Sunday 30 December 2012

Personal Development Portfolio: Tree Tutorial

Hello All!

Well its after christmas and everything will be ramping up for the submissions on the 18th so yeserday i decided to get myself back into the swing of things by trying out some things from the tutorial on www.cgcookie.com.


Through the tutorial i was pleased but also disappointed that i knew and do most of the things he says already.

However, he did go more in depth on the hue,value and saturation side of pixel art one of which never really crossed my mind.

Anyways following his video i got to work creating my tree it all was going well, untill i seemed to start not enjoying what i was doing which made me give a rather lackluster, unfinished result. 

Thinking about it i have concluded:

1. his use of transfer on his brushes i didnt like, as it took away most of the control i enjoy about pixel art, going back on things i have said before if you find the importance of the placement of each pixel decrease in value then its digital art but not pixel art.

2. I felt it was going down a too overly processed realistic look using masks and overlay layers to do some of the work for him (however im having an internal debate about this)

So anyways due to my recent upgrade my computers more stable and can run vlc in the background so the return of timelapses!

so heres my tree "failings" for you to watch i feel it was going well until about step 6/7 on the picture above. Also for my christmas i was lucky in getting a new ipad mini on the hunt for looking for a good pixel art editor in the app store





Edit: heres the final 100x100 image i forgot to post up.


Looking back now on it, it doesnt look as bad as what i though, but it still isn'nt my style.

Thursday 20 December 2012

Update: Holidays!

Hello,

Sorry for the complete absence of updates so far this month, anyways this is where I am at now and what I have planned to do for the holidays.

Well firstly I managed to get my Project Proposal submitted in time at 6% originality, I feel relatively confident on the proposal but essays have never been my strong point so I am not expecting a fantastic grade.

Anyways other than that I bought new RAM for my pc and did a complete clean install (i do this every year to get my computers fresh for the new year.

However, my laptop does appear to have a  HDD problem so it makes work take longer than its supposed to due to it being rather slow when it works or constantly crashes.

My Pc for whatever hard was making it difficult for me to download the drivers required for my tablet and also photoshop, however with the presence of Alastair that seemed to had made them work.

So thats me finally able to get some work done (before i go to Ayr on the 23rd - 27th) was hoping to get more work done before i went down but it was rather unavoidable, its a shame pixel art is so digital because then my work progress can rely solely on the temper of my PCs.

Tim Von Rueden - Pixel Art Tutorial Sprite sheet

Anyways, Today I bought a tutorial from http://cgcookie.com/concept/cgc-series/pixel-course/ thanks to George for pointing it out to me it cost me about £6 but it gave the impression that it was rather good and i thought it would be worth it, to get myself back into the swing of things. I have some of the tutorial videos downloaded and ready so should get results of that up asap.

what else i have planned, well i still want to do a video of my project proposal. I want to get my skyscraper vs truck animation sorted. I also need to think of what it is exactly that i want to do for my final project.

so yeah in sumary


  1. video proposal
  2. Ethics Sheet
  3. Skyscraper vs truck animation
  4. Final Project, WHAT ARE YOUUUUU!?!? 
anyways thats all i have so far today, I have overdue books to deliver so better be off.

David M

Tuesday 4 December 2012

Project Proposal: A quick update

Well I am so close to achieving the completion of my proposal that i thought that it warranted an update.

So yeah im at 2,873 words and just need to complete my abstract!

planning on making a video thingy of essentially my proposal so people can watch and understand my project so should do that at some point hopefully before the new year.

other than that its last week of teaching, so im hoping to meet ryan before we go for christmas to discuss plans and ideas for my practical stuff to be done for the next group of hand ins on the 11th of janurary.

So yeah expect alot more practical updates and media tests soon :)

but until then that is me for today.

David M