GR#081 - You Can Design a Kindergarten's Bathroom Pixel Art

[Bloodfart]

*I am interested in more than one, possibly many, artists contributing to different walls.

My wife and I own a kindergarten and we are moving to a new place. A while ago when making up a bathroom I came across small colored tiles that can be used in tiling to make mosaics. I thought it would be awesome to make some pixel art in the children's bathrooms because I had some experience making it in the game Minecraft.

Now the opportunity has come but I don't have the time available to design the art for all of the walls (possibly more than 16 total surfaces), and I would love to have some variety in the art styles, plus very professional, clean-looking designs. I'm talking not just game art, but isometric landscapes/cityscapes, surrealism, abstract, whatever you want to make.

What better way to find amazing pixel art than asking communities on the internet? If you or someone you know may be interested, please reply.

What I am requesting:

Design fairly low resolution pixel art images, collages, or whatever awesome, and email it to me. The dimensions and walls are listed in the documents below. If you are interested please mention in thread what wall you wish to take so I know what goes where. Just a nice clean jpg, png, or bmp would be perfect so I can print it on 11x17 and hand it to the workers to follow.

What I am offering:

I will keep the thread up to date with progress in the form of text and photographs! Then when the bathrooms are finished i'll take pictures of them as well! Your pixel art will have a very long life bringing smiles, excitement, joy, and inspiration to young kids.

Additional infomation:

The school is an English school located in China. Chinese business dealings are often flaky, confusing, and full of misunderstandings. It is possible (though we hope not) that something could go wrong and we can't move into the new school or decorate. However we have signed the property rental papers and everything looks good at the moment.

The wall's resolutions vary but they all use 5cm tiles with a mortar estimated to be between 1-2mm on average. When i did the math for calculating the resolution requirements I averaged in 1.5mm for mortar the the images should be a bit larger than the wall resolution so I can easily compensate for inaccuracy.

Also the placement of toilets, sinks, towel racks, and more can't be organized in advance of the tile planning because it may take serious organizing to get the workers to follow the design docs.

We may get started tiling walls within days.

If you choose to do any walls please note the bathroom number and wall number together. The resolution for the pixel art should be a bit larger than the tiling resolution in the design docs; tiles long by tall, not cm.

Here are the design docs followed by examples of tiles with at least a light and dark variant of each major colour. The tiles in the picture are half the size of the ones that I will be using:

*update: bathroom 2 will be taken out to increase classroom space since bathroom 1 is very large. Also see bathroom 3 update attachment.

http://postimage.org/gallery/ceo5mg6bw/

Bathroom 3 update
http://postimage.org/image/ixq8ev7cr/

To anyone interested, Thank you. I know there's people out there that would think this an awesome, easy project, and the tiling will come out beautifully; i'm sure.

admin@rootsnshoots.org

Any more questions please post them; i'll check in often.

[Mathias]

This interests me. I might help out with this. Online porty. PixelJoint gallery. I even have a lot of experience doing tile, walls and floors.

When do you have to start tiling? What's the deadline? Before that time you need to have all art finalized. That could take a while.

The floorplans you've given are tiny and rather useless.

If you want help with this, you really should give better information. Unless you can better organize this effort I don't think I'll participate. I would really like to see your idea come to fruition, and not fail, but we need to start of better.


1) Better/larger images of the two floorplans of the two rooms in question.

2) I highly recommend you label all walls with a unique letter and/or number so you can keep all the art straight.

3) Write the corresponding unique name of each wall on the actual walls themselves in big black letters/numbers so the tilers don't mix them up when it's time to tile.

4) Measure all walls and determine the number of tiles in length and height. Factor in all grout joints of course. Be accurate! Otherwise it'll be impossible to design anything detailed that continues across walls and some of it not be cropped when once the tile workers actually install it.

5) Is that really your palette? I'm referring to the tiny pic of tiles you posted. We need to establish the palette.

6) Are you limited to only those tiles?



Additionally, when I think about the space we're discussing, kindergarten classrooms, I wonder what style would be best and how detailed, possibly distracting for the students, it should be. Classrooms are typically painted very simply and with colors that encourage a nurturing atmosphere. There's obviously plenty of color theory behind classroom colors. You should consider all this.

The space isn't some ADD teenager's bedroom, it's for very young students. The tile designs probably shouldn't be too far out.

Why not post pics of the space as is, before anything is done to it?

[Bloodfart]

Hi Mathias thanks for the response,

Sorry about the floorplan pictures. It appears i was mistaken about the thumbnails. I had assumed the thumbnails would be clickable to open into the fullsized jpegs. I will re-upload them and edit the OP.

The tiling is only for the bathrooms. I think anything can be applied in the bathroom as it will always provide for interesting things to look at when the kids are sitting on the toilet

In the floorplans (high resolution) you can see that i've measured and calculated the amount of tiles necessary to the best of my ability. The tiles themselves are 5cm x 5cm and the grout is between 1-2mm.

