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Topics - Indigo
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11
Devlogs & Projects / Index Painter
« on: June 11, 2018, 06:01:15 am »
So it's been 4 years since I wrote about my HD Index Painting technique and there was a huge amount of interest - more than I could have imagined (over 73,000 notes on tumblr alone!).  Generally speaking, people were excited at the possibilities it presented, but the common feedback I kept receiving was it's simply too complicated and cumbersome to use in practice for most people, not to mention it required expensive professional software to even try.

The idea of making a dedicated app for this process started pretty much immediately after publishing my article, but at the time, I determined it wouldn't be a viable endeavor.  I was deep in the midst of working on Chasm on top of my day job, leaving me with very little spare time.  And even if I had more time, the vast majority of work would be in recreating basic photoshop-like features such as their excellent dynamic brushes, as well as the table-steaks of any good image editing software such as undo-redo, layers, selection, transformations, etc - all before even starting to work on the pixel art aspects at all.  I wasn't sure how to approach making it with my limited programming knowledge, and it wasn't even clear to me how large the market would be for a specialized tool such as this.

Quite a lot has changed in that 4 years that has made me reconsider the idea.  Chasm is near complete and will soon ship, meaning my free time is about to become more open.  More and more indie games have adopted the technique and it's been wonderful and fascinating to see how they've applied it and hearing their success stories of how it benefited their speed and workflow.  It's become clear that if such a tool were to be available, there would be a decent market for it.  I've also become a more competent programmer since then, getting more experienced with next-gen web technologies such as node and react, as well as graphics pipelines/shaders which would be necessary for this project.

So here we go!

I'm building a dedicated HD Index Painting application called Index Painter (working title) built in Javascript using Node, React, and WebGL, and it'll be bundled as a stand-alone desktop application using Electron.

Recently there's been a resurgence of new pixel art tools in development, and some extremely excellent newcomers such as aseprite and pyxel edit.  It's important to me that this project doesn't become just more noise in the market.  As such, it has the following design goals:

1) Index-painting focused
It doesn't need to compete with other pixel art applications, nor should it.  Instead it should focus on what it has to offer which is completely unique and unavailable in other programs - namely the ability to HD index paint.

2) Simple workflow
The complicated layer stack that Photoshop required was obviously too much hassle for most, but *any* workflow that deviates too far from standard pixel art workflow will likely alienate and push out potential users.  Ideally the workflow should feel completely comfortable to traditional pixel artists as well as digital painters and shouldn't involve convoluted steps or modes to switch between.  If you want to pixel traditionally, grab the 1 pixel pencil tool.  If you want to index paint, grab the soft brush. simple as that. There should be zero friction transitioning between the two, instead, it should feel like one seamless process.

3) Familiar/flexible user interface
Too often, pixel art applications either re-invent the wheel or are stuck in archaic paradigms when it comes to UI/UX. It's important to me that this tool adopts modern standards and feels familiar and easy to approach for new users.  The interface needs to be streamlined and unopinionated; adapting to your preferences and workflow.

In this stage of development, I will be pushing preview builds up to the web to get early feedback, but at some point I will likely transition to a pay-what you want beta phase with a downloadable build.

The preview will be pushed here continually:
https://index-painter.netlify.com/

12
General Discussion / GDC Art Jam 2018
« on: February 20, 2018, 11:15:15 pm »
We're hosting another art jam at GDC.  Details and info here:
www.pixelation.org/gdc

13
General Discussion / GDC Art Jam 2017
« on: February 20, 2017, 12:10:27 am »

Pixelation is hosting another Art Jam at GDC this year! Each year has seen more and more artists and has been a heck of a lot of fun.  If you'll be in town for GDC, be sure to make it if you can.

Sign up here to RSVP for the 2017 art jam here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ucc_gySrRlFbcxBr966a1g2PmjjlAqGyuQrpym-RTBQ/edit?usp=sharing

We're meeting up as GDC is winding down to be creative together and meet cool new people.  Bring your art gear.  There are plenty of power outlets.  Bring your own beer if you want to drink.  Bring a few bucks to contribute to the pizza pool.  Forward this signup to any creatives you know.

