A new look for the blog.
Just a header and some CSS at the moment, but I'll expand it later to a whole voxel theme. I do so love them little voxels.
Also, PIXEL HEART OMG.
Don't say I didn't warn anyone!
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Ideas in Limbo
I just found this floating around on my hard drive, and thought I'd share it. It's an image I painted for a game I was working on at my last job.
This was to form something of a style guide for the first level in the game, and was rushed onto digital canvas in the early hours of a sleepless night as the realities of global finance marched inexorably towards dire circumstances.
Sound vague? Deliberately so. Business happens.
But to remain positive, it was an amazing team of people, and a really great product (can you believe we were regularly playtesting within a few weeks, and actually fighting for the controller?) Best of all, I had the incredible honour of being art lead/director on this project, and working with some people who truly humbled me. Illustrators like Jeremy Love, Mike Manalac, Richard Lyons, Brendan Deboy, Jared Pullen and Danh Nhan; the best 3D sidekicks ever in Dean Walshe, Kieran O'Sullivan and Stewart Alves; the awesome designers - Paul McInnes, Christian Carriere and Mark Hurst; and the coders - James Podesta and Shane Lontis - making all the cool stuff happen. And of course our producer, John Whiston, who fought the hard fight for us. It sounds like I'm accepting an award... Well, we should have been!
It was one of those periods of creativity where deadlines and schedules and budgets never interrupted the process. We were always on time, always over delivering, and always thrilled with the results of our efforts, despite the usual production difficulties. I've rarely loved what I do more than on this project.
Unfortunately, as I vaguely hinted at above, due to business-type things out of any of our control, the doors were closed and this project, as far as I know, has drifted off into the ether.
[Insert long and wistful sigh here]
This image is obviously unfinished, and it saddens me to think it never will be, especially since I was super happy with the direction it was going in, and had surprised myself a bit with it. But such is the way of the creative industries.
Sometimes bad things happen to good ideas.
This was to form something of a style guide for the first level in the game, and was rushed onto digital canvas in the early hours of a sleepless night as the realities of global finance marched inexorably towards dire circumstances.
Sound vague? Deliberately so. Business happens.
But to remain positive, it was an amazing team of people, and a really great product (can you believe we were regularly playtesting within a few weeks, and actually fighting for the controller?) Best of all, I had the incredible honour of being art lead/director on this project, and working with some people who truly humbled me. Illustrators like Jeremy Love, Mike Manalac, Richard Lyons, Brendan Deboy, Jared Pullen and Danh Nhan; the best 3D sidekicks ever in Dean Walshe, Kieran O'Sullivan and Stewart Alves; the awesome designers - Paul McInnes, Christian Carriere and Mark Hurst; and the coders - James Podesta and Shane Lontis - making all the cool stuff happen. And of course our producer, John Whiston, who fought the hard fight for us. It sounds like I'm accepting an award... Well, we should have been!
It was one of those periods of creativity where deadlines and schedules and budgets never interrupted the process. We were always on time, always over delivering, and always thrilled with the results of our efforts, despite the usual production difficulties. I've rarely loved what I do more than on this project.
Unfortunately, as I vaguely hinted at above, due to business-type things out of any of our control, the doors were closed and this project, as far as I know, has drifted off into the ether.
[Insert long and wistful sigh here]
This image is obviously unfinished, and it saddens me to think it never will be, especially since I was super happy with the direction it was going in, and had surprised myself a bit with it. But such is the way of the creative industries.
Sometimes bad things happen to good ideas.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Dark Castle Adventure
Does anyone else remember an old DOS game called Castle Adventure? Follow this link to jog your memory. I remember playing this game many years ago on a friend's Tandy1000 PC - a great, chunky, noisy, utilitarian looking beast of a thing, and it was in many ways one of my earliest introductions to the joys of video games.
The memory of Castle Adventure itself was triggered in a bit of an unusual way. Let me preface the story with a promise that it does not contain gross stuff: I was using a friend's toilet. I hadn't used it at this point, but was in the process of intending to (a detail which is imperative to the following), when the particular combined aroma of their scented toilet paper and their chosen brand of deodoriser was like some B-movie flashback sequence trigger. Memories of Tandy1000-Friend's toilet some 20 years previously, and more critically an unrelated (albeit bizarrely connected) series of vivid memories of playing these old computer games accosted me with such force that I briefly forgot what I was in there for.
