Official Off-Topic Thread 2015

[wzl]

st0ven oftentimes hangs out in the #ludumdare irc in irc.afternet.org. the other ones i don't know 

[Chilly]

 

Well I guess I need to make some new friends...

Learning pixel art all over again. Feels pretty refreshing. Avatar was a warm up ... Now to try tile making again.

[API-Beast]

There is this GIMP python plugin that still works pretty well. It allows to change the hue and the saturation completely, while preserving the perceived brightness, e.g. not destroying the picture like the normal Hue/Saturation tools.



http://registry.gimp.org/node/25522

[uristmcguffin]

I didn't really want to make my own thread.


It is a hobby of mine to make joke little games on my computer. I enjoy the coding aspect and I love to learn programming by making little games. My issue is that I SUCK at making pictures. All the sprites in my games consist of colored boxes and shapes and I'd like to move beyond that.

After pouring over many guides accross the internet, learning about creating pixel art, learning about contrast and hue and form and whatnot. Now, I feel like I have an understanding about how a sprite should be made, but when I open GIMP, I'm at a loss for what to do. I want to make a guy for my game, anything that would look even a little decent, and I just can't. Everything I throw on the page just looks like a blob and it's disheartening.

What should I do?

[Ai]

I didn't really want to make my own thread.


It is a hobby of mine to make joke little games on my computer. I enjoy the coding aspect and I love to learn programming by making little games. My issue is that I SUCK at making pictures. All the sprites in my games consist of colored boxes and shapes and I'd like to move beyond that.

After pouring over many guides accross the internet, learning about creating pixel art, learning about contrast and hue and form and whatnot. Now, I feel like I have an understanding about how a sprite should be made, but when I open GIMP, I'm at a loss for what to do. I want to make a guy for my game, anything that would look even a little decent, and I just can't. Everything I throw on the page just looks like a blob and it's disheartening.

What should I do?

A few suggestions:

* Get references, use them. Like, all of the time. There are lots of different ways to use references, but it's almost always good to use them somehow.
* Try GrafX2 or another program that is specifically oriented to pixeling, It makes experimentation easier and does not complicate things with tools that have no relevance to pixel art.
* If your traditional art skills are not good, work on them. Get some art books, read them, they will get you thinking about the right things. (which art books are good is beyond the scope of this post, but for a start, Loomis' books are good and freely available on the net.)
* Keep things simple -- 2 or at most 3 colors, till you've got that working well.

[surt]

If you're not actually into making arts yourself you could try using/adapting some free arts from places such as Open Game Art.

[NowvaB]

@uristmcguffin
Well I'm sure you know already that if you want to get better you have to keep at it!
Work slowly and try to implement the things you have learned. and when you think a piece has got as good as possible... start a new one!
eventually when you go back to your old pieces you'll see the improvement and that will inspire you to keep making new things.

And don't forget if you need help, you kinda just signed up for a forum that specializes in that.

Now on my part:
I'm pretty excited to start re-mastering this thing I made while I was still an "okay" pixel artist.
Spoiler

[Daimoth]

When you're working with a SNES-like resolution you basically have to make every thing read correctly at 200% zoom, and there are certain things you can't get away with at 200%. Certain details become noise, you may end up resorting to a massive palette, etc.

[Ai]

When you're working with a SNES-like resolution you basically have to make every thing read correctly at 200% zoom, and there are certain things you can't get away with at 200%. Certain details become noise, you may end up resorting to a massive palette, etc.

?

Have you posted this to the wrong thread? It doesn't seem connected to anything here.

[Ai]

Hi,

I'm currently working on a little measurement/factorization/drafting problem, which can be summed up as 'how do you divide an established line into N uniform divisions without a measuring device'.
N may be up to 20.
Ideally, you can do this via a simple projection (mark out N same-size divisions on another line, then project lines to the ends of the target line, which establishes a vanishing point you can use to locate the other divisions on the target line.), or even a digital drawing tool that automatically marks divisions.
However, this isn't always practical, and it's preferable to be able to do things in a minimum of calculations / lines.

So I started working on this table, based whereever possible on divisions of 2 or 3, since they are easy to eyeball.

I'll post a few entries and explain the meaning, for a start:

* 4 : 2x2
* 5 : 2x2.5

So, to divide a line in 4, you divide it in 2 twice and you have the correct size for a segment. Easy to understand IMO.
Non-integer divisions are harder. When I write '2x2.5', I mean:
* first, divide the segment in 2, and consider one of the two sub sections you have made
* then, place a line that defines a unit such that 2.5 units fit into the subsection. One can start on this by first dividing it in half -- then you need to visualize how much to shrink the new half by so that 2.5 of it will fit into the subsection. This may seem a little fuzzy but you get the hang of it.
* If you placed the line correctly, you now have the correct unit size for dividing the line in 5.

Here's a gif showing the process:


Okay, going on with a few more entries from the table:


* 6 : 3x2
* 7 : 3x2.33...
* 8 : 2x2x2
* 9 : 3x3

Here, I'd further comment that I'm trying to limit the precision of non-integer divisions to no more precise than 1 in 4. This is because I don't really trust my eye to judge well measurements more precise than that. Here, the measurement for 7 is a third divided by 2 1/3.


* 10 : 3x3.33
* 11 : 3x3.66
* 12 : 3x2x2

Some of the more horrifying entries -- 3 1/3 is fairly hard to judge.


* 13 : 2x2x2x1.5
* 14 : 2x2x2x1.75
* 15 : 2x2x3.75 or 2x2x2.5x1.5
* 16 : 2x2x2x2

In comment on 15, my experiments suggest that smaller divisors are easier to cope with, so the 2x2x2.5x1.5 formula is actually easier than the 2x2x3.75 formula, IME. Probably because the relation is more gross and hence easier to judge.


* 17 : ??
* 18 : 2x2x2x2.25 or 3x2x2x1.5
* 19 : ??
* 20 : 2x2x2x2.5

This is where I'm currently stumped. I don't know of any divisors that are remotely nice for 17 or 19.
The best I have for 17 is 4.25x2x2 (which works, but judging the 4.25 size is pretty hard.)

19 is even worse -- the best I have is 4.75x2x2, which so far I've completely failed to estimate even once.
All other measures, I have successfully drawn using these formulas.

That's what I've got so far. If you have any suggestions on how to cope with 17, 19, or easier formulas for other numbers of divisions, I'd be interested to hear it.