The Gamer's Quarter

[dessgeega]

admittedly, i am starting this thread just to draw attention to my new pixel blog, but i will provide content!

pixels are elusive and mysterious! many of us first encountered pixel characters in videogames, where the pixel was (is?) the medium of communication between game and player. though videogames remain the primary source of detailed pixel designs, a number of artists, designers and webcomicsists (eboy, for example, and army of trolls) have brought the pixel outside of the context of the videogame to their design and web work.

though perhaps there's a phantom context that follows the work, making it readily accessible to those who have grown up with videogames!

nfg wrote a book on pixelling a while ago. it's full of big, glossy, colorful pages. since he's nfg, he talks a lot about the hardware of portable platforms, then about the technical aspects of spriting. he doesn't dwell much on craft - if you're looking for a tutorial, this is not the place (try here!). he does print a lot of interesting context, like sprite histories of mario, sonic and knight arthur.

a lot of the images are mislabelled, though, and sadly, though nfg spends a page on the right and wrong ways to resize pixels, a few of the book's pixel sheets have been resized the wrong way. it's a bit disappointing to see. but it's still a good tome to have around.

here are some pixels! here's an image i did of some of the gamer's quarter staff, with a four color palette, based on a picture by persona in issue 6. locate your favorite staffers!




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[kirkjerk]

My all time favorite exercise in pixel art was the long lost pixeltime, part of the now defunct online art site "word.com"

45*45 pixels, 16 color pallette, themed galleries and contests (with small real world prizes, even), and presided over by this brilliant Mr. Rogers meets Blue Man Group and Max Headroom avatar "The Pixel Master"

I have a tribute page at http://www.kisrael.com/pixeltime/

my personal achievements include a nice 3*4 pixel font for both upper case and lower case, and then an "interesting" technological hack to reproduce b+w images in it automagically... breaking the spirit but not the letter of the law.

I'm tempted to try and revive the site. Unfortunately, my online friendship w/ the guy who did the work (and got me sheets of all the ones I made for the site) has gone astray as of late.

[Swimmy]

I just realized I can probably very easily make a pixelized version of Swimmy in better proportions and use that as my avatar for everything ever.

Uh. Bee arr bee.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[player 2]

How can you manage being vegan without eating mushrooms? Weirddd...
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Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

[dessgeega]

[Swimmy]

That was fun. Anyone know how to scale it slightly without the annoying shading effects Paint and GIMP add? I'd like to keep it monochrome but it's slightly too big to be my avatar.

Also if any pixelperts want to give me any tips to clean it up, I'd take them. This is fun. I'd like to learn how to do this better.

And yes, Dess, you're free to link that site. Which reminds me, I haven't updated in a while.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[kirkjerk]

[kirkjerk]

Also, a lot of pixel art prefers strong 90 angles rather than your avatar's more natural one.

There's an Atari homebrew called Go Fish! that you could probably freely steal from... screenshots at http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=2721

I don't know if you prefer to reduce your current avatar, rather than grabbing one of these and optionally painting it black and adjusting the distinctinve rear fin, but it's an idea

[dessgeega]

[Nana Komatsu]

So wait, how does one go about creating pixel art? The only piece I've ever done was a goldfish for a Feel the Magic T-shirt, but that was done in Adobe Illustrator since it had to be vector art and I ended up making one standard-sized "pixel" and copy/pasting it over and over for the rest.

[Swimmy]

I made a tribute to The Creatures in my Head, namely this entry:



(I don't know why I decided he was green.)

A lot of pixel art tutorials start with "Draw something first, either on tablet or with your mouse." Problem is I'm terrible at just drawing things. After that I can pretty easily tell which pixels need modified, but man. Drawing something first is hard.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[dessgeega]

[Swimmy]

So that's how. Sweet. I just made one of my friend Cate:



8 colors.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Six]

Vampires need cool hats.


Yeah, I don't really know either.


Maybe Lackey will come by later! He does some pretty sweet pixels.

[kirkjerk]

Heh, this used to be my "signature" portrait though I don't think I ever used it as an avatar:

2 colors. Fun with high contrast.

The picture it came from is kind of goofy, doesn't hint it will be that high contrast:
http://kisrael.com/journal.aux/old_title_source..jpg

And in trying to "recreate" the steps, I learned: much better to shrink, then reduce colors then to reduce colors and then shrink. Which makes sense, now that I think about it.[/img]

[Shapermc]

[kirkjerk]

[Shapermc]

I think you mean the High-Score history of video games. I don't really consider the Ultimate History as a coffee table book. It's good reading, just oversized.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Swimmy]

I made a couple more of these.