Where: 750 Natoma st. San Francisco           
When: Friday, March 18th, 5PM to whenever             
Seats 30 but we won't turn anyone away           
Call Stevie if you need help finding the place: (415) 845-2429

Check this thread for pictures from the previous event:
http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19802.0

14
Challenges & Activities / GDC Art Jam
« on: March 06, 2016, 05:08:11 am »
Pixelation.org Presents   
GDC Art Jam 2016      

It's that time of year again!  For the past few years me and Hryx (Stevie) have hosted a GDC art jam and this year is no exception.  Each year has seen more and more pixel artists and has been a heck of a lot of fun.  If you'll be in town for GDC, be sure to make it if you can.

Sign up here to RSVP for the 2015 art jam here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dde_5SZsfHCW4eBqclWVjLP2vJeBRK5JokPS-nlNKSA/edit?usp=sharing

We're meeting up as GDC is winding down to be creative together and meet cool new people.  Bring your art gear.  There are plenty of power outlets.  Bring your own beer if you want to drink.  Bring a few bucks to contribute to the pizza pool.  Forward this signup to any creatives you know.

Where: 750 Natoma st. San Francisco            
When: Friday, March 18th, 5PM to whenever             
Seats 30 but we won't turn anyone away            
Call Stevie if you need help finding the place: (415) 845-2429            

16
General Discussion / We are now Pixelation.org
« on: February 27, 2016, 09:26:48 am »
Branding our forum has been an important mission of mine this past year to bring back a sense of pride, spirit, and hopefully activity.  As part of this branding, in addition to the new forum skin, I was able to secure Pixelation.org for us.  It took some work (it wasn't on the market) but I was able to make a deal with the owner :)

So we are now officially Pixelation.org!  Crow is updating the site settings this very moment to redirect old links.  We probably won't be abandoning wayofthepixel.net though, we have plans to use it in the future as a sort of hub for all things Pixel Art related (links to pixel communities, pixel-wiki, and perhaps a blog).  That won't happen immediately, but we'll be working on it.

Here's to Pixelation!  !yus!

18
General Discussion / Official Pixelation Skin!
« on: February 22, 2016, 10:34:44 am »
So as you can tell, we have a new skin!  This skin represents about 2 years of work between my day job at Zynga, Chasm, and Life.  But I wasn't entirely alone, I was lucky to have some good help along the way from these fine folks

Ptoing: Worked on the original mockups for the new skin some years ago
Crow: helped a ton with server-side issues
pistachio: Did some great work on developing a new icon set. They've changed a bit since then, but the initial work was absolutely invaluable
Atnas: Gave lots of valuable feedback throughout the development as well as gathered the first batch of featured threads
CyangMou: The great work he's been doing with GoodReads is what lead to the Tag mod we now have installed

Thanks guys!  And also thanks to the rest of the mods who gave great feedback along the way.

We also now have a new domain name.  Read about that here: http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19726.0

A few things to note:

Featured threads and activities:
As part of our new goal as a moderating team to spark more activity and better content, we're going to start rolling out a major activity once a month and frequently highlight quality threads and place them prominently at the top of our site.

GoodReads and Tags:
One of the recurring problems we deal with at this forum is the loss of really great answers/resources to common problems and questions.  Part of the problem is it's currently pretty difficult to quickly find the types of threads you're interested in researching such as "dithering" or whatnot.  This is where the tags mod comes in.  I've completely rebuilt the tags mod to suit our needs here.  It's currently turned off for regular members (we may open that to everyone to use in the near future), but mods can now tag threads with common subjects and mark when it has especially good content.  In the coming weeks we will be converting our archived good reads threads into regular tags to keep an eye out for that

There will probably be issues with the skin
I tried my best to keep the skin bug free, but it's very likely I didn't catch everything.  If you see an issue, please let me know by posting in this thread.  Make sure you provide a screenshot of the issue, and tell me what browser and operating system you're on.

Known Issues:
        Missing page style: who's online
        Missing page style: Statistics Center
        footer info widths need fixed 50%
        post overflow issue with large images
        avatar area of posts can overflow their width
        "last post" link style
        Mixed navigation font in Chrome
        Redirect board icon
        New posts icon needs redesign

19
General Discussion / Official Off-Topic Thread 2016
« on: February 04, 2016, 07:56:15 am »
A new year, a new thread - and keeping with tradition, a bit late.

Post here about anything that doesn't quite fit anywhere else or deserve it's own thread.

20
Challenges & Activities / Hexquisite Corpse III
« on: February 01, 2016, 03:44:08 am »
HEXQUISITE CORPSE COLLAB III

               
                                                                           
                               


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