My first quadruped animation (pixel art) | PART 2

So this Is the stage I am at now finished the first pass of the animation and started on the second adding more detail in shading and moving the smaller bits of hair and adding the tail. with 5/7 frames done.

Hes still got a long way to go, before I would class it as finished but taking my time.

Also just to add my Part 1 timelapse is now up and ready for you to watch if you like, with part 2 coming later.

Thanks for your time,

David

My first quadruped animation (pixel art) | PART 1

not finished

Hey guys,

Well today along with my sketches i decided to get back into animating to prepare myself for the short I am doing,

So, I chose to do a quadruped animation because its something I have never done before I have done a lot of human animations but nothing else really.

The above image I would say is about 25% complete maybe less, so how did I get to this stage then,

timelapse

1. the sketch so bellow is my initial sketch on paper which i then highlighted in pen to make it easier for the camera to pick out, you may ask why I didnt just sketch it straight onto he computer using a graphics tablet. well the truth is, I really don't like it I feel on the sketching stage I produce stuff much closer to what I had in my head and paper and pencil is just easier and more tactile for me.

2. After doing this I then made a rough pixel outline

3. cleaned the pixel line adding base colour and shading

4. started animating using run cycles of dogs as reference most notably this animation by Paul Robertson.

5. As I am right now on just the base poses of the wolf I am ignoring smaller details such as the hair and tail which i completely removed so i could focus completely on the legs.

so I am about 2 thirds of the way through my first pass, so this is 6 frames of a total of 9.

So hopefully I will have Part 1 on youtube tomorrow and will be working on the 2nd part :)

untill then, bye byeeee!

David

Honours project & Presentation : timeline progress for presentation & a sketch

Hello, we have a looooooong post for today, but i have alot of pictures for you to look at so lets have a blast..

So Presentation day (again) so I have been getting my slides or atleast what i want to say together.

So basicaly since my project idea has changed I want to explain why,

Sor right off the bat, the general consensus of my showcase didnt come across well enough, like what i talked about in an earlier post me and ryan discussed a more final and coherent way to showcase my showcase and to do this we discussed an idea envolving a timeline of the styles and there introduction not showing dates or anything like that.

The more I thought about it the more i liked the idea and that in a way I was doing it subconsiously, My critical framework broke down images of pixel art and placed them into 3 different "styles" of pixel art.

I also mentioned in my previous presentations that i feel the most valuable part to pixel art is that it ages better than its 3D "realistic" counterparts, the reason for this to me is that pixel art borrows or works in the same way of its traditional art abstract relatives.

For example:

Proteus (2013) a pixel art/3D game about exploring a new world. People who play the game become immersed in the world for hours on end despite what can be considered as its abstract blocky looks.

Skyrim (2012) a realistic fantasy game about exploration (of sorts) this game has heavy praise of it graphic fidelity and realism (well despite the dragons and all the other mystical creatures) people become immersed in the realistic world for hours.

The problem with realism to me and many peers is that since its so focused on realistic graphics that it becomes the foundation behind the reason why you get immersed in the experiance, but 5-10 years from now the realistic graphics will move on to bigger better and more HD places leaving skyrim looking a bit worse for wear as its mascara begins to run.

Let me show this happening in visuals, Battlefield. I chose this franchise as its one of my favourites and one which i have played and loved from the baginning in 2002.

Battlefield 1942 (2002)

2 year old me: "Wow, Look at those graphics thats some realistic brown going on there"

Disclaimer: i may not have said it but something along those lines definately crossed my mind.

Battlefield 2 (2005)

15 year old me: " Holy S*** its like being outside and holding a gun in real life"

Disclaimer: sorry for the language, teenage hormones and all that.

Battlefield 2 was also the first game that i ever experianced that my PC  at the time wasnt able to run at full specs yet i was still blown away by it.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (2010)

I remember seeing this being shown and was amazed the new frostbite engine dice created for this was intense, on its highest settings it still looks pretty good...

... Until you play this...

Battlefield 3 (2012)

The most recent battlefield game, and considered one of the most realistic modern warfare games ever created and has the ability to bring a gaming rig to its knees.

look back 7 years ago and what looked pretty then looks horrible now...

and that change has an effect on an aesthetic level atleast.. its missing its realism that it touted before and more importantly what you remember it looking, in away its the negative impact of nostalgia than that of what pixel art has, and i think thats due to the abstract art side at play.

So where was I...

Ah yes, timeline...

