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[wierd]

I frequently make pixel art images for the forgotten beast art thread in the community games subforum. I have come to notice, and later read online by others, that doing pixel art is becoming much more rare these days, due to the higher resolution devices everyone is using.

Personally, I *prefer* making higher resolution pixel images, in the 100x100px range, which is what brings me to the random idea.

For those that remember, and for some background for those too young to, back in the early days of the first VGA capable cards, there was a very popular video mode known as "mode X". Nearly all games that made use of Mode X used pixel art, because of the tiny total screen resolution: 320x240@256 colors.  It's main claim to fame was having square pixels, being "fast!", and having access to a full 256 color palette. (Most high res modes were limited to 64 colors, 32colors, 16 colos, or 8 colors, as your screen resolution went higher. This was due to memory constraints of the video hardware itself.)

For pixel artists, this is what made the 32x32 pixel tile sprite the mainstay. You could put 10 per row, with 7 and a half rows.

There's another, more modern video mode that is quite popular on modern hardware, which I think would lend itself very nicely here, for the best of all worlds:

1280x960 32bit color. (With OpenGL assisted fun!)

We can chop this same sized viewport into the same 10 columns, 7.5 rows! The aspect ratio is a dead ringer! The kicker?  The new tilesize is 128x128. A power 4 size increase in pixel density per sprite!

So, the silly idea.

I want to start making 128x128 tileset graphics, just because I enjoy doing pixel art images in that size formfactor, and as pointed out above, it lends itself very well to the same layout and aspect ratios, which lets game makers keep the same retro feel, but with a much better screen depth.

The problem:

I don't work from a vaccuum very well. I need suggestions and requests for things to doodle up. That's the issue I had trying to work for OpenGameArt.org. the Devs wanting sprites don't have a good idea of what they want, art-wise, and focus almost exclusively on the code end, making the issue difficult.

What do you guys think, should I start doing this, or is it a waste of time?
(And no. I don't like doing 32x32 or smaller tiles. I find it too constraining, which negates the pleasure.)

I would like to make potentially useful art, but need specific things to draw.

[Moghjubar]

Well, if you are just doodling, random stuff works too, like a cyborg Abraham Lincoln with battle damage and a walking cane.

But.... if you want to actually make potentially useful stuff then you need to either make general stuff from categories (woodlands, cyberpunk city, insect hive, etc) or invent/get some specific character ideas to show off so someone who could actually use your services can see what you can do.  Other than that, its just fun and practice/experimentation.

[Gentlefish]

Make a 128x128 ASCII tileset for Dwarf Fortress?

[wierd]

Well.. my most recent submission was this forgotten beast. (I like that thread, because it lists something specific and yet also very open to imagination.)



About an hour in MSPaint.  If you want the cyborg/zombie lincoln, I *can* accommodate.

*RE DF tileset:

Give me a comprehensive list of creature entities that I can slog through. Toady adds creatures by the jillions, and the raws are too cluttered up to make a good list.

(Also, 128x128 is a bit big for DF, assuming you want to be looking at more than just your trade depot at 1280x960 res. )

[Max White]

MSPaint.

You crazy glorious bastard. You did that in MSPaint?
Have you ever tried Graphics Gale? It was literally made for pixel art, works so much better. Trust me, it has tools you never knew you needed.
Well you don't need, but it will be helpful.

[wierd]

What's wrong with MSPaint?  Sure, it lacks layers, but you can get around that using a transparent selection, and overlayed pastes, and other such tricks.

I actually prefer the lack of aliasing when dropping pixels, since I like to do the dithering manually.

Never tried Glorious Gale, but MSPaint is sononymous with windows installs, and for whatever reason, almost never gets culled from corporate deployment images. (That's why I have so much experience with ith! Shhhhh!)

[Max White]

Well it has no loupe, no right click color select, no advanced color manipulation, no layers (And this is a problem), no frames, no decent grid or decent grid features like snapping...

[wierd]

Loupe as in, loupe selection, or loupe as in "local magnifier"?

Mspaint's more recent incarnation (XP and newer) does have a freeform lasso selection tool (but no magic wand. Pity.)

It does have grid as well, and has since win9x at least. Right click draws with the secondary color, which is handy. You can pick both flat colors of your current shading run, and if you goof, you can drop the undercolor down to touch up. Snapping would be nice, but fine motor skill is just as good.

It does have advanced color selection. You have to click on either "custom colors", or "more colors" (depends on version) and you get a standard 2d colorspace representation of the RGB space you can pick in. (Or, you can poke RBG values manually, which I often do.)  You can assign colors to the 24 palette picks on the 9x version, and the XP version has 12 "greyed out" custom color pallet slots you can assign manually picked colors to. You can modify them later.

What it lacks straight up is alpha blending. What I usually do, is build an opaque sprite layer in paint, copy/paste it into paint.net (or similar), and use that exclusively for opacity and layering effects.

I did that with this FB submission, in fact.



(Its a little empty as a composition, because I didn't get to finish it to my satisfaction before the deadline. I had wanted to put a large pixel art dwarven sniper and his backpack hiding behind that large foreground pillar, and a bunch of dead dwarven bodies strewn about the scene, but ran out of time.)

