Pixel art and different variations

Pixel art and different variations

Joshua brophy 

Isometric art (Print)

An isometric picture is generally a graphic most used in Eboy as they have published books with pixel art in and also posters isometric is basically a parallel projection where the view point is rotated slightly to make it look 3D in a 2D perspective. There are more well-known variations of isometric art like.

·         Eboy make isometric pictures using pixels There are quite a few variations of Eboy’s work and here is an example right (from the Eboy Blog site) 

·         Habbo is more set to the other side of the spectrum habbo hotel is an online social site where all of the graphics are made up from isometric art.

      Detail is put into the isometric art is  by going in close to the pixels and manually insert the corresponding pixels in to give greater detail when looking at it from a distance.

2D Pixel art for games

Pixel art is also used in the production of video games, As well as art there are many once popular games that used isometric graphics in the development of  video games and also modern games.

·         Retro in the 1980 there were games that used isometric graphics in the game itself in games like Q*bert.

·         Remakes: Pixel Force is a company who make 2d pixel remakes of modern games like Left 4 Dead, Halo and also DJ Hero.

·         Continuing franchises that still use this form of graphic with games are generally on hand-held consoles like Pokémon and Mario through their form of graphic hasn’t changed, the level of detail that now goes in the games is far more detailed than one of their earlier games.

Pixel character ideas

Skyrim based character ideas including: dauvakin, argonian, khajit, swords and a dragon

Hammam's Street fighter work

Pixel Project room ideas (production management)

 Our theme for pixel art is having video game characters as college students in the college dorms doing what college students do. Everyone in our group is going to create thier own individual room with their video character of choice. The video game I chose is Street Fighter which is a fighting game made in Japan which was released as an arcade game in 1987. It already has that pixel look because that was what was popular at the time so I need to take a long and hard look at the design of the characters and venues.                                                                                       

Street fighter acade game. The reason i choose street fighter is becuase of the classic street fighter look is really interestng and unique making it a really ideal choice for my room.

My room

I am going to have the characters ryu and ken chilling out in thier really messy room smoking a “shisha”.

ITEMS: bed, computer desk, shisha, fast food boxes and packets(pizza and burger boxes), random scraps of paper, a sock, street fighter trophies, a poster of a hot babe (preferbly one of the street fighter females), a guitar and a video games console. Things will be added during the production of the room due to random inspiration.

   Characters:  ken(in red) and ryu(in white)

   

Messy Dorm room.

                                 

 

 

There are many different ways to create my characters using a range of unique styles ranging from very simple looking characters to highly detailed and shaded characters. I still haven’t chosen the style but whatever style I use I need to keep it at about 50 pixels in height because when you take in consideration the size of the room having the character more than 50 pixels high would make the character way too big.

Supervision of timetabling

Day 1 01/10/2012,

9:30 – 12:00

Today we individually brainstormed ideas for the rooms we would be making. Beth told us we each had to make 10 ideas ourselves and then discuss them with the rest of the group. When we finished and discussed the idea with the rest of the group and it seemed that a lot of us had similar ideas which shows we’re all on the same track. We also shared some ideas with Beth and she gave feedback on these ideas we shared, she then assigned us to do 10 themes of what the rooms could be and with that we correlated the ideas and themes together in to a mindmap. We then got told to mindmap those themes and see if we can do anymore correlating.

12:00 – 14:20

We came together to choose what idea we were going to choose and after a long enough discussion we decided to do college dorms for game characters. So this is consisted of a hall and 6 rooms, each consisting of an area from each game, the characters are students studying to become the gaming icon heroes they’re destined to be. The first room will belong to Chris Coghlan who will be making a pokemon room with pok fights, similar to cock fights but with pokemon. Callum will be doing Skyrim with dovahkin with mead in tankards and meat. I will be doing John Shephard with space beer, ME computers, N7 armor bottles, Liara and Wrex with a bong. Joshua will be doing a room for big daddy with old jukeboxes. Jamie will be doing Halo with Chief and Cortana. Hamam will be doing Castlevania themed room. We are now mindmapping the contents of the rooms we will be making. We have also come to the conclusion that the target audience is 18-26, generally university students that do gaming.

