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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/
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/