Pixel Workshop and Aseprite

10/04/15

So, I had a pretty positive experience at the pixel art workshop yesterday. I don't really have anything to show for it, as I burned out pretty quickly messing around with the new tool.

The Content of the Workshop

The workshop started with the talker, William, saying that anyone can be good at art. Art is something that you get good at through repetition and study. A lot of it is the repetition.

Then he went on to talk about how art is done in layers. Eventually, he interupted himself to say, "Let's just make some pixel art." And he created a chest-opening animation as the group attempted to keep up.

From there, he showed us how to create a walking animation.

I was a bit lost through the process, as I didn't notice him switching between frames while making the animations, so instead of making mulitple frames, I mutilated the single one I was working on.

Oops.

The Tool

The tool we used is called Aseprite. It's got a pay version, a free-demo (where you can't save), and a dev version. The dev version is gotten by clone the repository and compiling the source code (its open source). The dev version has all the functionality of the $10 pay-for version, I think.

Me being me, I went ahead and got the dev version running on my Chromebook. I even made a special crouton partition just for it (I called it "art"). I'll probably also install it here on my desktop.

In fact, I'll do just that right now.

Two hours later....

Compiling stuff on Windows is confusing and gross. Confusing and gross I say!

I'll figure it out eventually. Whatever.

Aseprite is cool and I think I'll use it as some part of my daily art goal when 2016 comes around. I'll also try and do something with it weekly until 2016, maybe.

I'm not really sure yet how I'll go about this whole learning to art thing. I just know that it'll be a big part of 2016 for me.