Game Dev: Meeting Notes
09/28/15
Background
William graduated Art Institute of Tucson in 2012. Sought out this club to find like-minded people. In the beginning, only he and Cindy did art.
What is Pixel Art?
The art of video games. The old limitations of what art in games could be that is now a style unto itself.
Why Use Pixel Art?
It's pretty.
It's computationally cheap and efficient (small image).
Can be made with most anything (any raster image is pixel art, basically).
Re-using assets that you have is a part of the pixel art craft. Can use art tools to palette swap sprites.
What's Pallette Swapping?
Color gradient that can be mapped over images. It's how Mega Man's various colors work.
Today's Agenda
Pixel Art: what it is, what it isn't.
How it's done.
The tools to use.
The workshop on Saturday will be line art, then animate a bouncing ball, and then make that ball have a tail (call it a squirel) and have it bounce it around.
Photoshop, or anything that can make a raster and be exported as a gif:
- Gimp
- Pencil2D (a program)
When Workshop
There's a doodle poll for where and when. Figuring it out.
Color-Swapping Technique Called Hue-Shifting
Something that will be gone over in the workshop. Pick a base color and then shift to warmer/cooler colors to get the palette for the art.
This technique is used to create palettes for basically anything. Pallettes are really important. Using too many colors looks gross.
Character Animations
Will teach how to do a base animation, idle animation and other stuff. And also put it into an engine. In the workshop next week.
3D Art with Pixel Textures
Makes 3D images with pixel textures. This is also efficient.
Cut a Slab Out of the Color Wheel and Only Use That
"By cutting shapes out of the color wheel palette I can get nice color schemes that are well-balanced. This is also nice because it gives me a general idea of how much of each color to use."
Link to zipfile of all images will be available soon.
Opening Photoshop
Who has used photoshop or a grid or pencil digital tool before? Bunch of people.
Failing to Show Youtube Video: PixelArt TileSets
IEEE wifi troubleshooting.
And now it is running.
The nine-tile grid is super powerful.
We stopped at the "make a tileset" part of the video (around 8 minutes in). We'll be doing that at the workshop on Saturday.
Funny thing to say about Shovel Knight in a minute: went from NES palette to a few more colors, and then made things simpler to make them more detailed. Will link articles on Facebook.
Side Note: Voxel-Art: Actual 3D Pixel Art
Not much known about it by William.
For the Workshop
Bring a computer. Bring a mouse.
Will bring a program on a usb drive for drawing that you can install at the workshop. Pixel. This one?
Other ones that are good:
- A-Sprite
- GraphicsGale
It will be in IEEE room. Sign up on the doodle poll and see what time it is.
Come if you can!