So in my timeline of pixel art styles (working title) Im going to show you that pixel art holds on by showing you all the styles as they are introduced.

as this was a brand new idea i thought i should conceptualise it with existing images of games that used the style,

As you may be aware thats the image i posted up in the post before,

But using my critical framework (which is now in need of an update) i listed the different styles of pixel art as i named them ( i couldnt find anything that has done it before yet )

• Vintage - the really old stuff black and white made up of simple blocks occasionaly a third coulour is used usually green.

• Classic - The colour palette and the resolution has increased however detail is at minimum colour is flat no shading etc

• Retro - This is one of the styles we think of when we think of games, the 8 bit era of games more pixels have been added along with a much larger colour palette giving you more detail yet still not enough for things like a full face on characters where certain features may have to be increased to hide the lack of others mario is a good example of this
• Old School - Often mistaken as retro/8-bit but old school represents the 16-bit era which is a noticeable increase in pixel density and colour gives it a sharper and more detailed look as characters begin to take more shape as the detail is increased enough

~ Introduction of the polygon ~

• Classic/Modern - a contradictory name for a style i hear you mutter, well the reason i called it this is that it uses all the same restrictions as classic the resolution restriction and colour limit remains intact yet the choices of what colour the limits are are completely upto the artist in question.

Example of a Classic/Modern style:

Passage(2007)

• Stylised - Probably the most common of pixel art styles mostly pioneered by Paul Robertson, the artist is free to use what size of resolution is used but usually no bigger than 128x128 is used, but can be expanded after. The pixel art is probably quite similar in appearance with the likes of cartoon drawings. this also gives an artist to throw in his/her own uniqueness to his/her art.

Example of stylised: 

Kings of Power 4 Billion % Paul Robertson

3D Pixel Art

Voxol - 3D cubes

3D Dot Game Heroes

Simplistic - Simple 3D geometry with pixel art textures

Minecraft

Hybrid - 2D sprites simple 3D geometry or 3D post manipulated

 

             Bit.Trip Runner                                                                                      Fez

These are the primary styles in my eyes but there can be overlap.

So lastly...

Thinking of a way to represent my timeline in a cool way, i thought a part of it can be told using a short animation /story (maybe even the full thing but we shall see...

I had the idea of something mining out a cube to represent the "polygon"... that led to me drawing up a concept image of a dwarf, I have a fascination with dwarves im unsure of why probably stems from my childhood.

Its been a while since i have drawen something so high rez haha...

but i think hes cool.

What do you all think, about EEEEEVERYTHING, like the sound of it or got any questions leave a comment and al get back to you :)

David M

Personal Development Portfolio: Terraria Pixel art

Hello,

Well I wanted to try something different this time, mixed with the want to play games but also the guilt that i should do some work.

I decided I could mix the two and maybe even learn something from it, So i chose to play terraria a 2D exploration/creation game created by Re-logic, the good thing about this is the world is made up of 2D blocks.

so i decided to create some pixel art in the game, but what to create,

Well I decided to recreate something thats already been done by some other pixel artist the reasoning behind this is maybe It would help teach me how other people do it and how they do it.

I chose this image by Paul Robertson,

Reasoning is that Paul Robertson is usually regarded as on of thee main man for pixel art and his modern stylised pixel art is the style that interests me most.

Obviously I wont recreate the full image so i just decided to do the guy with the hammer,

So first I had to scale the image down so that the pixels actually equaled 1 pixel. Then in game i had to search for the right material that would play as the outline (ash) i cut this out the timelapse as it was rather unnecessary and i wanted to keep the video to 5 minutes... heres the video:

So what did i learn beside that pixel art in terraria add an extra does of potential death?

well the thing that stuck out to me was that Pauls Pixel art has far more whats considered unclean/Jaggies than what i thought. However his lines still works this is probably something i will learn in time but it will save me alot of time in worrying about my lines.

Secondaly, it sounded rather easy to recreate something but it actually was harder than what i thought it would be. there are a few mistakes most notably the hammer. this probably due to a simple miscount.

Anyways this was more useful to me than what i first thought and im looking forward to using what i learned on my other project im doing.

anyways hope you enjoy it.

David

Critical Framework: Paul Robertson, Part.3

Framework Evaluation – Violent Storm By Paul Robertson

Resolution : 384 x 216, Expanded ( 768 x 432)

Colour :  

Outline : Black

Anti – Ailising : N/A

Shading : Cell Shaded

Style : Modern Stylized

Platform : Image