I also thought about the labeling on the walls to keep the art aligned and placed correctly but i'm not sure of the easiest way for the workers to follow it. Bear in mind that I am in China and the quality of the work done by laborers is typically poor. However I will be supervising and having a limited palette helps reduce problems as well.

I think each wall should have separate art as aligning walls together along the corners will likely be a lot of trouble since the grout thickness can't be measured accurately.

[Mathias]

Hey there.

Oh right, bathrooms. Not classrooms. Hah that's different.

Ok, so this greatly decreases the scope of the project, which is a good thing.

It still may be possible to have art in corners continue seamlessly as long as the design is really simple. We may see.

___

Now, on to palette. Something massively important.

Looking at your tile samples board I see many tile combos. All glass (make sure they use only white thinset or mastic, not grey!)


Here's a possible issue you'll run into: Look at the blue tile combo in the top middle row of your tile samples pic.



It contains3 shades of blue - What happens if a wall design uses a ton of only the medium blue color for a sky? When you purchase the tile you'll get roughly even amounts of all 3 shades, though you'll need a ton of the medium blue, which means you'll have to buy more sheets of that blue combo just to get enough medium blues. Resulting in much waste.

Plus, the tile workers will have never done this sort of thing before - it's unheard of to have to meticulously cut apart tile sheets and consider little 1x1's individually.



What do you think of the palette problem we have? Are you able to get sheets of only one color? Otherwise, there's gonna be a TON of waste.

I'm located in the central US.

[Bloodfart]

So my Chinese isn't good enough to handle dealing with the sellers myself but I tried to make clear to my wife what I want. She assured me first that they have these same tiles colours in 5cm pieces.

I hadn't thought of the fact that they come in tile sheets but when we were at the shop they said they can use the tiles to make any design. If its a matter of paying them for more time to cut apart the sheets, it shouldn't be a problem.

Also she said they will refund money for any excess tiles when we are finished. Not having to worry about and count out specific colour amounts is fantastic; though i'll still likely do some counting with math.

I forgot to take pictures of the bathrooms when i was down there but all I had was my iPod and the light was quite dark anyway.

[Mathias]

Does your wife speak Chinese? Is she the one teaching?

So you can return partial tile sheets and get your money back? You typically buy a box of these sort of tile sheets and get about 10 per box. Then you can return unused sheets. But not partial sheets; sheet that have been cut apart and partially used. Nobody wants to the buy them, therefore tile dealers won't buy them back. Better make sure!

But, if you can buy sheets of all one color I guess there's no problem.

We still need to nail down what the palette(s) are for this. I think the artist(s) should define the palette, it's an integral part of the artwork. Do you have color or subject matter preferences? Shall we attempt to depict scenes from Chinese history that the kids might learn about (wait, history in Kindergarten . . ?), or something academic-related? It would make sense. Though I haven't thought about it much.

I suggest 4-8 colors per design. Perhaps we can define about 3 palettes to use. Maybe different palettes per boy's and girl's bathrooms - one would be girl colors, one would be boy colors. Like in The States, does China associate pinks as female and blues as male colors? Haha I have to ask.

We definitely need shots taken of the spaces, in question, before anything is done. Try and get good really good images, please. And it would be ideal if the final photos are taken from the same exact angle for a really cool Before & After composite picture. I'll be honest, the main reason I want to do this is because I want the before and after pics for my portfolio. I love having an odd variety. Plus, I love your idea to apply the pixel art medium as a sort of 'art installation' in a Chinese kindergarten. That's just cool.

[Bloodfart]

Does your wife speak Chinese? Is she the one teaching?

I am the Director of Education and teach most of our english classes.

So you can return partial tile sheets and get your money back? You typically buy a box of these sort of tile sheets and get about 10 per box. Then you can return unused sheets. But not partial sheets; sheet that have been cut apart and partially used. Nobody wants to the buy them, therefore tile dealers won't buy them back. Better make sure!

My wife assured me that they'd take back unused tiles, and it should have been clear that I will use separate colours to design with. However, people are generally unclear and often confused when communicating with each other here so i'm crossing my fingers but it seems ok.

The palette i think should be limited to 2 shades per colour; a light and a dark. It keeps things simple yet has enough diversity to allow to some depth perception and shading. This is how I would do pixel art in Minecraft for example and it turns out good enough for what I'm thinking. If you think it is necessary then you can add in another shade if you see it in the tile palette.

I don't mind at all mixing up tons of colours into crazy collages of characters and settings, or specific palette-controlled compositions. Really anything goes here.

I don't want the sexes to have anything noticeably catering to sex stereotypes like blue/pink motifs. Plus the bathrooms are unisex anyway in kindergarten.

