Supplice spriting timelapse #1

I’m busy with all kinds of projects as usual, however I thought recently that I could record myself working on some game artwork and create a kind of time-lapse video with some commentary what I’m doing and why. :) And while it’s not a proper tutorial, a look into someone’s workflow can still be interesting and helpful. Here’s a first video where I clean up and paint-over the 3d renders of the weapons to create proper gun pickup sprites for the Supplice Doom project. I plan to make more soon, covering making sprites and textures from scratch.

Thanks to James Paddock for the great music I could use in the video!

Artists who inspired me – Henk Nieborg

Welcome to a new column where I will write about artists who I admire and have been a great influence on me. The name of the article may, or may not be a reference to a certain spy movie. ;)

For the honourable first, I’ve chosen Henk Nieborg. While his name is probably only known by pixel art enthusiasts, this Dutch artist was my first big inspiration, somebody that I looked up to, both in the terms of actual level of skill as well as future career – I was a teenager back then, still early on the road to find my way. Fascinated by game design and pixelart (Which at the time, seemed easier than other types of art, which in my opinion now, is very far from truth and I don’t know how I did get that idea – I think that each medium or art discipline has it’s own specifics and it’s not possible to objectively say that any is easier or harder over the other.) Henk blew my mind when I discovered him and it’s very likely I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now if it wasn’t for his work.

Contra 4
Contra 4 (Nintendo DS/2007)

Read More

Monstro release date!

Monstro on Steam on December 3rd!

Hello everone! This is pretty big news for me – we’ve scheduled the release date for our puzzle-tactical game, Monstro: Battle Tactics. This is the project I’m working on together with Maurycy Zarzycki (who is my best friend and the coding wizard and main designer of the game) as Retrocade.net. We’re coming to Steam on December 3rd, this is our first game on Steam so I’m sure you know how excited we are. :) We are going to launch a new trailer soon as well. If you don’t wan’t to miss anything to best idea to follow us on Twitter @CagesCorner and @RetrocadeNet. Cheers folks, I’m back to work since there’s still a lot to do!

Milestones


No wonder I hid the Manticore’s paws behind the logo…

Learning something, increasing your skill takes time and sometimes feels like a struggle – there are moments when you just don’t feel you’re getting better. Usually, for most people, progress comes in increments or at least feels that way – long peroid of working and then those short nice moments of “Oh hey, I’m suddenly better at this!” ;) If you wanted to visualize this somehow you could imagine it as an slowly ascending staircase.

What you can do, to check how are you doing, is to just dig up some of your old artwork and simply re-do it. I have to admit, I didn’t attempt to do that it until now. Since we’re preparing Monstro for it’s release, as part of the improvements on the game, I’ve decided to redraw the artworks for the monsters. Here’s a before-after – there’s a 1,5 year gap between those IIRC. I think I’ve really improved a lot and it really feel like the practice wasn’t wasted time – hopefully this comparison will inspire and motivate you to keep going on your journey as well! ;)

Read More

Next livestream: 20th March

Hello! I’ll be doing the next livestream tomorrow, on 20th March, 2pm CET (Central European Time – I don’t have anything special prepared, so I will just do some work for personal projects on stream – Creating an 8-bit palette for a 2.5d engine and some sprite or texturework afterwards. Unless something goes wrong, this stream will be archived as well. Stay tuned!

CC goes multimedial!

To kickstart the revival of CC, I’ll be hosting now Twitch streams every once in a while (Time/date will be posted in advance) – already did one, but forgot to tick on the “archive broadcasts” checkbox, so it’s lost in time and space – doh! I’ve also created a Facebook page and a Twitter account for short updates. Like and Follow if you so desire! ;)

Introduction to shading

Very often, I encounter starting out artists who consider line art drawings and shading/rendering work as two separate things, the second one being more professional, harder, more demanding, etc. I don’t understand that division, since both are just a method of representing three dimensional objects in the 2d space. They require the same knowledge – what exactly?

What you need is the awareness of the 3d forms behind what your drawing – especially, the planes, which compose those forms. It’s easier to think about them in case of angular figures, but what about spherical or cylindrical forms? Exactly the same as the others. As you probably remember from your maths class, a sphere has infinite number of planes. As an example of this, here’s an computer rendered example of an angular shape, progressively expanded into something more spherical, but still not a perfect sphere. It’s easier to think of simple objects first – and simple objects can always be expanded to be more complex or smooth ones.

Read More

Links ahoy!

I’ve decided to add a fully-fledged links page, enjoy! Accessible through the top menu, or through here. ;)

Good looking old games: Amiga first person shooters

This is the first entry to the series! From time to time, I will write about games I consider good looking and why – not limiting myself to first person shooters, or the PC platform, stay tuned!

In the second half of the 80’s and in early 90’s, Amiga was The Computer. Until IBM PC’s started to outclass the Amiga, it’s multimedia capability was unmatched. The games offered great graphics and sound for it’s time. It was also a platform for the creative individuals because of the available software for creating your own art (Even 3d models and renders!) and music. The software and hardware expansion Video Toaster improved the 3d rendering capability and allowed the Amiga users to work on video post production at home, which was quite revolutionary at the time – it had a lot of features which were available only in the expensive studio equipment by that time.

Being a strict PC gamer for a long while, I’ve discovered plenty of interesting stuff later, in the age of internet. ;) The first person shooters really kicked of in the 90’s, which was a time when the PC started to outrun the Amiga in the “arms race”. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there are Amiga exclusive FPS titles, most of them arriving late to the party (1995-1997). Of course, I’m thinking about “3d”/2.5d shooters, not the ones of “moving crosshair” kind, or the 90 degree limited, faux 3d environment – like in plenty of RPG titles like, for example, Wizardry. Technically, there’s plenty of games on Wolfenstein 3-D tech level, and some are a little more advanced – keep in mind that the non-upgraded hardware wasn’t suited too well for 3d/2.5d games. I’ve picked some titles I consider visually, or technically, most interesting/inspiring.

Read More

Re-Aranged

Hello everybody!

I took a little break from the site, but I’ve now reordered the tutorials to be posts instead of pages and it should work a little better like this. :) I’ll be back to writing soon – I’d like to talk more about the visual aspects of some of the old games plus it seems I’ll be doing some cool stuff this year which should prove enough material for some interesting write-ups. Cheers and stay tuned!

Page 1 of 3

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén