I found a random portrait generator today on a different forum.  It produces things like this:




Here's the link to the forum thread describing it and a download as well.

http://roguetemple.com/forums/index.php?topic=2970.0


It raises an interesting question of just how different faces have to be before one's brain decides that the portrait is a different person.  Anyone use or develop something like this in their pixel art?  I know I've seen a couple of doll makers around the web.

Tourist

Someone on another forum mentioned that a lot of modern 3d games would work just as well 2d, and I wanted to try that out.  Here is a WIP of a demake of the Vampire: Bloodlines video game.  It's the apartment that the player can acquire later in the game.



This is the third version.  The first version was large.  After beating myself up trying to approximate the textures I realized that most of the apartment didn't matter.  There's only about half a dozen things to interact with, and I could chop out the kitchen, bathrooms, etc, without affecting the 'game' at all.

The second version is the tiny version at the top of the screen.  This was too small.  The scale of the stairs was all wrong.

The third version is the one in the middle.  Less complete at this point, but it seems like a good balance.  The nearby figure (NPC Heather Poe) is intentionally oversized because it is a more important aspect of the game.  Most of the apartment is just scenery.


Goals:

1) Explore the 3:4 view instead of 1:2 iso

Overall I like the effect, although it requires a lot of AA work.


2) Explore color spaces, texturing

The second (smaller) version uses colors pulled from the Munsell set, with some interpolation  They look pretty good.  For the third version I used the IPT color space, although some of the placeholder colors are from the smaller image.  This mix contributes to the high color count.  It should probably be closer to 100 at this point.  Overall, I like the IPT color space, but need more practice with textures.


3) Draw a larger portrait than I usually work with

This is the second version of the portrait.  The first was drawn from reference and looked rather bad.  Overall, good enough for a first draft (even though it's a second draft).


4) Design a UI

Didn't get very far on this yet, just some scratchpad doodles on the right hand side.  Incomplete.


Things left to do:

Let's just say a lot.


Lessons learned so far

If I was doing this for a real game, the first thing I would do is build a level editor.  The second thing I would do is create the bitmap font(s).

Also learned that this game is rather poorly designed.  Too many objects that are utterly useless, like the entire kitchen.

I keep getting bogged down in the fine details, which slows progress.  Pushing the boundaries of my current skills is also slow.  If I had to design all of the furniture and characters and whatnot, it would be even slower.

Feedback welcome,
Tourist

A couple of experiments in colors.  The art is not a finished work, but complete enough to ponder the techniques, I think.



Instead of a color ramp, I tried a color wedge.  Started with a triangle, with corners marked light, dark, and saturation.  Used three different hues, and blended.  The result is a set of colors that can be sliced in several different ways and the whole set remains harmonious.  I think this approach has promise. 

There are still some limitations:
* The short ramps make AA is difficult
* Integrating different wedges into a whole
* Separating light/dark/saturation prevents colors that are both dark and saturated, or both light and saturated.




This is a dithering experiment.  A set of 8 grays dithered with a set of hues + saturation.  Expanded the previous image to 2x and changed each 2x pixel into a 50/50 dither gray scale and hue.  The box shapes could be smoothed.  Also, the color set really needs a brown.

This came from trying to use colored pencils on graph paper to make some offline pixel art.  That didn't work out so well, so I wondered what would happen with dithering.  I can't say I like the results, but maybe someone can find it useful, even as an example of what doesn't really work.


Tourist

This will be part of a larger piece.  Lots of work left.  I'm starting on the hair next, the skullcap is just a placeholder.



Feedback is welcomed.

Tourist

There's not much originality in a character mashup, but I need the practice at doing figures. 





C +C welcome.  I don't think I've got the legs correct.  Maybe push the hue shift on the color ramps too?

Tourist