Bear in mind that this is the first attempt at pixel art tiling. In the future we plan on opening more schools and if this works out as well as i think it can, i will oversee even more detailed and carefully planned projects with higher resolution. Right now we are just far too busy to attempt anything more elaborate than what I am after.

We definitely need shots taken of the spaces, in question, before anything is done. Try and get good really good images, please. And it would be ideal if the final photos are taken from the same exact angle for a really cool Before & After composite picture. I'll be honest, the main reason I want to do this is because I want the before and after pics for my portfolio. I love having an odd variety. Plus, I love your idea to apply the pixel art medium as a sort of 'art installation' in a Chinese kindergarten. That's just cool.

Ok i will go try to go there tomorrow and take shots of the bathroom walls. I would love to give an artist before and after shots. Plus I will acknowledge the work provided on our website; also under renovations.

[Mathias]

(You got a block of your own text in quote tags, almost missed it)

Ok, so how many different colors are you thinking per wall?

Bathrooms are unisex, ok.

Oh so we're treating this a prototype. That's cool. The resolution/size of tiles is no problem. Let's keep it very simple for this first attempt.

-RELEVANT-

[Bloodfart]

Fixed it. I didn't think of using quotes until after I had already written responses in a different order. Then messed up rearranging the order and slapping on quotes.

I will work on a wall design now and post it when its done. Though i'm not sure how awesome mine will turn out compared to more practiced artists; I do a lot of drawing and design myself though, just not professionally.

*edited the OP to state that I am interested in possibly many people contributing.

[Mathias]

Np.

You're now going to work on a wall design? Which, where?

I did a ton of legwork for this project today. The information you've given is good, but I wanted to better facilitate the creation of artwork for your walls so I refined and clarified the information. It's funny, not only do I have months of tiling (and wood flooring) installation experience but I also spent 2 years at a big architectural firm, full-time. I've dealt with architectural info 10x more complex.

--THE CHINESE BATHROOMS PIXELIZING PROJECT GUIDE-- (updated)

Blood, you need to thoroughly proof it, though. Nobody should use it until you've had time to review everything I've done in the above image and approve it, first. Once you've done that, I suggest putting a big fat link to it in your OP to attract help. Artists here will find it very helpful.



Some things:

1) Can we not get the dims of the doors in question? (Affecting walls B, K & N)

2) Can we get the location of all sinks and toilets? (Only Bathroom 1 has them drawn)

3) How high are your walls, from floor to ceiling? 8 feet high, as is the standard in The States?

[Manupix]

Well I guess everyone has seen this by now, but just in case

Pixels by Frost.


Edit: oops, useless post. Sorry

[Mathias]

Hehe thanks, Manupix. But I've actually linked to the youtube video in Post #7 already.

[Cyangmou]

Your  attachment is very helpful Mathias.

[Mathias]

Edit: oops, useless post. Sorry

haha np.



For those participating, please disclose all work done in this thread so everyone knows what's going on.

I would like to do artwork for this, but not all of it.

If you want to grab a wall, post here what wall you're checking out. Keep your color count very low.

All walls should have visual continuity so we need to agree on a palette or at least color count.
We're limited by what actual tile colors are available, though. We may design the walls in greyscale and colorize the artwork with available tile colors later.


I think we simply need to start submitting wall designs to get this moving. Blood will ultimately decide which designs will be chosen.

[Bloodfart]

Just woke up to and see your awesome attachment bathroom plans that are much better than the ones i made

Quick note: my wife talked to the owner and the 2 small interior walls of bathroom 3 can not be removed as we had thought. So the size of the tiling area will be cut there. I have to go teach a class for 2 hours but when I return i'll post a more detailed explanation.

For now just don't design anything for bathroom 3 until i update the information for it.

All other bathrooms are still ok.

Here is the updated Bathroom 3 info.

http://postimage.org/image/ixq8ev7cr/

Note that the upper portion will not be tiled over and the bottom portion inner wall does not have an exact measurement. The landlord lives very far away and I can't get access to measure or take pictures at the moment.

We have also decided to remove Classroom 1 Bathroom 2 because Bathroom 1 will be large enough to accommodate enough children.

So again, no more bathroom 2, and no more upper portion to bathroom 3.

Edited OP to clarify.

[Mathias]

Sounds like the project just got a bit smaller. You sure you can't tear out the old stuff in upper Bathroom 3 so we can put in all new??? It'll look much better, all matching once all is said and done.

I will update the Guide image and also create an additional Master image, which will be much smaller than the Guide, and have a copy of all approved art that we can go by as canon during this project, to quickly view what's done and what needs done.



Any other changes to the plan that you know of?

-AND-

How many colors max do you think any single should have?
I want to start developing the palette(s) or at least constraints we can go by to keep all artwork feasible to physically tile.