Day 2 08/10/2012

09:40 – 13:00

At this point we have laid out what needs to be done by the end of the day and how we will approach finishing these objectives. Chris and Jamie have been assigned the design of the timetable in the form of a gantt chart. Hamam is designing the basic concept of the college dorms; this is going to be presented to Beth. Callum is typing up the proposal to present to Beth. Josh is researching abnd moodboarding pixel art that is in relation to games. Another idea was spurred from Callum that we should make optional back up plans for our rooms so nobody is stuck to doing that one room and they don’t have the same idea as someone else if they decide to change their mind. I’ve decided I’m going to make progress on the pitch of our project. We also decided that we need to make a list of props that will be in our room when we’ve finished with our objectives, and do a little research on them.

13:00 – 16:15

We discussed the sizes in terms of pixels and the average human height of each pixel art character will be 50 pixels, with the average of width being 25-30. Some of us are going to start experimenting with the pixel art techniques and some of us are writing up documents about our props and how we’re going to make them.

Day 3 15/10/2012

9:20 -09:50

This meeting that had taken place ultimately discussed what had to be finished by the end of today and who would do it. The first thing discussed was the individual research on what we’re going to include in our room, some of us have and some of us haven’t completed so the ones who haven’t completed it, this is their current priority. Personally I’ve completed the individual room research so I’m going to move on to talking about the target audience. Joshua has finished techniques for pixel art which we are going to include in our presentation pitch, displaying how we plan on doing our pixel art. Another thing we will need included in the presentation is the constraints that may hold us back; Jamie is going to an analysis on the plans. Callum is going to create a blog so we can put work on there when we’re not in college; he’s also going to add extra to his current proposal. I’m going to begin production on the presentation after I’ve analysed the target audience. Once we’ve all done our objectives we can fully present our pitch and then we can adapt off feedback and then we can finalise our idea. Chris has now created the blog.

Day 4 22/10/2012

9:00 – 09:15

Basically we’re just finishing off all our research so we can piece it all together to use it in a presentation used for the pitch. We’re just waiting on Jamie to complete constraints and then we shall be all good to put together out presentation. In the meantime we’re going to put together all we can with people who have completed their work. Chris is going to complete a report on our resources and materials available which was supposed to be done with the rest of learning outcome 1 but it’s something to complete while awaiting the work from Jamie.

Hamam has now completed the template for the college dorms.

Day 5 05/11/2012

9:00 – 09:55

The people present for the first meeting were Chris, Leo, Callum, Hamam and Jamie, we had Josh missing. We’ve decided for ease of access for everyone we’re going to put all our work on a blog so we can all access it whenever  we’re not on our college computers and we can access each other’s  work if need be. We definitely need to collaborate for our presentation, this is long overdue but it has been discussed with Beth also that both groups could do their presentation on the same day for the sake of less pressure and so our audience doesn’t have to watch two separate presentations on two separate occasions. Another individual task is we’re arranging all of our folders so we can put all our work there easy and so Beth can assess our work a lot easier.

1:00 – 01:15

Well now we’ve put the presentation as our priority at the moment, we’re going to start typing up wing to say.

Chris Coghlan's Work

Skills needed in relation to the project

The skills that I and the team I am working with are more than suitable for this project, we have completed projects in the past in which artistic qualities were required. An example of this is in the Concept Art unit on my course, in which we had to research into concept art done by companies and then create our own concept art, in the form of fictional characters.

Another example would be that we did a Digital Graphic unit during our first year of college in which we had to create a box art for a new game for an existing company.

Another important skill to have in order to achieve success in this project is, management and organisational skills, this can be shown through group discussions in which someone in the team is appointed team leader, in which it developed their management skills when dealing with a team. Time management skills are also required, this is because without time management you might end up missing the deadline for the project, in which would inevitably fail the unit. Time management also falls down the organisation skill line due to the fact that without time management, there is little organisation within the group where the project is concerned.

