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Portfolios / Re: Matt Walkden - pixel portfolio
« on: March 07, 2022, 04:58:29 pm »
Portfolio updated. Currently available for commissions and ongoing jobs.
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Portfolios / Re: Matt Walkden - pixel portfolio
« on: August 31, 2020, 09:48:05 am »
Portfolio updated. I'm available for commissions and ongoing jobs.
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Portfolios / [NOT AVAILABLE] Matt Walkden - pixel portfolio
« on: February 06, 2017, 11:50:25 am »
Hi,
Currently available for commissions. 11 years of experience. No revenue share work.
Contact me via mattwalkden[at]hotmail[dot]com
Website: mattwalkden.com
Clan N:
Steam link
Arcane Waters:
Website link.
Shattered Throne:
(Steam link):
Novus (commission):
Asset Work:
itch.io link
Personal work:
Currently available for commissions. 11 years of experience. No revenue share work.
Contact me via mattwalkden[at]hotmail[dot]com
Website: mattwalkden.com
Clan N:
Steam link
Arcane Waters:
Website link.
Shattered Throne:
(Steam link):
Novus (commission):
Asset Work:
itch.io link
Personal work:
5
Pixel Art / [WIP] Yeti Vs. Octopus
« on: September 26, 2011, 03:37:21 pm »
As per the title:
A mockup for a very strange one on one beat-em-up. Although to be honest neither character design has been thought through in terms of whether they'd actually be functional in a game...
The full plan is to have a background of ice flows and icebergs and narwhals jumping out of the water like those killer whales in King Of Fighters 12, the northern lights and a big starry sky with parodius style constellations hanging in it.
Any thoughts, feedback and suggestions would be very helpful
A mockup for a very strange one on one beat-em-up. Although to be honest neither character design has been thought through in terms of whether they'd actually be functional in a game...
The full plan is to have a background of ice flows and icebergs and narwhals jumping out of the water like those killer whales in King Of Fighters 12, the northern lights and a big starry sky with parodius style constellations hanging in it.
Any thoughts, feedback and suggestions would be very helpful
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General Discussion / Re: pixel art articles project
« on: July 23, 2011, 11:09:00 am »
Nice one, that restrictions thread is going to come in handy.
...
After giving things a bit of thought I'm ditching the idea of splitting the articles into catagories and covering 3 games each article. I'll probably just do a seperate blog post for each game I want to cover, that way if I run out of steam what I do manage to write can stand alone and won't come across as a fragment of a bigger project that never got finished. It'll give me a bit more breathing room to talk about hardware limitations in the context of each game for the early stuff and it does away with any potential awkwardness from having that 8-bit/16-bit distinction in there (in case I decide to cover games on the PC Engine or mid to late 80s arcade games etc. that can muddy the waters).
Also, after a bit of research I realised that there aren't many 8-bit home computer games that still interest me visually - I had Knightlore down as a cert. but looking at it now, it's kind of bland... any suggestions for C64/CPC/Spectrum (or other formats) games that people still think stand up today would be very welcome - I'm not going to include arcade ports I'm thinking more format exclusive games that made exceptional use of the limited hardware or games where one format had a definitive version.
...
After giving things a bit of thought I'm ditching the idea of splitting the articles into catagories and covering 3 games each article. I'll probably just do a seperate blog post for each game I want to cover, that way if I run out of steam what I do manage to write can stand alone and won't come across as a fragment of a bigger project that never got finished. It'll give me a bit more breathing room to talk about hardware limitations in the context of each game for the early stuff and it does away with any potential awkwardness from having that 8-bit/16-bit distinction in there (in case I decide to cover games on the PC Engine or mid to late 80s arcade games etc. that can muddy the waters).
Also, after a bit of research I realised that there aren't many 8-bit home computer games that still interest me visually - I had Knightlore down as a cert. but looking at it now, it's kind of bland... any suggestions for C64/CPC/Spectrum (or other formats) games that people still think stand up today would be very welcome - I'm not going to include arcade ports I'm thinking more format exclusive games that made exceptional use of the limited hardware or games where one format had a definitive version.
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General Discussion / Re: pixel art articles project
« on: July 22, 2011, 08:31:05 am »Is it? I agree that those games look nice. But IMO none of them are very good examples of good pixelart. If you look at the stuff in Metal Slug for example there is bad practise everywhere, hardly any aa, banding all over the joint, and so on. Metal Slus as well as those other games look good because the people who made the art were good artists and good animators (as in able to really draw and paint), but not good pixel artists.
Lack of AA is something I've always seen as a choice an artist makes, I wouldn't necessarily hold it against a piece of work if it didn't have any - although I'm not sure it's a conscious choice with SNKs games. Also those games were all late 90s as far as I remember (Garou maybe a bit later?) good pixel art practice as we have it today wasn't as widespread.
Metal Slug as a series can look a bit messy but the backgrounds alone I think are worth looking at, there's some stunning pixelled cloudscapes and stone work in there and textures in general, things like sand, wood grain, rust that are very hard to capture are done perfectly at a pixel level. And the animation is something I'll be looking at too - that big explosion from Metal Slug 1 is incredible. Looking at Last Blade and Garou shots just now and you're right - it's a very basic technique, lots of blocks of clean pixels but that's interesting to me in and of itself.