[Bloodfart]

This is the extent of the plan so far. If anything comes up I will post soon as i can.

I really don't care about keeping any of the palette or adjacent walls consistent. Think of it a bit like graffiti or a collage. I'd really like various works of art randomly thrown around the space, but if anyone has a cool idea to use a large or multiple space feel free.

About the part of the bathroom that is already tiled: I would like to tear it out and do it like the others and i'll argue the case with my wife, but no guarantees. We are both the business owners and have to agree on things to get them done.

[Bloodfart]

Np.

You're now going to work on a wall design? Which, where?

I did a ton of legwork for this project today. The information you've given is good, but I wanted to better facilitate the creation of artwork for your walls so I refined and clarified the information. It's funny, not only do I have months of tiling (and wood flooring) installation experience but I also spent 2 years at a big architectural firm, full-time. I've dealt with architectural info 10x more complex.

--THE CHINESE BATHROOMS PIXELIZING PROJECT GUIDE--

Blood, you need to thoroughly proof it, though. Nobody should use it until you've had time to review everything I've done in the above image and approve it, first. Once you've done that, I suggest putting a big fat link to it in your OP to attract help. Artists here will find it very helpful.



Some things:

1) Can we not get the dims of the doors in question? (Affecting walls B, K & N)

2) Can we get the location of all sinks and toilets? (Only Bathroom 1 has them drawn)

3) How high are your walls, from floor to ceiling? 8 feet high, as is the standard in The States?

I should've answered these earlier.

I will start a design for Classroom 1, bathroom 1, wall 2

your questions:

1) We aren't sure of the doorframes we will be using yet, so can't be sure of how much space they take up on the wall surfaces.

2) The toilets and whatnot in the picture provided are NOT final. I think the designer we hired to make the plans just threw them in for show.

3) From floor to ceiling is supposed to be about 240cm

[Bloodfart]

Here is what i've made so far for bathroom 1 wall 2 (C).

http://postimage.org/image/rkz9az7yj/

I'm trying to make gamey hills and land framing the characters in the picture. Possibly the frame is too thick though it may turn out better if i can add another character or animal though I can't think of what else could go in.

[Mathias]

Let's hope the guide pic doesn't have to change anymore. We need to be able to rely on it.

--UPDATED PROJECT GUIDE--



I also have the art master, version 1, ready.

--ART MASTER 01--



As for your progress shot, I was hoping you'd let us fulfill the art and design needs for this project. Your role would be to oversee all art - approving or disapproving. Also, verifying everything is done to spec, so all chosen art is feasibly tileable.

[jams0988]

^Well, bloodfart (I feel fifteen years younger even typing that = = ) is technically a forum member too, even if he only joined for help with this project, so I don't see the harm in him contributing to the art along with whoever else wants to help out. I mean, there are plenty of walls left, hahah. =)

And his sprite art is pretty cute, anyway. Looks like something that belongs in a kindergarten mural, so it fits perfectly.

[Bloodfart]

^Well, bloodfart (I feel fifteen years younger even typing that = = ) is technically a forum member too, even if he only joined for help with this project, so I don't see the harm in him contributing to the art along with whoever else wants to help out. I mean, there are plenty of walls left, hahah. =)

And his sprite art is pretty cute, anyway. Looks like something that belongs in a kindergarten mural, so it fits perfectly.

Thanks for the compliment, though I am a total amateur at pixel art; i've only done it a few times before; mostly in Minecraft more than a year ago.

Another way I'd like to explain my idea for these bathrooms is like a sketchbook. When I did sketches I'd let friends and people I'd meet draw anything they want inside. Without any preplanning the books would end up becoming an interesting collection of random pieces. This is similar to how I envision the walls becoming.

At any rate, I will be pixeling myself for fun and to see what comes out of it. If other people produce better work I will choose the better over my own; though of course I'd like something I made in here.

[Mathias]

I think understanding our color options would be very advantageous right now.

If you're unable to get a full list and color example/sample of some sort of all available colors, post the brand(s) available at your tile place and we can perhaps access the info online. This will most likely require a custom order, which hopefully won't cost more than if the tile place has it all in stock, in-store. They differ, so I can't say.

Once we have a good idea of the palette I'll create the master palette and post it here.

[Bloodfart]

The palette is the tileset colours that i posted.

Do you want a labeling system for each colour so we can keep accurate count?

I can't guarantee the precise shade of colours but we can approximate closely enough i think.

At the shop i noted all the colours to make sure we werent missing anything important and i'd just label them as <colour> followed by D for dark, L for light, and if a third shade vD for very dark, vL for very light. This is pretty easy for anyone else to apply and likely match up with someone else.

