[wip] "Industrial Dawn" (C64 HiRes) + the new "Motoc" (C64 MCol)

[skw]

Hi!

First off, let me start from the background.  Just go through this post: "Moon Tarot", the latest Helm's project.  I've watched the video.  It was very inspirational to see Helm in action, and the music choice was really decent -- the right tune in the right place. . .  That speeded-up progress accompanied with some slow, gentle music in the background. . . just beautiful, so to say.  I did a little "research" on the artist (I'm a sucker for ambient/electronica/downtempo) and found out "Plume", the album with this cover:



I don't know how you see it, but for me it's just boiling with inspiration.  Now combine the mood of Helm's video and the cover art. . . ideas come up momentarily. . . and so we have this:



Intentionally, I was planning to keep it dark until finishing, and then *bang!* all of a sudden show it off in the gallery -- but plans aside.  It's C64 HiRes, ignore errors for the moment.  I'm still struggling with the construction, so it makes no sense at all to polish the piece before everything is set up right.

And yes, there's also my main problem, and the reason why I'm writing all this. . .  The plume, the smoke coming out of the stacks -- I just ran out of ideas. . . blank point, it seems I just can't set it up right.  Should I start polishing what I have now?  Any other ideas?  C&C?

By the way, if everything goes well, this one will be illustrated with a .sid tune -- a fellow demoscener is already working on the soundtrack! but *shh!*

Thank you!

[Helm]

I am glad I inspired you at all.

You have too many features in the picture, too many things are going on. If you want any part of the emotional elation that you'd get from Loscil's Plume record, I would suggest utilizing SPACE more. Put dead space around pivotal parts of the image, construct them in such a way that they are pleasing (I am sure other people will suggest formations, there are a few 'classical' ones with primary point in golden median, two minor points in assymetrical positions around it etc)

Get rid of the demoscene disease where every little part of the image must be textured. The cover of the record is more evocative than your image right now because it has a point of bright color versus whiteness, and a busy texture (smoke) versus an open space.

You can definitely make the smoke from the pipes work with the black tree in the front, but I'd personally lose the extra little things around the sky. Think more of that pure emotion you're feeling when you listen to Plume and how best to symbolize it (do you need a dead tree? Why? Do you need a cat and a dog? Why? Ask all these questions) and don't bother at all with that idea in the back of your mind that you must IMPRESS with DENSITY.

Sorry for mostly aesthetic critique, but you're very good at pixelling, I'm sure you'll adeptly render what you want at the end. Getting what you want in your head is I think more important right now.

[EvilEye]

Y'know, at first glance I thought the smoke was leaves on the tree.

Once I realized that was not the case the foreground looked kind of bare.

I say make the smoke into leaves and make some more smoke going the opposite direction 

[Fidsah]

Personally, I think the tree/smoke play looks amazing. The dead tree with pollution as it's "foliage" seems to carry a powerful message as part of the piece.

I'd recommend playing on this more, and changing the smoke billows to appear a touch more like the leaves of the tree, but definitely keep the sickly smoke overtures.

[Dr D]

That's a very interesting observation, even if he didn't intend for it to come out like that. I think he should go with it, but more importantly I agree with Helm, if you want to make your message stronger, lose surrounding details, and make what is to be focused on stick out the most.

[skw]

Thanks a lot!

Basically, the artwork here is the second attempt at the picture.  In the first one, the smoke was going upwards and to the sides, but I called that boring and started all over.  I did six, maybe seven quick pencil sketches beforehand, applying the rules of the golden ratio in different ways -- but planning to occupy only two focal points.  In Pro Motion, though, I couldn't set the gird to divide the piece right, and kind of trusted my own senses.  The lower left pivotal point is the grey smokestack, the other two are somewhere in the tree and its crown -- and I'm going to put a red leaf among the dead branches there. . .

Oh, wait, why not showing all this in a picture?



Also, in my sketches, there was that the-smoke-is-going-to-the-left variation (and a plain blue space to-"catch-some-breath" in the upper right rectangle), which EvilEye suggested; but the one I have now was, at least in my books, the best choice.  Sure, the tree/smoke play is intentional, it's also a bit of an attempt to trick/utilize the HiRes restrictions (only two colors in one 8x8 pixel block) -- just as is the natural/industrial landscape division, and the sneaking/sitting cat (they're both cats, Helm! ).  There's dead and living nature, the emotion (I wanted to show the animals coexisting together, not just put a pussycat in here and another pussy in there, you know) and the cold machinery.

Well, I'll think of clearing some of the bits out.  I don't mind aesthetic critique -- I do appreciate it, as this is probably what saves the piece!

Thanks again!

[Fidsah]

To begin with, my apologies for what's about to follow:



In this brutal and awful quick edit to your work, I've removed some of the foreground noise, pulled a few odd pixels off of the center cat, and roughly reshaped the smoke plumes to match more of how a tree's general shape might fit in to illustrate some potential directions you could go.