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General Discussion / Re: pixel art articles project
« on: July 21, 2011, 09:55:01 pm »
@ Mathias:
Yeah, there'll be a lot of pictures - pretty much everything I've chosen to cover can be easily emulated and I'm sure there'll be a way to grab screens of the newer PC stuff.
I've got a bunch of different reasons for doing this. I'm hoping a large study project like this will help improve my own art. I've been wanting to do some writing about art in general for a long time now and this is just part of that. Finally I thought people might be interested.
@ Kasumi:
I'd argue the 8-bit / 16-bit distinction means more to a casual reader (at least here in Britain) than dividing things by bits per pixels, like you said. I know they're not exact catagories in a lot of ways but they're two distinct eras for most gamers. I thought about using years (say before 1990, after 1990) but then there's issues with overlap with some of the games I want to cover.
Yeah, there'll be a lot of pictures - pretty much everything I've chosen to cover can be easily emulated and I'm sure there'll be a way to grab screens of the newer PC stuff.
I've got a bunch of different reasons for doing this. I'm hoping a large study project like this will help improve my own art. I've been wanting to do some writing about art in general for a long time now and this is just part of that. Finally I thought people might be interested.
@ Kasumi:
I'd argue the 8-bit / 16-bit distinction means more to a casual reader (at least here in Britain) than dividing things by bits per pixels, like you said. I know they're not exact catagories in a lot of ways but they're two distinct eras for most gamers. I thought about using years (say before 1990, after 1990) but then there's issues with overlap with some of the games I want to cover.
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General Discussion / pixel art articles project
« on: July 17, 2011, 04:23:25 pm »
Hey,
I?m planning on writing a series of blog articles about pixel art, focusing specifically on games and I?m just canvassing around for peoples opinions.
I?m not sure how long the series will run for or how I?m going to structure it yet but as a starting point I was considering breaking down pixel art into smaller categories and covering those. I?m also considering interviews with artists, some WIP series? of pieces that I?m going to attempt myself in various different styles and theory articles.
It?s a very big project and I doubt all of these ideas will make it in.
The (sometimes very loose) categories I?ve decided on are:
8 bit pixel art (worldwide) - this will probably be the most general article - This will include home computers (Spectrum, C64, CPC, Apple II etc.) as well as consoles and maybe arcade games too.
Western (weighted towards European) 16 bit pixel art - centred around the ST/Amiga/DOS and hopefully including demo-scene related stuff.
Japanese 16 bit pixel art - centred around the SNES/Genesis and arcades
SNKs late Neo Geo output - I?m thinking Metal Slug up to the SNK/Playmore merger (I think they do deserve a whole article to themselves considering games like Metal Slug, Garou, Last Blade etc. contain some of the most respected pixel art ever created).
Modern Japanese portable consoles - centred mainly around GBA/DS - inspired by almost too many games to list, Advance Wars, FF-Tactics Advance, Boktai, Fire Emblem etc. are some of my personal favourites. I also need to separate it from the next category which is another huge one:
Modern pixel art in general (worldwide) - Cave Story seems like an obvious game to look at as well as Joachim Sandberg?s games (Noitu Love 1+2 etc), Paul Robertson (Baby Pirate whatever-it-was-called, Scott Pilgrim etc.)
So anyway, I?m cross-posting this here and on the Pixel Joint and rllmuk retro forums as well to try and gauge peoples opinions on those categories, whether there?s major areas you think are left out (or even whether they?re valid categories in the first place?).
Once I've got the categories sorted I'll probably pick 3 games for each to focus on in greater detail.
Thanks for reading!
- Matt
I?m planning on writing a series of blog articles about pixel art, focusing specifically on games and I?m just canvassing around for peoples opinions.
I?m not sure how long the series will run for or how I?m going to structure it yet but as a starting point I was considering breaking down pixel art into smaller categories and covering those. I?m also considering interviews with artists, some WIP series? of pieces that I?m going to attempt myself in various different styles and theory articles.
It?s a very big project and I doubt all of these ideas will make it in.
The (sometimes very loose) categories I?ve decided on are:
8 bit pixel art (worldwide) - this will probably be the most general article - This will include home computers (Spectrum, C64, CPC, Apple II etc.) as well as consoles and maybe arcade games too.
Western (weighted towards European) 16 bit pixel art - centred around the ST/Amiga/DOS and hopefully including demo-scene related stuff.
Japanese 16 bit pixel art - centred around the SNES/Genesis and arcades
SNKs late Neo Geo output - I?m thinking Metal Slug up to the SNK/Playmore merger (I think they do deserve a whole article to themselves considering games like Metal Slug, Garou, Last Blade etc. contain some of the most respected pixel art ever created).
Modern Japanese portable consoles - centred mainly around GBA/DS - inspired by almost too many games to list, Advance Wars, FF-Tactics Advance, Boktai, Fire Emblem etc. are some of my personal favourites. I also need to separate it from the next category which is another huge one:
Modern pixel art in general (worldwide) - Cave Story seems like an obvious game to look at as well as Joachim Sandberg?s games (Noitu Love 1+2 etc), Paul Robertson (Baby Pirate whatever-it-was-called, Scott Pilgrim etc.)
So anyway, I?m cross-posting this here and on the Pixel Joint and rllmuk retro forums as well to try and gauge peoples opinions on those categories, whether there?s major areas you think are left out (or even whether they?re valid categories in the first place?).
Once I've got the categories sorted I'll probably pick 3 games for each to focus on in greater detail.
Thanks for reading!
- Matt
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