Having an understanding, this may not seem much of a skill but having an understanding on the basis of what needs to be done in a project (getting from A to B as efficiently as possible) and knowing the task in hand can go a long way in being able to complete the teams goals, that being on an individual basis or when working within a group.

 

Chris Coghlan                                            

Date completed - 26/10/12

Task 1

Identify Resources and Materials Available

Isometric Paper

Isometric Paper is used to create concept drawings for the final product and can be used as a guideline in which we base our drawings of. The way it is done ‘Isometric’ is by the way it is styled, in the form of diagonal lines and with horizontal lines.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word will be used in order to create our research documents such as this one, and the documents produced will be placed onto our blog.

Blogger

Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. In our case we have published a blog in which we showcase the current state of production and any thoughts/concepts that we have.

The website for our blog is – http://www.Unit4gamesdev.blogspot.com

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems. What we are creating in Photoshop, is pixel art in the form of isometric drawing (2D artistry with the look of 3D).

The Internet and books on isometric artistry will be our main source of inspiration and research for the project.

My Room

My room for this project will be based on the game ‘Pokémon’.

My room will be made with the style of isometric drawing with pixel art.

The Pokémon franchise has advanced over the years in terms of artwork and the reason why I chose Pokémon for my project is because of this change. If you take a version like ‘Fire Red’ (2004), you can see that the art style was in the form of ‘over the top’ 2D perspective giving the feel of a 3D environment. Today with the new Pokémon (Black 2 & White 2) you can see that the art style of focus for this game is isometric with keeping the same feel of a 3D environment.

 

 

What I want in my room

PokéBall

A PokéBall is a type of item that is critical to a Trainer’s quest, used for catching and storing Pokémon

Battlefield

For my room I want to create a battle scene involving Pokémon fighting on a similar scene like this one. The environment might differ from what is shown in the picture but the concept will be the same.

Pikachu

Pikachu one of the Pokémon that I have chosen because it is one of my favourite Pokémon plus it is the most recognised and is the mascot of the franchise.

Other details

I am going to include other things into my project such as trainers, other Pokémon, items etc. but I am undecided on what to pick.

An example of something I would like to do is something like this. What I’d like to do is keep all the old colours from my chosen game (in this case it is ‘Fire Red’ version) and implement into a bedroom form instead of a town like shown in this example.

My first character design

 Concepts and Designs

My second character design



A pokeball

My design for pikachu, as one of the pokemon owned by one of the trainers.

This is my current progress of this project at the end of the time given. My  characters have not been implemented into the scene yet.

Our Schedule

As you can see, we made a Gantt Chart to represent out timetable for the project.

Leo's Work so far..

Supervision of timetabling (so far)

Day 1 01/10/2012,

9:30 – 12:00

Today we individually brainstormed ideas for the rooms we would be making. Beth told us we each had to make 10 ideas ourselves and then discuss them with the rest of the group. When we finished and discussed the idea with the rest of the group and it seemed that a lot of us had similar ideas which shows we’re all on the same track. We also shared some ideas with Beth and she gave feedback on these ideas we shared, she then assigned us to do 10 themes of what the rooms could be and with that we correlated the ideas and themes together in to a mindmap. We then got told to mindmap those themes and see if we can do anymore correlating.

12:00 – 14:20

We came together to choose what idea we were going to choose and after a long enough discussion we decided to do college dorms for game characters. So this is consisted of a hall and 6 rooms, each consisting of an area from each game, the characters are students studying to become the gaming icon heroes they’re destined to be. The first room will belong to Chris Coghlan who will be making a pokemon room with the look of a stadium battle as seen within the games and the television shows. Callum will be doing Skyrim with dovahkin with mead in tankards and meat. I will be doing John Shephard with space beer, ME computers, N7 armor bottles, Liara and Wrex with a bong. Joshua will be doing a room for big daddy with old jukeboxes. Jamie will be doing Halo with Chief and Cortana. Hamam will be doing Castlevania themed room. We are now mindmapping the contents of the rooms we will be making. We have also come to the conclusion that the target audience is 18-26, generally university students that do gaming.

