Honours Project: Critic of final work.

Hello,

So the past couple of weeks has been rather hectic but i have finaly managed to get my project done, so i thought it would be a good idea to have a final critic of my work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYRFV7Xl1MU&feature=youtu.be

So here is the final version of my project working on my timeline, apart from some memory crashes it works perfectly fine. 

so going to take this opportunity to thank Stuart howieson for making this possible and coding this for me to focus solely on my pixel art.

So, I am going to talk about each style and level individualy discussing what works and the bits that dont to well.

First up ~Vintage,

 planet - lvl1

 landscape - lvl2

character - lvl3

Vintage: Since it was created originally on early game consoles in the 70s and 80s everything was very basic 2 colours low resolutions and limited frames for animations as stated in my critical framework.

Since I am doing a more post modern approach to try update the style but still keeping its character I made some changes. i kept the colour pallette the same reminiscent of games like space invaders. I kept the frames relatively low in the animations until it came to the special,

However despite being rather limited in detail i think its still rather striking and nearly hypnotic. I think this is the simplistic nature of the style.

Planet - Lvl1

Landscape - lvl2

Character - Lvl3

Classic: The changes from vinatage to classic is that of colour how the resolutions and frames are still rather low. 

This makes the character more defined I deliberately made him/her hard to sex, this was because i wanted to keep it so that it was upto whomever who the character is. 

I would also point out i made an error i think i made the city part of landscape to detailed which made it a problem for later on.

Also feel the need to point out the reasons why the special is so over the top is because i wanted to show people in the most basic way why i am attached to pixel art it still has its unrealistic over the top childish nature things didnt really need explained people just went with it.

I think my approach to the classic style went rather well and represents the style well.

 Lvl1

 Lvl2

Lvl3

Retro: more colours gave characters and landscapes more detail and depth animations could also have more too them and the characters taking more of a resembelance to an actual person.

apart from some animation niggles that due to several reasons havnt been fixed, this style went rather well and you can see a step from the previous styles.

The crazyness of specials was toned down too, i like the arm changing at the initial flash his other arm annoys me and looks a bit abnormal.

Old School: The last original style before 3D started to become the new industry standard another step up in colours its most notably recognised however by the shading.

so yeah overall old school went relatively well however as you can see i was struggling to make the city really stand out however the nature side is progressing in each stage rather well.

last but not least stylised...

Stylised: Stylised is pixel art that is made with the complete freedom of colours and resolution. however usually the highest any pixel art goes is about 200x200 pixels anymore then it can be rather laborius and time consuming

unfotunately if i was going to be really honest despite the fact i like the general look of these styles some of it being the best pixel art i have done the animation has alot to be desired i was intending on fixing these but during one night of extreme tiredness i saved over the animation file and i hadnt the time enough to amend this.

however overall im extremely proud of what i managed to achieve in a rather short time it did feel like for the first half of this semester the world was out to get me but i have made it and genuinely looking forward to see what people make of it.

David M

Honours Project: Old School Level 3 done

Some more character animations for you to look at that i did today.

character special this took me far too long to do and it still could have done with a bit more work to it. took me a while to think of something cool for him to do.

so yeah the big change from retro to oldschool is more colour so shading is pretty obvious also the sprites now at 64x64 pixels.

so yeah quick post today but i thought some of you out there might like them? let me know in a comment what you think, please.

so next up im going to be doing the second level and then thats everything atleast has art for albeit some being placers and could really do with improvement.. however since i gave myself till wednesday to get these 2 levels finished im ahead of schedule which is great :) need to get the momentum going with this little boost of motivation.

Honours Project: Retro level 3 character and level 2 started

So lets get right into it,

so heres the special, i guess you could say i toned down the crazy a bit from the previous 2 and showing off a sort of mechanical attack.

level 3 spritesheet

so heres the spriteseheet of all the characters animations from level 3 with jump and idle animations i put up yesterday.

So also today i was working a bit on the level 2 for retro..

I got as far as doing the nature side,

however im kinda unhappy with it since the character level is getting more and more kenetic each style the level 2 seems to up the detail but the animations remain the same and kinda boring so im working on a way to do that.

also this leads onto the city side, I did this:

thos eagled eyed readers out there may have noticed that the city side has barely changed from the earlier style. so again i need to think of something to living everything up. however classic and retro have very subtle differences anyways but it would be nice if there was something else to catch the eye.

anyways yeah thats it for today.

Any feedback on anything is welcome also any suggestions for my two queries feel free to drop me a comment or hit me up on thee old facebook chat. 

Honours project: classic level 2 and the beginnings of level 3 for retro

Hello so after a brake on monday, and a dissertation day yesterday i got back to my practical stuff

So today i got the second level for classic done.

here it is,

So yeah classic allows things to eget a bit more colourfull ... im thinking of a way to make this more interesting than just them bobbing up and down gonna try liven it up for Retro

Talking about retro i got to work on the character animation for it,

so heres idle,

as you can see there is a big jump in detail thanks to the increase of resolution looking closer like the one in stylised.

this is him jumping

more detail lets me play about with giving him some motion blur... any excuse for these kinda particle animations i have a problem, i think im addicted to doing this sort of thing.

so yeah i had begun with doing some for his special.. i wanted to up the crazy from the previous one ... i have have an idea of how it should look in my head but i cant quite translate it well enough.. its starting to bug me so going to leave it for now and have a wee break and then do some more dissertating.

