AuthorTopic: Official Off-Topic Thread  (Read 1004327 times)

Offline Lachie Dazdarian

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 141
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
    • The Maker Of Stuff

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2610 on: August 16, 2012, 10:45:32 pm
Would love to hear just the drums. Just to hear your performance better. Care to make few videos with your playing only?

Thanks for the support in my drawing/pixel art ambition.


I'm currently doing a pixel art work where I traced the body contours of a photograph (with a tablet). What's your stance on that guys? Useful? Worthwhile in the learning process? I tried to replicate the contours by watching the photo on the side, but it would take me too long, and I'm still getting used to tablet so I don't know how much the tablet is slowing me down in this, classic watch and replicate process.

Offline Friend

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 288
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2611 on: August 16, 2012, 11:08:08 pm
Yes, I'd be glad to do videos with just me playing.  The issue I have now with doing covers is that it's impossible to get my playing and the audio perfectly synced, because I'm playing with headphones and then trying to match an audio file to my motions, and imovie isn't really great for that kind of thing.  I'm uploading a video right now where you'll hear me playing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XDR-wDIKrU&feature=plcp

About your new pixel art, I really don't see how it is worthwhile.  You're not practicing drawing without reference, and you aren't even really practicing drawing.  The only good I can see in it is learning to convert in image into something with fewer colors, and you could just reduce the colors and go from there, which is frowned upon.  But idk others opinions on the matter
« Last Edit: August 17, 2012, 12:27:54 am by Friend »

Offline Grimsane

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 423
  • Karma: +2/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2612 on: August 17, 2012, 12:36:48 am
good stuff friend!

maybe all the pixelation musos should do a collaborative track? ;D

been quite busy last few days, activity on the forums was quite high in my absence I see, should have some time over the weekend to invest here :)

@lachie drawing skills are intrinsically tied, mainly due to the understanding garnered of the subject matters and how to represent them, I think it's a good exercise particularly for familiarizing yourself with using the tablet and also make a concious effort to analyse and observe the subtly of curves and flow, not just copying for copying sake, that'd serve less purpose find some strong and striking figures and examples of proportions you want to depict and just take some time while you are practising to pay close attention to the subtleties and even the not so subtle elements of your chosen subjects

Offline Stab

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 34
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • I'M WILLOWS!
    • View Profile

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2613 on: August 17, 2012, 02:51:03 am
@Lachie

Drawing in itself is never bad. I'm certainly no expert, but I'm someone who is perpetually stuck in thought, and this is a subject I've put some thought in to. Forgive what might turn out to be a massive vomiting of information (and mind that these are only my thoughts, so don't let me corrupt you with any mistakes I've made!)!

Drawing is a form of communication. This shouldn't be a hard concept to grasp; just as people speak or write or wave their arms frantically to convey some information or message, drawing is equally used to record and convey information that can be used at a later time. Often the message is less direct in intention than more formal methods of communication, but the beauty of art or drawing is that the message almost always has a certain ambiguity about it. The viewer of your message and information will almost always apply their own breadth of visual understandings to your message. While drawing has a lot in common with formal/literal communication, it

There are two aspects to any communication, your physical/mechanical ability to perform, and the mental message you wish to convey. In speaking or writing, your vocabulary is the primary physical restrictor on how accurately you can communicate your message. In drawing, your physical ability to produce the strokes/lines/marks you intend to is the primary restrictor on your ability to communicate your message. Someone could have a crystal-clear image of what they hoped to produce, but if they lack the mechanical ability to produce the lines or pick the colours or otherwise manipulate their tools, it is quite possible that they'll end up with a message that isn't quite what they intended. The beauty of art, again, is that this is totally okay. It isn't nearly as easy for the viewer to pick out where you've minorly mussed up your message, as there will typically be such a wealth of information that picking through it for the nitty gritty would be too imposing and uninteresting a task for the casual communicatee. But I digress! While I'd hope this is at least thought-provoking, it isn't necessarily useful or relevant information, so let's carry on!

Where this starts to take relevance to your practice is in the considerations of what you hope to communicate, and what aspect of your communication you hope to improve. A point I skipped over earlier is that from what I understand, people will understand visual information as symbols, and that if your symbols aren't true or understandable your message will start to fall apart. What I mean by this is simple; if you're drawing a leg that doesn't look like a leg and doesn't show an understanding of the leg people will automatically and instinctively "feel" that it is wrong. Any non-artist won't likely be able to point to a specific error, but an observant artist or critic would be able to point to the specific element or elements that make it inconsistent with the symbol of "leg". As with any message, context becomes important, but at the risk of bursting forth on yet another tangent, I'll try bring this back to what it means to anyone practicing drawing:

Learn to draw TRUTH, then deviate from that. Anime is a perfect example of an art-form that heavily relies on symbols to communicate its message. Could any physical person actually look like an anime character? Barring certain case instances, I'd venture to say no... but it still doesn't look wrong, right? A temptation of starting artists is to draw superheroes/anime characters or other already bastardized instances of truth... and while I would definitely and obviously say that that isn't unforgivably bad (We ALL started that way, didn't we?), it certainly isn't something conducive to efficient learning. What you're doing by learning from cartoons is learning someone else's set of symbols that they created from their own understanding and deviation from reality. It will teach you things that the original artist would have recognized as conscious untruths with intent (Compare: Exaggerated important facial features for purpose of impactful expression OR Exaggerated important facial features because anime.)... and won't tell you that they're conscious untruths, nor their intent. Sure, you can puzzle out the purpose of these deviations and still learn without permanently damaging yourself, but by doing so you'd be adding a layer of complexity to your learning AND still not endeavoring to learn truth, but rather someone else's deviation from it. So draw from life, draw from reality, learn from what IS so you can make up what COULD BE.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU SPECIFICALLY MR LACHIE DAZDARIAN is that my only concerns for you drawing the human form on a tablet in pixel art is that it's convoluted practice. It's somewhat comparable to learning to play the piano while learning to ride a unicycle, but less obviously and pointlessly difficult. If you want to learn about the human form, isolate that as the purpose of your practice, and make EVERYTHING ELSE AS EASY AS POSSIBLE. Trying to exercise your mechanical ability to communicate while refining the message you'd hope to communicate WHILE restricting yourself to pixel art is a lot and diminishes your ability to actually absorb the lessons you could be learning. You'll learn stuff about all three, yes, but I'm inclined to believe that you'd learn them slower than if you'd spent time focusing specifically on specific aspects.

But as I said, drawing in itself is never bad. You'll always be improving something, and if you're careful about considering whether or not what you're learning is TRUTH, then you should be a-shootin' for the stars.

That was a lot of words. I like taking time to figure out what the heck I think about things. GOGO OFF TOPIC THREAD.

Offline Grimsane

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 423
  • Karma: +2/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2614 on: August 17, 2012, 10:07:30 am


fullsize WiP map

figured I'd post it here because I figured people would be less hesitant to make non Critique comments here, I've got a few projects going, and with one particular collaborator (a programmer) I am narrowing down game concepts, he recently put together a demo of collision and movement, and it was a varied terrain and the character rotated to adhere to the surface angle, immediately upon testing we thought a gravity based game where the character rotates to the surface would be a great idea, I've just mocked up a game concept art wise, and also experimented with organic 360 degree level design and tile maps, it's partially tiled in that screenshot with 3x sprite rotation, the tiles are 8x8 at the moment but will likely end up 24x24, with a 3x scaled sprite doing realtime rotations.

what do you guys think of the art style and gameplay concept? we might play with rotating camera too, so you can set it to track with player rotation and it'll seem like the level is rotating, or have just player rotation meaning you'll end up sideways and upside down, (the option to have fixed on player, will be enough for anyone who finds the other mechanics disconcerting)

the setting I've got in mind is chunks/levels that are parts of a planet torn asunder, and the main character will transit between these chunks searching for artifacts from her civilization and survivors of the cataclysmic event. the quadruped in that image is a proposed player companion who we will try working into the gameplay mechanics and story.

so yeah what do you guys think? I can start a thread later if you guys think I should, posting updates on the game art, and welcoming any critique or comments

Offline PixelPiledriver

  • 0011
  • **
  • Posts: 997
  • Karma: +6/-0
  • Yo!
    • View Profile
    • My Blog

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2615 on: August 18, 2012, 03:21:32 am
Quote
so yeah what do you guys think? I can start a thread later if you guys think I should, posting updates on the game art, and welcoming any critique or comments
There isn't much for me to comment on at the moment.
But I offer positive vibes to help you get there.  :y: :)
Would be happy to see it progress over time.
PLAY TEST YOUR GAME A LOT.
Many great ideas will come up as a result of filling in gaps.
What kind of cool stuff might the beast do?
Perhaps after a few more art posts I'll have something real to say.
And knowing that it is, we seek what it is... ~ Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Chapter 1

Offline rikfuzz

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 427
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile
    • twitter @hot_pengu

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2616 on: August 18, 2012, 09:04:46 am
I made a game on a rotating planet thing once.  It's just a very very basic game made in two days, so probably very little in common with yours, but I did a little write up afterwards on the things that worked and didn't work which you might find interesting. 

game: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1534394/ld48/planet/game.html
write up:  http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/04/27/a-post-mortem/

I think the worst thing was the small featureless planet, you don't really feel like you're exploring anything or going anywhere, cos it all looks the same.

Offline yaomon17

  • 0011
  • **
  • Posts: 660
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • YaomonKS
    • taiya.sun
    • http://pixeljoint.com/p/28472.htm
    • yaomon17
    • valedev
    • playvale
    • View Profile
    • portfolio

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2617 on: August 19, 2012, 05:53:16 pm

Offline Mathias

  • 0100
  • ***
  • Posts: 1797
  • Karma: +2/-0
  • Goodbye.
    • http://pixeljoint.com/p/9542.htm
    • View Profile

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2618 on: August 20, 2012, 03:31:29 am
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/322438897/mercenary-kings/posts/290181
Looks promising.

Wow, that is extremely Paul Robertson inspired. The art. Even the name.

Can't blame a guy for copying such a PA hero, though. Haha, remember when PA purist retards ran him off from PJ? They pissed him off, hah.

Offline Kasumi

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 275
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2619 on: August 20, 2012, 04:06:25 am
Is it Paul Robertson inspired if the actual Paul Robertson is the one doing the art?
I make actual NES games. Thus, I'm the unofficial forum dealer of too much information about the NES