Day 2 08/10/2012

09:40 – 13:00

At this point we have laid out what needs to be done by the end of the day and how we will approach finishing these objectives. Chris and Jamie have been assigned the design of the timetable in the form of a gantt chart. Hamam is designing the basic concept of the college dorms; this is going to be presented to Beth. Callum is typing up the proposal to present to Beth. Josh is researching abnd moodboarding pixel art that is in relation to games. Another idea was spurred from Callum that we should make optional back up plans for our rooms so nobody is stuck to doing that one room and they don’t have the same idea as someone else if they decide to change their mind. I’ve decided I’m going to make progress on the pitch of our project. We also decided that we need to make a list of props that will be in our room when we’ve finished with our objectives, and do a little research on them.

13:00 – 16:15

We discussed the sizes in terms of pixels and the average human height of each pixel art character will be 50 pixels, with the average of width being 25-30. Some of us are going to start experimenting with the pixel art techniques and some of us are writing up documents about our props and how we’re going to make them.

Day 3 15/10/2012

9:20 -09:50

This meeting that had taken place ultimately discussed what had to be finished by the end of today and who would do it. The first thing discussed was the individual research on what we’re going to include in our room, some of us have and some of us haven’t completed so the ones who haven’t completed it, this is their current priority. Personally I’ve completed the individual room research so I’m going to move on to talking about the target audience. Joshua has finished techniques for pixel art which we are going to include in our presentation pitch, displaying how we plan on doing our pixel art. Another thing we will need included in the presentation is the constraints that may hold us back; Jamie is going to an analysis on the plans. Callum is going to create a blog so we can put work on there when we’re not in college; he’s also going to add extra to his current proposal. I’m going to begin production on the presentation after I’ve analysed the target audience. Once we’ve all done our objectives we can fully present our pitch and then we can adapt off feedback and then we can finalise our idea. Chris has now created the blog.

Day 4 22/10/2012

9:00 – 09:15

Basically we’re just finishing off all our research so we can piece it all together to use it in a presentation used for the pitch. We’re just waiting on Jamie to complete constraints and then we shall be all good to put together out presentation. In the meantime we’re going to put together all we can with people who have completed their work. Chris is going to complete a report on our resources and materials available which was supposed to be done with the rest of learning outcome 1 but it’s something to complete while awaiting the work from Jamie.

Hamam has now completed the template for the college dorms.

Day 5 05/11/2012

9:00 – 09:55

_________________________________________________________________________________

Target Audience

First I’m going to look at what the age ratings of the games are because they’re all different types of games aged at different age groups yet they still can be considered aimed at students.

Chris: Pokemon – 3+

Joshua: Assassins Creed – 15+

Callum: Skyrim – 15+

Hamam: Street Fighter – 12+

Jamie: Halo – 15+

Leo: Mass Effect – 15+

Surprisingly, none of the age ratings are 18+; this changes our original predicted target audience from 18-26 year olds to 15-26. Mainly however our target audience is university students because of the halls. The essence is that they’re supposed to see the correlation between the pixel arts presenting the iconic game heroes in their dorms to the dorms of the students themselves, as if these iconic game heroes actually did tend a university to become what they are. It is also aimed at gamers alike however because these games characters are big ones that any regular gamer could recognise.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Callums individual research

Research for SKYRIM themed room

Individual research for Skyrim themed room

I have Primary research of Skyrim from owning the game and playing it thoroughly although I will need some images as a reference when drawing my pixel room

These are the main type’s swords in Skyrim, I will use them as ornaments in my room or have characters wielding or creating them

I will try and add tattoos and scars to my pixel characters which are similar to these to add more detail

I will create the door and wall for my room in this style, which is the dwarven ruins in Skyrim

This is a basic stone tower they are scattered throughout Skyrim and will be recognisable to the target audience who are old enough to play the game

These are enemies you can find throughout Skyrim I will use these in my room but change details like the colour of the cloaks, patterns of branches etc.

These are objects in a standard Skyrim house, I will use these in my room but they will be displayed in another layout