For the most part though, as I almost directly said earlier, this is a marvelous piece.

[Helm]

This is a valuable edit, I'd take it a bit further personally, but it does show how much a bit of space helps.

[ter-o]

I think I would ditch the leaves complitely and show only the carcass of the tree which has died because of the fumes coming from the pipes. I think it would create stronger message and help with the "too busy" issues.

[skw]

Finally, I've got hold of the "Plume" recording and now I can clearly understand your point, Helm.  The music in this CD is very inhuman and minimalistic, which is not the case with "First Narrows", the tune you can hear in the Helm's progress video and which was something of a "base" for my piece.  While listening to "Plume", I can easily imagine what type of pictures it would illustrate best -- and those would be of course much more minimalistic and involve rather industrial constructions and scapes than natural beings put against living environment.

Fidsah, it's a nice coincidence you're from Detroit.  You're probably aware of the Detroit techno movement in the late 80s.  From what I can gather (basing on a rudimentary knowledge and experience of the genre music), the mood of "First Narrows" is to "Plume", as Jeff Mills is to Ritchie Hawtin -- the former is much more of a DJ, the music contains much more noise, richer textures and---if I can put it in this way---colors, while the latter is very minimalistic, dead cold and almost mechanical -- and evokes mostly bleak grey colors (the "murrain" effect, as I call it).

Thanks a lot for your edit, as I've just realized what was wrong in there -- all of the four focal points were somehow occupied and that made the piece very, very busy.  In your edit, the problem is partially solved -- the open space really helps it.

Okay, no time for pixel-pushing today, but tomorrow I'll get something going!

PS:  Helm, if you have some time to spare, I'll gladly see your edit as well.

Regards!

[Helm]

[skw]

Wow!  You're really fast!  Never thought of such an arrangement, I'll reconsider the composition -- the tree sticking out looks quite nice.  Thanks, now I can peacefully get back to my academic assignments.

[ptoing]

Which version of PM do you have? 5.1 or 6? In 6 you could easily make a layer to display over your picture with some transparent division lines for the compositional structure.

[skw]

6.  I've tried figuring it out, but can't adjust them layers right (it's pretty tricky).  Maybe I shouldn't be saying that, but I still have the TRIAL version -- maybe that's the reason why not everything works as it should.  Could you please explain how to do this?  I'll check if that's even possible in the shareware version.

[ptoing]

Layers in PM6 are, lets say different. They still work very well and are in some ways nicer and more versatile than layers in Photoshop, bare the blending modes.

Any frame in any open project can be used as a layer in any other open project. So you could have seperate project files for sprites and backgrounds and whatnot but still see them layered in the same open project.

So here goes:

• Make a new frame in same project and clear it, then draw your lines on that.
• Press L.
• Make a 2nd layer by pressing the + at the bottom
• At the top select "Use Frame Position" and set it to 1 and 2 in the respective layers.
• In the layer with the picture make sure that the transparent colour is not set to any used colour.
• In the layer with the lines set the main colour to transparent and then set the layer to 20% opacity or so.
• The layers appear in the order as they are in the layer window, so make sure to move the one with the lines up.

[skw]

Baffling, but it works.  Thank you, I think I should get used to it.

I made the golden ratio grid for the future use:



And the completed? image, what do you think?  Is it any better now?



Also, this time I considered the border which Ptoing was talking about a piece before.  See how it looks with it:



You can download the compressed .prg here: http://jspade.republika.pl/plume0.prg.

Heheh, it seems I've learnt a few things lately.

[infinitegames]

It gets rid of the whole cool tree leaf effect, but it does look more spacious

[cce]

It's a lot better now, I feel like I can breath freely again 

[Ryumaru]

I personally liked what helm did in his edit. the bare white fits more with the album cover, but it also gives it an extra something that I cant' quite describe. I think if you did that, with the little lines he has, and also but in some nice dither patterns that would be nice. However, the image does stand on its own right now, just a different mood.

[skw]

Thanks!  Hmm, I guess I know what you mean, Ryu, though the white would probably work better with the lighter version of the palette, i.e.:



. . . but I'm not sure if this is what I've intended.  I might tweak the latest version a bit more, together with some minor cosmetic improvements.  Tomorrow.

Edit:  Here's the light palette version of the recent step of mine:



While run from the .prg, it doesn't make difference -- since Commodore has a fixed, build-in palette, but as for the preview purposes, it might be even a better variant.

[skw]

Okay, I bit the bullet.  The white space, here it goes!


The initial artwork, polished and ready to go!


Here with the clouds,


and here without (and I still like the outcome, but somehow miss them).

Now I have a bit of a dilemma. . .

[balls01]

that looks like real healthy sky blue for pollution to be destroying it

i think. reduce the space of the white and put that 'effect' you did in this one:
to the sky and draw more...

naww you edited... um... ok...

