AuthorTopic: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately  (Read 15410 times)

Offline Helm

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TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

on: November 01, 2005, 05:09:49 pm


I've been making this for a long while, then I got a job and no longer had the time or inclination for it. Demoscene artwork takes a lot out of you. I will not be finishing this it seems. If I ever make another 640x480 pic, I'll dedicate the effort to a theme that I find more substantial and varied and fun to work on. This is all pixel art of course, but some pro motion tricks have been used. It's posted as is just so it doesn't rot in my harddrive forever. I think there's merit to a lot of how the face and the little part of the hair that is finished is made, maybe the chest a bit. some 64 colours, not optimized ( could get it down to 42 or something, maybe even less if I wanted) and not colour-corrected or contrast enhanced. Zoom in to at least x2 zoom for appreciation of the finer points and tints.

oh well.

history:

www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal2.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal3.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal4.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal5.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal6.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal7.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal8.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal9.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal10.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal11.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal12.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal13.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal14.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal15.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal16.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal17.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal18.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal19.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal20.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal21.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal22.png
www.locustleaves.com/lolmetal23.png

last one more recent than one posted, but not in a significant way. if anyone needs they can make this into an animation or something. There's interest in how I work with flatshaded polygons sorta

EDIT: actually, lolmetal23.png is quite more advanced than the first image. here's a full post for posterity:

« Last Edit: November 01, 2005, 05:20:02 pm by Helm »

Offline Filax_666

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #1 on: November 01, 2005, 05:35:02 pm
Spectacular  :o

The face is unremarcably (I hope I spelled this correctly :s) well pixeled (oh god is that a skull next to his theeth?cool!).the veins are very well defined and the shading works fantastically. And the hair- oh my god - is so...so...realistic! I cant find words to describe it...

The only thing I think that looks wrong, and it was hard to notice, is the chest: it looks a bit too hum...segmentated (I dont really know if this word exists in english but thats how I would say in portuguese - "segmentado"). In my opinion you should make it as a whole, not like it is.

Aside from that, theres nothing I can say against it. Great job (I hope you find the time and patience to finish it)

Offline Silver

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #2 on: November 01, 2005, 05:36:30 pm
Helm this is really Good piece .
There are no cirts for me to give ,
The background is very well done , the texter on his Body is great . the hair looks real with that dark red .
I Like this demoscene stuff especially from u helm .
Cant wait to see it finished ,
Good luck helm

Offline ejay

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #3 on: November 01, 2005, 06:05:06 pm
This is really amazing. i love every bit of it, but especially the atmospheric tinting on the hair on the right. cool stuff.

Do you have an online gallery somewhere with more of these ?

I'd also appreciate it if you could share some tips about the way you use color and tinting in the early stages of your work- i'm interested in the decision making process- is it something that you're constantly aware of and can put into words or do you find yourself making most of those choices automatically ?

Offline Helm

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #4 on: November 01, 2005, 06:12:57 pm
ejay, I don't have an online gallery besides my things on pixeljoint.

I don't think there's any tinting way early in the process here, is there? Post which history step you mean if you want something specific. When dealing with demoscene artwork, I make my colour ramps estimating what tints I'll be using beforehand and then adjust each shade until it meshes considerably in my mind. Way early this is all the one flesh ramp until I'm satisfied with the volumetrics. The corpsepaint face of course called for a pure grayscale ramp, and the hair and leather for blues and reds. So 64 colours. When I had my ramps, I somewhat intuitively started testing tints on places ( like the collarbones which I REALLY love as they came out ) and some stuff just makes sense ( like the tint on the shoulder from the resonant blue behind the hair ). Other stuff are just there to be there. I like mixing everything with everything. Pure ramps look boring to me.

If you need more info, just point to a thing I did on a specific step and I'll be glad to explain what I had in mind. Since this isn't artwork that stands as finished, might as well make a tutorial out of this thread, no? :)

Offline ejay

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #5 on: November 01, 2005, 08:13:00 pm
Thanks Helm,
I'm glad you picked the coloring of the collarbones as an example, it Does look great yet to me it's not what i'd call intuitive coloring.
I remember Craig Mullins (goodbrush.com) once said in a forum post that you can generally go crazy with your hues, as long as you get the values right.

If i may continue my interrogation , i'm also curious about the greenish tints in the skin ramps - the blue tints makes sense to me because of the suggested blue atmosphere , but the greens don't( by mere intuition , it's all super-sweet to my eyes  :) ).

Offline crab2selout.png

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #6 on: November 01, 2005, 08:26:23 pm
It's beautiful Helm. Did you really do this by hand without any dithering brushes or things like that? If so, I can see why you got sick of it ;D

I've got no crits or anything. The neck areas probably my favourite part. Can't really figure out how to explain what I like about it though.

Offline Helm

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #7 on: November 01, 2005, 08:33:46 pm
Craig Mullins is talking about things I probably wouldn't understand for the life of me I guess, but from my limited ability and experience I can too tell that as long as you properly minmax the saturation and lightness of a shade, you can do pretty freaking big jumps in hue from shade to shade and it will look very well. Look at a recent edit I did for faceless' avatar for hue jumps in a single ramp. There's theory behind the hue shifts most of the time, but since pixel art allows for such minute control at any level in creating the piece, one sometimes just goes crazy and experiments with the HSL sliders on a shade, 1 bit at a time :)

Generally though, the theory is that you tint towards the colour of the lightsource ( blueish yellow in sunlight I guess ) and towards complementary shades in darkness. Skin strangely adds saturation in darkness in places where the skin is thin and light subsurface scatters through, but it goes towards more muted unsaturated purple darks where it is thick and oily. In pixel art, and this is more of the way I learnt to pixel from studying amiga-era artists, I usually forget proper theory when I tint art. I like to unify my palette for the piece, everything everywhere, and I like to keep the main colour of the piece as 'ambient'. It's there, but it's not THERE and THERE but not THERE. It's the general colour. Otherwise I like to use otherworldly lightsources, tints and smearings that while not realistic, suit the pixel art aesthetic I've developed over the years.

The computer is not a tool for simple reproduction of representational art like actual painting can be (amongst other things). It has it's own aesthetic. There is an aesthetic in the method. You can accentuate the aesthetic by making the method more visible in the art. Computer art, video-game art, pixel art. These things have special charges that need to be understood and to an extent exploredfor me to respect the produced art as within a new medium in itself. In that respect then, I pixel in colour schemes and stylistics I've picked up from amiga art, because clear 'reality'-based colour theory doesn't accentuate the pixel art method for me. Also, I sometimes texture using squares, or my structures ( not as in this piece ) accentuate the vertical and horisontal grids, generally giving the feel of squares, doublewide pixels, etc etc. Pixel art isn't just drawing in another way.

about green tint in flesh: I think I was trying to unify that end of the ramp with the pure gray ramp I use to tint that under the nipple for example for later when I would collapse the two ramps so as to save shades at the optimization stage. But the sickly green suits his oily flesh, no? What else would probably work would be as sick burned pink, but it would need a lot of juggling to balance it now if I changed it.


crab2selout: of course dither brushes were used. Also darken/lighten modes, some smearing around the head hmm what else...

no that's about it.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2005, 08:38:39 pm by Helm »

Offline Filax_666

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #8 on: November 01, 2005, 09:08:32 pm
Im goin to feel so stupid askin this...what are dither brushes??? ???

Offline ejay

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #9 on: November 01, 2005, 10:18:50 pm
Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed reply , i enjoyed it very much. Some good people still out there, evidently.