[Max White]

A loupe is basically a small window that shows the same image you are working on at a different magnification. So, if you are zoomed in to 2000% you can see exact pixel placement, but in the loupe you can still see the entire image so you have a better idea of how it will look when you zoom out.
The MSPaint grid is pretty bad. It doesn't allow you to set it to a custom size, and you can't lock onto grid coordinance. So, for example, if I wanted to make a sprite sheet of 64*64 sized sprites, I can set the grid to that size. Then if I need to cut the entire sprite, I can lock onto the grid and the rectangle select will be sure to cut the exact 64 * 64 area. It is actually more useful than it sounds.
By advanced color manipulation, I mean you can adjust things like contrast and brightness and hue very easily. Not as powerful as say Photoshop or Gimp, but it doesn't have to be.

Also, by right click color select, I mean the color selection tool is bound to your right mouse button. This is actually one of the most useful features I have found, as it allows you to very easily juggle any number of colors.

[wierd]

You should pay more attention to the status bar!

Selecting a fixed size rectangle out of the image just takes fine motor skill.
In the bottom right, on the status bar portion of the window, there is a "column, row" reading for the current cursor position.
You can select exactly 64x64 pixels that way, assuming you can count.

I have just gotten used to all MSPaint's warts is all. (No question. Lots of warts.) It is considerably more powerful than most people give it credit for.

I may have to try Glorious Gale this weekend though, when I have time.

[CognitiveDissonance]

You should pay more attention to the status bar!

Selecting a fixed size rectangle out of the image just takes fine motor skill.
In the bottom right, on the status bar portion of the window, there is a "column, row" reading for the current cursor position.
You can select exactly 64x64 pixels that way, assuming you can count.

I have just gotten used to all MSPaint's warts is all. (No question. Lots of warts.) It is considerably more powerful than most people give it credit for.

I may have to try Glorious Gale this weekend though, when I have time.

I also have been having a lot of fun with GIMP, and highly recommend it. It's open source, but very powerful and has an easy to use windows installation file.

That said, Graphics Gale looks awesome and appears to also be free!
http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/

You also need a better title for the thread Something like "I draw pixels. GIVE ME YOUR IDEAS RAWR."

So if I get this right, you are looking to create 128x128 tilesets for dwarf fortress, and want ideas on how to style them?

[wierd]

Tilesets in general.

Basically, there are 5 major "kinds" of sprite tilesets:

Platformer (megaman, Castlevania, Supermario, etc...)
JRPG (FinalFantasy, Seiken Densetsu, legend of zelda, et al.)
Side Scroller (Double Dragon, TMNT, ninja gaiden, et al.)
Isoparametric (Landstalker, simcity 2000, age of empires, Diablo I and II, etc.)
Rogue-like (2D, Topdown games like DF, Rouge, Nethack, etc.)

Platformer and JRPG are the most desired. Sidescrollers can often use platformer style sprites, if they are horizonta. Vertical scrollers have different needs, which is why I give them a category. Ninja gaiden and TMNT had a hybrid between platform and isoparametric styles.)

A DF tileset *is* something I want to do, but I was specifically thinking either platformer or JRPG flavor, with preference for a castlevania like platformer.

I'd do a DF tileset, but I want a comprehensive list of all the animals in the game, without having to play "cull all the entity data from 20 different raw files". That way I can check them off as each is completed.

[AlStar]

So if I get this right, you are looking to create 128x128 tilesets for dwarf fortress, and want ideas on how to style them?

Actually, he said that if someone provides him with a full list of DF's animals, he'd make 128x128 tiles of them, which sounds like it could be fun to watch.

For other ideas, you could try to make a decent tileset for Unreal World.

Edit: bah, beaten.

[Knight of Fools]

Your pixel art with MSPaint is better than anything I can do with Photoshop and a tablet, so you're doing pretty good on that end. Don't kid yourself that you can't draw or anything, because you've obviously got a bit of practice behind you.


As for practice and getting better, just think of a theme that you enjoy and play with it. There's plenty of material to draw from, it's just a matter of sitting down and figuring out what you're going to draw today.

Try a variety of different things - Backgrounds you can tile, short sprites, tall sprites, 'realistic' sprites, animations, actual pictures, faces... There's a lot of good suggestions here. One thing that's fun, try making 'doll' sprites that can wear different clothes and wield different items you make for them. See if you can do different hair styles to stick on the sprite, too. Have those clothes with different conditions, such as ripped or dirty.

Think of things you would want in a game if you happened to be making one.

You're probably not going to be comfortable with doing artwork for someone else who wants something in particular until you actually start doing it. It's unknown territory for you, and it'll probably be unknown territory for the guy making the request, too. They'll probably be pickier than they need to be unless they're experienced (In which case, congratulations!), but just take it in stride and try to do what they want. Even if they're not paying you, it's good practice.


Most importantly, come up with your own style. Build a portfolio. Have fun. If you're enjoying it and learning from it, it's not a waste of time.

[Ameablable]

How about a 128x128 minecraft texturepack?

A MC texturpack made by wierd, id play the shit outa that texturepack.