Laura.


And myself.

This is fun.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[dessgeega]

please please please don't save pixels as jpegs? jpeg compression is just horrible for any image with a small palette. gif and png are so much pixel-friendlier.
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[Swimmy]

Oh, whoops, I didn't. Facebook automatically converted them. I only linked there because it was convenient, and it's fixed now.

Yeah, I noticed that about jpegs. It messed my little green monster up something fierce.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Six]

I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm kind of enjoying it!

[Swimmy]

Six, I love yours. Please tell me that's your afro.


I kinda fudged the eyes on the helmet, so I just blanked it.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[kirkjerk]

Speaking of pixel art... tell me again what the invaders with the heart is all about? it's really nifty.

[player 2]

I'm looking for the video, but I can't find it. It's a Space Invaders vid by Ken Ishii. It's really great, actually.
_________________
Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

[Swimmy]

It got taken off youtube, looks like. Luckily, I saved it!
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[player 2]

Hey, do you guys want to do a pixel making game? All we have to do is find a photo or a screencap of a 3D game, section it off, divy out the sections, and then pixelize it. I think it could turn out pretty cool, especially if we put it all together at the end. Anyone up for it?
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Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

[Six]

Sure! I am intrigued.

Swimmy: The hair is all mine.

[Lackey]

Here's a portrait I did of myself in Commodore 64 hires mode:


I've been doing pixel art for years, it's fun and relaxing. Here's another, 4 colour image:


And a pixel comic done with NES colours:


I wouldn't really recommend colour-reducing and tracing although I guess it works for your needs. Graphics Gale is a really handy program for doing lowres art, it's what I use.

Oh, Dess, you might appreciate the 100 invaders I drew for the game of the same title.

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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[dessgeega]

that game was totally featured in my gamesetwatch column.

i used graphicsgale to do the sprites for invader, and i found it pretty overrated. paint shop pro serves my needs just fine.
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[Lackey]

The advantage of GG is it's palette and animation handling. Some of the best artists I know use Pro Motion though, and I've never been able to get the hang of it.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[kirkjerk]

This thread has gotten cooler than I ever expected.

That Space Invaders video was great, though I think it glosses over one of the central messages of the game, and of retrogaming in general: in the end, the Invaders win.

But I dig your icon from it!

Lackey, is it ok to repost your 100 Invaders, dually credited? Also would you be angry w/ a small derivative work? (maybe slowing down the animation...)

[Lackey]

Do whatever you like with them! I don't think that little grid is the best way to see them anyway.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[kirkjerk]

I appreciate that, I'll post when I put it in kisrael, probably tomorrowish.

It reminds me a bit of this java applet I made, with all 7 of the critter types from the Imagic Atari 2600 game "Cosmic Ark"

http://kisrael.com/viewblog.cgi?date=2004.09.18

For interactivity, I accidentally turned it into a bit of a Katamari-ish feeling toy.

That and some other similar java stuff at
http://kisrael.com/features/java/

I was going to try and do something similar w/ 100 Invaders, but then I realized it had been done with much more loving attention to detail than I was prepared to give in the actual game. It's kind of a freaky thing though, w/ the ghosts, kind of like 8bit old school meets Ringu...

[Lackey]

There's totally a game in that Cosmic Ark toy. I'm not sure quite how it would play, but the scattering effect when you release the button is neat.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[kirkjerk]

[Laco]

Oh, man, I really want to try your Cosmic Ark toy thingy, but the java bar just keeps loading, eventually off the side of the screen. All the other toys work fine

[friedchicken]

Laco, you might want to try giving it a minute or two-- it did the same thing to me, but eventually it just worked. Oh, and kirkjerk, that's an awesome 'toy'.

Wow, this thread has gotten me thinking about some pixel design that I always found appealing-- Necromancer, by Synapse Software, for (in my case at least) the Atari 8-bit computers. I'm going to have to dig that one up!

[kirkjerk]

[dessgeega]

hey andy.





you still reading us?
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[Mister Toups]

oh shut up




that's awesome!
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

[sawtooth]

memories!

I never did fix that little hang when the tongue slides back in. But I have other things I need to be doing right now, so.
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[dessgeega]

[Swimmy]

Holy crap Dess I love you.

And I really need to make some new pictures.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[dessgeega]

[kirkjerk]

[Six]

[ApM]

HOLY LORD YES.

[Harveyjames]

I did this.

[Mister Toups]

that's amazing
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?