[ptoing]

You could also fizzle out the ends of the branches by using either the greys (on white) or the blues (on cyan sky), kinda like Character Block AA

[Ryumaru]

I like the one with the white as well as the clouds, very pleasing. But imo the white border needs some blending.

[Atnas]

I don't think that the white bubble you have going in your white revision is working. What made Helm's work so well was his use of the background elements as dividers, rather than trying to force an unnatural shape on the scene.

[skw]

Thanks guys, it seems I would throw it away and do nothing without your help!

Atnas:  I kind of like how it somehow says to the viewer: "What are you looking at isn't a raytraced depiction of the real world, but a scene in a restricted 16-color realm!"  I blended the bubble borders to match the style, though.

[k]inda like Character Block AA

. . . or a strictly restricted Motion Blur effect!!


DOWNLOAD THE .PRG

I call it quits.  Probably.

[ptoing]

Not a fan of the super localized dither I have to say.

[skw]

[k]inda like Character Block AA

. . . or a strictly restricted Motion Blur effect!!

I mean, the HDR effect.  Something all new games have.

I have no problem with those dithered portions, personally.

[Dr D]

Hmm, yeah, the dither sticks out too much, I personally like subtle dithers.

What's up with the square parts of the clouds? Just a style touch? Looks kind of off to me, sorta makes it look unfinished, even.

-EDIT- Forgot to say, I really like the piece.  It looks really good in it's current state, anyway.

[skw]

Thank you!

Yeah, I also like fancy yet subtle (isn't it a paradox?) dithers, but there you have to work with a fixed 16-color palette (plus, come on, you all know that, use only 2 colors in one 8x8 pixel block).  Try zooming in with the grid on.  This was the first time I even thought of dithers while making a HiRes piece, but kind of restricted myself to use only 50% patterns -- maybe that's why they still look a bit unfinished.  But I like the way they look -- this is another part of the picture that, as I said before on the big white bubble, says to the viewer: "What are you looking at isn't some raytraced depiction of the real world, but a scene in a restricted 16-color realm!", and this is what I was aiming at at the later stage.

Glad to hear you like what this piece came to be anyway!

http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/40596.htm

Soon with the exclusively-made .sid tune!!

edit:  No problem, Dr D!

[Dr D]

Right, my apologies for being ignorant/stupid.. I forgot this was C64. Which is actually a good thing, because I can usually easily tell, you made it seem like there weren't any restrictions. 

[skw]

Okay.  While we wait for Psycho to finish his tune, let us see something different.

This is what I feel while listening to "Plume":




. . . and with the light gray border -- the piece really profits from it, I think.

http://jspade.republika.pl/motoc.prg
Try yourself.

Feel free to C&C!

[ptoing]

I actually think that border does not do much at all for this apart from make it float around and look cut off oddly.

You could do more play in this case if you used a black border. Also getting some colours in there would not hurt I think.
You could hide that sig a bit better, like make it an embossed element on some gear.

[skw]

Wow!  This is a very nice edit.  Thanks a lot!

Well, I felt like making the border kind of united with the rest of the piece, and since the SPACE! color (if I can put it in this way) was the light gray, I thought that would be the best choice.  But while looking at that black border version, I can see the point.

Actually, the sig is an encrypted message, though I doubt anyone will have nerves to solve the mystery.   I think, now I can hide it somewhere in the border.

The colors on this one look very appealing -- I must have been wrong thinking they would do harm to the piece.  I have to tell you this combination look very "yours" (hehe, how to say that in English?); I mean, recall the Helm's ZX comic you were coloring some time ago -- this is exactly that feeling.  I don't know if I find some better scheme, I'll try; but if not -- I'm certainly giving you credit!

[ptoing]

Glad you like it, but really I think the border thing can be pushed further. Just play around a bit.

[skw]

Though the colors are really neat (and, as Mr. Psycho noticed, your edit reminds of Wrath Design!), I decided not to use them at all.  Also, the aa on the big cog -- tried to fit the dark green in some places there, but it just didn't work as it should -- so those circular cuts are now gone.  Everything I could think of regarding the border for today's evening:



Been watching a movie and playing with details for, like, two hours, or so.  May work a little more tommorow if there's anything to work on left!

Now sleep!

[Helm]

The leftmost gear is not round nor are its teeth uniform as they should be. When you do mechanized stuff like this it's really important that everything looks right in that respect.

[skw]

You have a point here, thanks!  I, too, wasn't a big fan of this deformed cog.  The new one:



Doing round shapes and doing them right while having been restricted to wide pixels is quite tiresome, I must admit.

I like how the border gives a "clockwork" feeling to it.

PS:  Ptoing, if you like the picture, and if you *feel* like coloring it, I have nothing against a joint release!   Just tell me if you are or ain't interested.

PS2:  Tymon, a fellow pixel-artist, did an edit for the "Industrial Dawn":