We can mark the colours as follows:

D = Dark   vD = Very Dark
L = light   vL  = Very Light

Yellow D, L

Red D, L

White

Green vD, D, L

Black

Grey D, L

Purple D, L, vL

Pink D, L

Brown D, L, vL

Blue D, L, vL

Orange D, L
 
Aqua/greenblue D, L

[Bloodfart]

Well it is time now to start ordering tiles and telling the workers what to do.

My wife is meeting with the worker's leader but I think that I can delay the tiling a bit if I can convince them to do the main flooring, painting, wallpaper, and trim first.

[Mathias]

Yikes! Really? Ok! Yeah, have them do other stuff first. Typically the tile can be done last.

*starts doing something!*

[Mathias]

Your palette organization is incredibly confusing (I'm hard to live with, I know). PA simply organizes indexes, or unique palette colors, with a number; every color has a number.

Here's a nice visual palette organization. Notice #6 is repeated twice. I determined precise RBG's of all colors by simply doing an average blur of a 20px X 20px area of each unique tile:



Here's the pal itself, organized by luminosity, the following image is already indexed with all unique pal colors:

Toss it into your gfx program and git going, people! Haven't you ever heard of deadlines!

[Mathias]

Here's a quick submission. Tentative pixels scrambled together to get the ball rolling.


CLICK IMAGE TO ZOOM IN

With tile, I think simple iconic patterns and objects will work best. Little or no AA.

Notice the examples I made can easily be tiled across walls, over corners, etc.

[Cyangmou]

Wow... Found some time, there were some unexpected things during the weekend, however I made now some designs.
I tried to keep it as simple and clean as possible. Also tried to made the walls very bright, it's a bath room so bright walls are a must-have (it looks cleaner). I Used mathias's palette (just changed 1 green tone a bit).
Dino and fish can also be changed by 2 tiles in the width to fit for several walls. It's also possible to use only parts of the city panoramaa, kept it in the size of the biggest wall. I Hope there is at least one design which will be used =)

[Mathias]

These are nice!

[Argyle]

Didn't have time to do anything more than this, but it's of the Q template size.

[Cilein]

Here's my contribution, for Bathroom 4-Q, Bathroom 1-B and Bathroom 1-A respectively.

[Bloodfart]

Wow.

You guys all made some rad stuff. Much cleaner and organized than what I made, plus easier to tile!

[Mathias]

Yeah, great stuff.

Blood, what's our status? Have you been able to get pictures of the bathrooms yet?

[Argyle]

Has anyone mentioned or thought it hilarious that this really cool project for a family owned kindergarten is being presented to us by a person who goes by the name of "Bloodfart"? Haha, I wish the operator of my school was named something like Snotgasm or Gutsmear... He would have been a neat guy, I'm sure.

[TheInquisitor]

This sounds like great fun. I'll look into doing something tonight!

[ui]

count me in, i will work in some tiles tonight.

Thx mathias for alllll that raaaddd info organization!!! ROX and helpful

[Mathias]

ui  -  I am so glad you showed up!


[EDIT] redundant pic removed, since ui posted his down below.

[TheInquisitor]

Behold...the Mandarin Duck! The most beautiful duck on the planet.

[Bloodfart]

Awesome art from everyone. Thanks again.

Turns out we have a bit more time before we start tiling. Maybe a few more days to a week.

Has anyone mentioned or thought it hilarious that this really cool project for a family owned kindergarten is being presented to us by a person who goes by the name of "Bloodfart"? Haha, I wish the operator of my school was named something like Snotgasm or Gutsmear... He would have been a neat guy, I'm sure.

I made this name years ago with as my brother, friends, and I all made nasty names for gaming together and making a new moniker at this point would result in me forgetting what to sign in with places Though as a business owner I'd likely keep it secret from customers and business partners 

[ui]

Hey, first at all, REALLY thx mathias . And i think im in love with this project! XD...

- - -

Mines are a bit inspired into the Chinese culture, in descriptions they are...

A/B/C) Are pretty much "freestyle"

D) Chan Chu (toad)
J) Red-crowned Crane
M) Giant Panda

O/P) Chinese Folk Toy (as far google said)

- - -

i would love to improve the ones i have done and in case we still have time for this, i will like to add more.
Thx mister Bloodfart! (XDDD) and thx mathias for the awesome organizacion.

[Elk]

„Zhuyin shi zi, tiqian du xie“





Dunno if its of any use...

[||||]

Here's one I did assuming kids like baseball... right?
I want to make a soccer one too but I don't have much time to offer as of right now.
This is possibly the most magnanimous I can be for this wonderful project.

[Bloodfart]

Here's one I did assuming kids like baseball... right?
I want to make a soccer one too but I don't have much time to offer as of right now.
This is possibly the most magnanimous I can be for this wonderful project.

That is awesome though they have no idea what baseball is at their ages and being Chinese.

