Official Off-Topic Thread 2014

[Helm]

Absolutely, go for it.

[Carnivac]

Hm, creating animated top down 2D sprites somewhat more advanced than the old Alien Breed type stuff is a lot more tricky than I thought.   Having trouble with perspective and making the animation clear as to what it's doing (like the punching attack or the running).  I've got an action figure I'm posing to try get a hang of it but I think I might get one of the Uncharted games loaded up, do some actions in it then play back the 'cinema' file and move the camera up above and pointed straight down to see how it works with the quality modelling and animating of Naughty Dog and use the snapshot function to take some reference shots and use those to figure what I'm doing wrong with my sprites. 

[Carnivac]

Is there even a remote chance to make a retro-style game for a device with actual buttons these days?  All this touchscreen crap is pissing me off.  At what point did people supposedly become content with having their thumbs obscure a large portion of the game screen?   The loss of the tactile feel is really making it difficult to produce the kinds of games I wanted to do.  I've tried other games on phones that have attempted it with the virtual joypad stuff but it's absolutely terrible.   Perhaps I should finally just call it quits and say "oh that's 'progress' or something" and delete everything.

[Crow]

Is there even a remote chance to make a retro-style game for a device with actual buttons these days?  All this touchscreen crap is pissing me off.  At what point did people supposedly become content with having their thumbs obscure a large portion of the game screen?   The loss of the tactile feel is really making it difficult to produce the kinds of games I wanted to do.  I've tried other games on phones that have attempted it with the virtual joypad stuff but it's absolutely terrible.   Perhaps I should finally just call it quits and say "oh that's 'progress' or something" and delete everything.

I wanted to link to the website of "the nD", but apparently.. it's gone. Have an article: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/06/nd-the-game-changing-handheld-console/

Their site now redirects to the site of "Bob's Game", which was supposed to be out on the device as well. We'll see if anything happens with that piece of hardware anytime soon. I sure as hell wouldn't mind.

[Carnivac]

Thanks but not really what I'm after.   Those things never sell well and are usually quickly forgotten   And I can't say I'd want one either looking at it (awful choice of making the buttons different sizes)

[Dusty]

3DS still has buttons, you're not required to use the touchscreen. DS is applicable as well, since it's still being marketed. Pretty sure the last Shantae game was released on the iDS store, no?

[rikfuzz]

There's always PC with xbox controller, Ouya maybe http://www.ouya.tv/, still a pretty healthy Dreamcast community too.

Rik 

[Tourist]

Is it significant when you can recognize the references in a piece of art?  I always thought the rule of thumb was that using reference is good, but copying reference is generally poor.  An artist should make effort to, I don't know, go beyond what the reference provides?  Learn from the reference and incorporate that into the artist's own vision?  Or ... something?

I ask because when browsing other art sites I routinely recognize the sources in the artwork that is posted.  I'm not sure that other visitors do, and the references are never explicitly acknowledged.  What's proper for this sort of thing?

Tourist

[Ashbad]

Is it significant when you can recognize the references in a piece of art?  I always thought the rule of thumb was that using reference is good, but copying reference is generally poor.  An artist should make effort to, I don't know, go beyond what the reference provides?  Learn from the reference and incorporate that into the artist's own vision?  Or ... something?

I ask because when browsing other art sites I routinely recognize the sources in the artwork that is posted.  I'm not sure that other visitors do, and the references are never explicitly acknowledged.  What's proper for this sort of thing?

Tourist

From what I've seen, it depends.  There are a lot of artists out there that seek to learn only to copy what they see; nothing more.  And I'd suspect it's at least a good practice exercise in many respects to at least try this every now and then -- I'd think that it probably improves one's ability to recognize minute detail and draw them accordingly.  Here's a good example of multiple people undergoing a similar exercise, in which they all draw whom many people somehow believe to be the most beautiful woman in the world: http://dueysdrawings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7008  You'll notice how many of them use extensive gridding in order to get extreme likeness.

As for not posting references, that's a bit of a different issue and probably has more to do with stealing/plagiarism rather than good/bad art practice.

[Seiseki]

How do I learn to draw explosions and smoke effects?
Does anyone have any good resources on the subject?