Sometime later, and in a great deal more comfort than I had been previously, I found myself Googling a huge list of old video games that I hadn't thought about in years. Ultima, Bard's Tale, Digger, Eye of the Beholder, and of course Castle Adventure being some of the more noteworthy ones. Castle Adventure in particular. Not that I can clearly explain why it has so much appeal to me. Maybe it was the mix of Pacman-like labyrinthine escape gameplay, exploration, and (simple) puzzles. Maybe it was also a bit to do with the antiquated graphics and the need to fill it in with imagination. I expect it's something like the passion that drives Nethack players, but in the "...For Dummies" version.
And then, as I'm wont to do, I was hit with the overwhelming urge to pay it homage - to attempt to capture the essence of it in my own way, which is kind of a nice way of saying "rip it off". Here are my early efforts:
It's is a bit of a weird way to get back into the creative contract, so forgive me for being particularly underwhelming, but I'm really excited about this in a weirdly nostalgic and childlike way.
Also, the art is way easy to do (LOL).
The memory of Castle Adventure itself was triggered in a bit of an unusual way. Let me preface the story with a promise that it does not contain gross stuff: I was using a friend's toilet. I hadn't used it at this point, but was in the process of intending to (a detail which is imperative to the following), when the particular combined aroma of their scented toilet paper and their chosen brand of deodoriser was like some B-movie flashback sequence trigger. Memories of Tandy1000-Friend's toilet some 20 years previously, and more critically an unrelated (albeit bizarrely connected) series of vivid memories of playing these old computer games accosted me with such force that I briefly forgot what I was in there for.
Sometime later, and in a great deal more comfort than I had been previously, I found myself Googling a huge list of old video games that I hadn't thought about in years. Ultima, Bard's Tale, Digger, Eye of the Beholder, and of course Castle Adventure being some of the more noteworthy ones. Castle Adventure in particular. Not that I can clearly explain why it has so much appeal to me. Maybe it was the mix of Pacman-like labyrinthine escape gameplay, exploration, and (simple) puzzles. Maybe it was also a bit to do with the antiquated graphics and the need to fill it in with imagination. I expect it's something like the passion that drives Nethack players, but in the "...For Dummies" version.
And then, as I'm wont to do, I was hit with the overwhelming urge to pay it homage - to attempt to capture the essence of it in my own way, which is kind of a nice way of saying "rip it off". Here are my early efforts:
It's is a bit of a weird way to get back into the creative contract, so forgive me for being particularly underwhelming, but I'm really excited about this in a weirdly nostalgic and childlike way.
Also, the art is way easy to do (LOL).
Saturday, February 5, 2011
XNA Platformer Run Cycle
I got something of a run cycle working. It's pretty gumby. 2D animator I am not... plus I kind of cheated and duplicated the middle frame which makes him look like he's scissoring. The feet particularly don't maintain a believable shape very well. His back foot doesn't change in orientation at all except for the switch-over frame, which looks odd.
It's all a bit of a mess, but I still think it looks pretty cute in spite of.
It's all a bit of a mess, but I still think it looks pretty cute in spite of.
It's certainly "good enough" to be moving on with other stuff for now. Like a jumping pose and a landing animation. Yay.
Edit: Actually I made a mistake putting the .GIF together, and the animation above is actually just looping the first 2 frames. So I put together a corrected version with all 4 frames and now I don't know which one looks better.
Turns out I don't enjoy animation all that much.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Illustration Dump
This isn't really an illustration dump, but more of a rendering dump. I spent a couple of hours experimenting with digital painting tools, and true to my word, here are the results.
Pixel Art Dump
As a first post, it's not very exciting. It's just a dump of some old pixel art experiments that were over on my first attempt to start a blog I regularly posted to. Pixel art is art which is produced dot-by-dot. Stylistically it's representative of old-school video games, with limited colour palettes and chunky line work. It's usually produced without the assistance of advanced tools.
These experiments are related to an independant game I've been working on. I spent the last year and a half teaching myself how to program. I've always wanted to make a retro video game. It's a massive amount of work though, and I'm only now started to get into art in a more meaningful way.
My initial instinct is to apologise and make excuses for this stuff, but that's not what this is about. So... dump incoming.
These experiments are related to an independant game I've been working on. I spent the last year and a half teaching myself how to program. I've always wanted to make a retro video game. It's a massive amount of work though, and I'm only now started to get into art in a more meaningful way.
My initial instinct is to apologise and make excuses for this stuff, but that's not what this is about. So... dump incoming.
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