Right now we are fishing around for the best price to do the tile mosaics. The guys we talked to were trying to shaft us on the tiling because it takes so long to install. I'm talking around 150rmb (20 dollarsish) per square meter which seems ridiculous.

[Mathias]

. . . I'm talking around 150rmb (20 dollarsish) per square meter which seems ridiculous.

To be fair, this project is highly custom. Very unusual. The tileworkers you'll find will have no experience doing this sort of thing. They can follow instructions on how to install the mosaics, because they know tile, but it'll most likely be something new to them.

I hope this isn't a show-stopper. We may have to simplify things - maybe do only a few walls, or designate only certain parts of certain walls for mosaic designs.

[||||]

Aww. They don't do baseball in China? Well glad you enjoyed my submission anyhow.
Thanks Mathias for breaking down the palette and everything.
I hope this comes to fruition even if as he mentioned it needs be simplified and lessened.

I had really hoped to see some of my pixels immortalized; this is a great cause too.

[Bloodfart]

Wish us luck!

We are trying to find a crew to do the work for a decent price right now. The last guy was being a jerk and trying to up the price insanely for the custom tile work. It really won't be difficult since I'll supply a large print to follow with a grid.

It also looks like we may have to reduce the custom tiling to one wall per bathroom due to the cost

But I'll make sure it's a walk not blocked by toilets or fixtures.

The biggest bathroom I hope will have two picture walls.

[Mathias]

Major bummer. We should've calculated costs first . . . obviously.

Oh well, it happens, just update us here with the final specs; wall dims and we'll see what we can do!

[Bloodfart]

My wife found a crew willing to do all of our work and for a good price too!

They will do one wall per bathroom for us. The rest will have to be plain big tiles.

Sadly every crew is very reluctant to do this tiling work for us. Another crew have even tried to raise the cost per square meter for it to near 100 dollars, which is not cool. Needless to say I told that crew to take a hike.

Even at a low cost for the current crew they refuse to do more custom tiling walls even if I pay more so we seem stuck with it.

Now I will select three designs and then could possibly use ideas on what colour, or simple patten of large tiles for the rest of the bathroom.

[jams0988]

Sadly every crew is very reluctant to do this tiling work for us. Another crew have even tried to raise the cost per square meter for it to near 100 dollars, which is not cool. Needless to say I told that crew to take a hike.

I don't know much about tiling, but that price sounds really cheap for what you're asking them to do...
Anyway, I can't wait to see the finished rooms. This is a really cool project. =D

[ui]

aahhhh! 

I wish they could do the tiling for less money!.

A solution could be, tell them is that you can tell the EXACT amount of each color. Other than that, i think a reticle would help them to understand how easy it could be.
Another could be give a number to each color (as we have it in here) and them the reticle just have NUMBERS instead of numbers (that could be easier for them).

Anyway, im really interesting in this project, please tell us if you have any update.

[Mathias]

Well ui, it's not the difficulty, it's the time it takes to do it. Time is money.

Normally with tiles this small you would install them in large groups/sheets where numerous small tiles are pre-spaced because they're connected with sticky lath. But with a mosaic, every single tile is separate so they have to use spacers on every one. Takes a ton of time. Most tile guys would hate doing it.

[snader]

Could you ask what they would think of using strips instead of individual tiles?

I think that for instance it would look pretty good to have the wall-width covered with a simple gradient and 1 focal piece.

Then you would have mostly large tiles, a couple of strips in the (vertical) middle to fade between colors, and then some detail in the middle of the wall. Imma whip you up something in a bit.

edit:

Top is the endresult
Middle shows which parts can be made with whole sheets (dark colors) and which consist of small strips (light colors)
Lowest one shows which tile sheets need to be cut (in red) regardless of what's on the image, because of the 'canvas' size: 85x47 is not nicely divisible by 4.

Maybe if you show them this they're willing to do this technique wallwide, and only a "unique" piece of 6 sheets wide somewhere in the room. Or 2 columns of 3 sheets or 3 of 2 wide. This could give us the chance to make a nice simple pattern/background for most of the room, with some detailed parts. This way we'll get a bit nicer spread of detail, and it doesn't look as much like it's to save time.
Imma make another mockup.

[Bloodfart]

Ok I have chosen the three pictures to use.

It was very hard to select three based on color combinations and partially how easy i think it will be to place.

Bathroom 1 Wall B (we changed the size of the wall so it isn't long anymore)
- 3 Mountains by Mathias


Bathroom 4 Wall O
- 2 Dinosaurs by Cyangmou

Now i'm having a hard time counting the total tile estimates per colour and have to go to work

Bathroom 3 Wall M
- Penguin by Celein (cropped width to fit)

[Mathias]

Ok. But, I need to revise mine a bit. All that brown in the bottom half needs to go. Will revise soonly!

