MonkeyX programmer, I found that actually, GameMaker comes with a lot of features that makes game-making easier. For example, GameMaker has a room_restart() function which simply removes every instance in a given room (except for instances with a persistent flag set to true), and then reload the room from scratch as normal. GameMaker also provides collission functions for you, and plenty of other functions I am surprised to hear has to be manually coded if working with MonkeyX.
Unity for 2D is weird being 3D with orthographic projection, in the past, there have been issues with setting a strict resolution in pixels. Unity is also annoying if you plan on recycling assets (e.g. recolors, or multiple variations of the same monster that has the exact same monsters), because their animator tool can only make absolute references to animation frames rather than relative references. Compared to GameMaker, it's structured so you can simply change the sprite_index variable and you can very easily have palette swaps more easily than what Unity provides.
Unity's animator also comes with modular animation tools, which may or may not be what you want.
Either way, you're always going to be using to some degree, some middleware so you spend less time making an engine, and more time creating actual content. No sane game developer is going to be making code entirely from scratch.
But as far as ease of working goes.... I've had iffy experiences with Unity programmers. However, every GML programmer I've worked with gets the job fairly quickly. 3 out of my 5 finished games are GameMaker projects (though, two of them were mine and all of them were very small projects), the other two being coded in Actionscript 2.0 or 3.0.
http://pix3m.deviantart.com/art/Robin-Steele-the-Waifu-Thief-V2-0-465750323
^ This game was originally made in GameMaker in 48 hours and added more content before handing the project over to said MonkeyX coder to translate the source files so it can be ported to flash and android for free. If you want an idea of what I managed to code in GameMaker in 48 hours....
- Procedurally-generated levels
- Collision engine between a global array and instances (GameMaker only provides collisions functions between objects)
- State machine that allows for stunning, knocking back, and special boss attacks that procs if you land either too many hits, or are aligned on the x or y axis. This easily took the biggest chunk of my time, making sure player and enemy behaviors work
- A tile rendering system (GameMaker's tile system is not based on an array but uses a more flexible but less efficient system using objects
- A three-attack combo system for all four cardinal directions
That, and despite the magnitude of this 48-hour-project, I was able to create all the graphics needed for this. I stayed up till 4 AM in the morning though
IMO, it's not a matter that GameMaker doesn't have enough features to make a complete game, it's just a matter of knowing how to approach a goal with code. There are other engines that provide even more features (e.g. RPGmaker2000), but they also put constraints on game mechanics you can add to the game, but others that provide less training wheels may require you to code more stuff from scratch. That, and there will be engines freely available so you can have all the GML ncessary to make a solid platformer game on GameMaker. Find a balance.