Honours Project: Classic level 3 and the abduction of hybrid

Hello again,

So today was a rather slow day which begun with what could be considered a fail....

So I shall start with the bad,

So in my calender I had these 3 days to get my 3D pixel art 'Hybrid' style stuff done, however 7 hours into the day and I had made or atleast felt like I had made no real dent into the first level of the style, this led onto the consideration in negating the style from my project altogether so i shall discuss why in greater detail....

(this section could probably be considered personal developement)

So in the first level (space) I was wanting the planet to revolve, which would be a very easy and obvious way of showing the third dimension.

I finally managed to figure out 3ds maxs toon shading nad getting it implemented so that the render would render out a rough outline of 1 pixel thick. (instead of having to put one in completely by hand)

this saved me (some) time i think however the outline still needed cleaned up and textures needed to still be fixed pre rendered, I was trying to find a good medium between a really fast jerky turn around and a super smooth turn around and ended up with 24 however at about quarter of the way through endlessly zooming in and fixing an outline just because it moved a pixel or so from the previous line was taking far too much time for no reward.

Now this time could be used to make other styles better for example the stylised levels animations more fluid, 

I am not ethusiastic as being a 3D artist so i dont see it being dentrimental to me in the future, and hybrid can stay as a part of my dissertation to look into further.

I have emailed ryan to hear what he thinks hopefully he agrees, it would be nice being able to focus on other styles more and doing something that enjoy more...as i think Hybrid style alone would be too much to get done in the 2 or so weeks untill submission...

Anyways.....

So moving on... I got to work at doing the levels for the Classic style.

Classics main advancement over vintage is the inclusion of more colours and this is the bit that i wanted to show in my levels.

level 3 - spritesheet

Original size: 16x16 special (64x64)

 Idle

Jump

Punch

Special

So along with more detail added to the character i added more detail into the animations, most notably the hair.

as always if you got something to say about anything in this post feel free to leave a comment...

honours project : sylised levels

So heres what i have done the previous two days,

been getting both levels done or close to finish for the stylised section, this along with Hybrid will prob take me the longest time so i thought it would be good getting it done ASAP.

so yeah pictures to the FACE!!

So leading on from my previous post of the pixelboy or level 3 in the stylised stage, i got to adding animation along with a little change to his appearance

Lvl 3 - Close up

So first up the grass ball has a face, i did this because i wanted the spritesheet to be more visually appealing and since the idle animation for the boy was only at 2 frames i thought i would do something else.

so heres it all moving

Ok for some reason bloggers having a hard time with this animation and the first frame of the boy seems to stick but i can assure you that isnt the case.

I understand the grass ball's yawn could do with more frames to make it look more fluid. but photoshop is a fiddly so and so when it comes to animation and i didnt want to spend more time on him (i might go back later) but im on a strict schedule so that i can get this done on time so i couldnt hang around..

this leads onto level 2 stuffs...

Level 2: stylised landscape

Stylised level 2 : sprite sheet level 2

so yeah details of the trees is more defined i put in some animation to make it more pleasing to look at.

but yeah took me a while to get the general look I didnt want to go as high resolution as i did for the boy because there was too much to do. im perticularly impressed with the trees the detail in the bush worked out pretty damn well..

the city side is more dynamic mainly becuase i thought it was rather simplistic so wanted to jazz it up a bit.

so along with these and my space level,

level 1 space

thats all the levels from stylised ready (missing a few things here and there ofocurse)

so thats what i have for today, what do you all think.. drop a comment and leave some feedback please :D

Honors Checklist

Honours Project: stylised character

Hey guys..

So i had a meeting with ryan today to show what i have done and things went pretty positively he liked what i had and thought everything was more interesting

when we were discussing if i had time to do animations and everything for every style and at every level we thought this might not be realistic.

However today i have been working on the more modern day style of pixel art.

using the character i showed in the last post i imagined what he may look like with more pixels and colours,

So here he is in all his glory, I think he looks pretty damn cool, the amount i have improved this year in my technique and pixel art is crazy.

first attempt

second attempt

as i am sure you will agree this guys far more eyecatching to look its funny looking back as i never thought i improved that much. but anyways think i shall show how i made him?

first up using the umage of the character from vintage i took some key aspects such as his squarish figure and simplistic design such as his arms and legs and tried to make it more eyecatching by adding hair and other accessories.

after this I went over the rough sketch in pen and scanned it in.

I then coloured him in and made various changes to see what would best suit him

after that i scaled down the image to a more suitable resolution for pixel art at 200x200 pixels

I then went over the original outline to make a pixel art outline eliminating jaggies to make the character more clean.

basic colours were then added

highlighting and shadows followed. since this is an individual pece to make it more interesting i added in a ground for him to stand on and a basic sky gradiant.

however this brings a rather big problem since this character is more complex it will make me animating him more time consuming something of which im running really low on right now.. so i am not sure how to do this if he animates atall and is just idling ( moving up and down from respiraion and hair blowing in the wind) but yeah panic stations i have so much stuff to still to do so some clever shortcutts will have to be found to make my life easier.