[Bloodfart]

Ok. But, I need to revise mine a bit. All that brown in the bottom half needs to go. Will revise soonly!

Woah no! Im actually using the brown.

The rest of the bathroom wall tiling will be brown to that same height, then blue paint the rest of the way.

My wife wanted to cut costs by not tiling all the way up the walls and this fits nicely.

[Mathias]

Hehe oh I see. Didn't know that. Alrighty, well that works then.

The rest of the bathroom wall tiling will be brown to that same height . . .

How many tiles high is the brown tile on the bottom?


You said Bathroom 1, Wall B has changed. What is it's dims now?

Will the other 2 custom tile areas need to be simplified in the bottom half?





Current final art:    (notice I cropped the penguin art to fit the wall length)


--PROJECT GUIDE--




Penguin tile test just for fun: (disregard the mirror haha!)



But notice the base trim tile (bottom-most row of tile). It will have to be considered for all custom areas.



Any pics taken yet?

[Helm]

(looking at the penguin mockup) This is the most important it's ever been: avoid single pixel noise and make certain the pixel clusters you use are as beautiful as they can. Let's teach these kids good practices from early on!

[Bloodfart]

lol that mockup is awesome.

it will help my wife see what i see in my head.

[Mathias]

(looking at the penguin mockup) This is the most important it's ever been: avoid single pixel noise and make certain the pixel clusters you use are as beautiful as they can. Let's teach these kids good practices from early on!

Haha, Helm! Yeah!

[jams0988]

With pixels that large, does the single pixel noise actually hurt the image? Serious question, since I'm working with all 32x32 sprites blown up to 64x64 resolution to give my game that blocky look, and I'm not sure whether or not I should be using single pixels anywhere...

[trough]

Aww, you didn't pick any of ui's 

[ui]

A1) Duck
A2) Chinese Monal
B) Squid and fishs
C) Jellyfish family (Grandpa, girl and boy)
D) Chinese Toad (Chan Chu)
J1) Golden Pheasant
J2) Crane
M) Giant Panda
N) Chow-Chow (blue)
O/P) Tradicional toy (Represent the Tiger)
Q) Frog

About Birds, they are based in this list. These birds are just in China.

In case the colors needs to be changed, let me know, i can fit the art into "any palette" or colors. Same as the position and composition. This obviously is not final, since i don't know the exact position of the doors and toilets, so the position defenly could change if needed.

[Mathias]

Any updates, Blood?

[Bloodfart]

Any updates, Blood?

Just logged in to update!

Things have been going slower than anticipated.

We are going to order the coloured tiles now but there may be a problem. After asking clearly to the seller and my wife that we can use any colour of tile in any number we want, they now say they don't want to produce any tiles if the total of that colour is less than 3 square meters. This is annoying as I asked to be made clear of any problems earlier.

I'm not taking this problem seriously yet though as confusing and aggravating information constantly comes up in China and just as often blows away.

I rreaaallly wish I could have used one or two of Ui''s piece but we don't have the wall space. I especially love the big squid. An entire bathroom done underwater would be awesome. I was going to use the panda for one bathroom piece but we felt we didn't couldn't use a green bathroom to match it.

So sorry Ui I love your work.

[Bloodfart]

I counted all of the tiles individually by colour and now we are heading out to buy.

Wish me luck!

[Bloodfart]

I'm back with good and bad news.

The good news: is that the company that sells tiles can take a picture (photo, or jpg drawing like the ones we have), rasterize it into tiles, and lay it on sheets for me! Then the workers just have to put the sheets on the wall instead of individual tiles.

Semi-bad news: They won't do the 5cm tiles. They will only do 5cm tiles in large sheets which messes up too much with our palette since some pieces use only a few tiles of certain colours.

The bad news: They won't even do some entire sets of colours. The purples and aquas are completely non-doable. They showed me a new palette that I took a picture of and the tiles are now reduced to 2.5cm.

Good news again: Since they will lay them in sheets for me based off of an image we can actually do four times the resolution in images. So I will either take the current images and just split each 5cm tile into four smaller ones, or possibly take any new awesome higher resolution art if anyone decides to supply some by tomorrow.

I was very upset upon hearing all this. When i had gone the first time i explicitly asked if we could use small numbers of some colours and that all the colours were available to which i was answered yes. They did not think things through to tell me about colour availability or size. This is a typical problem in China so i'm not super surprised.

I actually had asked when i was there the first time if there was an easy software way they went about doing mosaics; must've been lost in translation.

tl:dr
The resolution is now with 2.5cm tiles and there is a new palette. If anyone can change the colours of their art to match it that would be cool. If not i will let the computer software that they use do it for you. Also the possibility of higher resolution art to match the new tile sizes would be cool to consider though we need to order these things quickly.

I will get this done one way or another.


New pallette
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/80334

[Helm]

Don't worry a bit. That palette is perfectly usable by pixel artists that have been doing with much, much less both in span and range.

[Mathias]

Let's hurry up and put a bullet in this project before China launches their nukes or something.


Let's get this done.

So the resolution for the 3 areas has doubled now?

Are you still only doing the 3 areas?

Please give new dimensions of all custom tile areas, for clarity!


Here's the new palette guys:



I've simply taken Blood's image, did the average blur thing again, on each swatch and listed the resultant colors at the bottom.


And here's an indexed version of the entire 42 color palette, on transparency:


Wait for Blood to answer the above questions before you do anything. There's already been enough unnecessary effort made here . . .

[Bloodfart]

Yes the resolution has doubled.

Still only doing the same three areas and the same sizes.

I'll likely keep the original three pieces i was going to use as we sort of matched the rest of the bathroom tiles to the colours.

My wife wants to email them now but its 11pm so I don't see any harm in waiting a few hours to see what anyone cooks up.

[Mathias]

Ok.

So, you just plan to use four tiles for each pixel in those 3 original pieces then?

I highly recommend each piece being re-pixelled, taking the new resolution into account. They won't change per sé, just get more detail.

[ui]

Hey guys!... woah!!! the new palette is HUGE, jajaja... pretty cool.

Blood, about my art, really thx , i was trying to jump a bit out of the cup and trying to do some "patriotic" stuff and some typical childish. About the colors and stuff, it's not really a big deal to me to change the colors in any piece if is needed. In case you REALLY want to include any of my pixels into the wall but some colors don't match with what you have in your head, just tell me, i can denfely change colors, specially now with the new palette, because this project is so cool to be true...

I have been busy, i will try to have something new at double size tomorrow, i really havent checked this in days because i have been busy. Is a shame that they are just 3 walls! , would be AMAZING if they can be all those wall you said for the first time. But well, somethimes is just cant be...

Again, mathias... really thx for help on the palette and organizing the stuff )))) somebody should invite you few beers!!!!...(hope you drink beers) :PPP

keep us up to date Blood, and thx again for giving us the oportunity

[Cilein]

Still needing higher resolution versions of the 3 chosen artworks? Double resolution just isn't it? Hadn't been back to this topic in a week or so, sorry about that and many thanks for the interest in my penguin piece, quite honoured

Edit/Update:
I recolored my penguin one using the new tile colors (much prettier palette!), both of the below are at the new resolution (4:1 ratio on pixels or 2x), one uses more detail, the other keeps the blockier look from the original sized piece. You didn't say how much you had cropped it by previously so I'll leave that one to you again bloodfart. Auto-printing the tilesets sounds genious, is it expensive to do?

[Bloodfart]

Came in to leave an update.

Sorry but I didn't have time to wait for higher resolution versions of the art though it would've been awesome. The custom printing, and making into sheets takes a week so I had to put in the order quickly or risk having the workers waiting around for it and not having any work to do in the meantime.

Today Is Wednesday here and my wife thinks the tiles will arrive on Friday and we can stick them on the walls on Monday. 

I also didn't have time to go over the pictures and redo the colours to the new palette so I *gulp* let the shop do it for me. I did however go over the pictures and realign many tiles and shapes that were messed up when they rasterized the pictures for their company. I was in a hurry so hope I didn't make many mistakes but I assume there are some. For example when they rasterized some areas turned into 1 or 3 pixel lengths instead of all nicely doubling into 2x2's.

We'll see how it looks soon and I'll try and go get some before and after shots with my DSLR.

[Bloodfart]

First I would like to apologize for the delay since my last post.

My daughter broke her arm and then the internet was being insanely slow and refusing to let me fully upload a a file.

Now I happily present photo proof of complete bathroom tile pixel mosaics!!

http://www.filesavr.com/WW0JYLES47Z0IG4

When the classes are completely clean up and decorated I will post more pictures.

Thanks again for the help you guys have been awesome.

How can i best honor your contributed efforts to completing this project?

[jams0988]

Ahhh, so cool! X3
Good work, everyone!

[Mathias]

(Hope your daughter is alright!)

Hey, thanks for uploading and linking to those!


For convenience, I went ahead and compiled them together into the 3 pics you see below. Following are all photos in the ZIP linked above, all scaled down quite a bit.










Looking forward to the next pics you plan to post.

I can't really think of anything further you ought to do. Making the pics available is enough for me.

[Phlakes]

Looks amazing. I may have to do this myself if I can find the time/money.

[StaticSails]

Saw this and thought of this thread.


Look at all the ugly automated noise! I prefer this bathroom.

[Cilein]

The link to the zip is dead, could it be rehosted? I'd like a copy of the hi-res files

Looking forward to the final shots when the buildings finished. Thank you Bloodfart