bishopmyers reblogged
Summoning circle made for my visual novel.
bishopmyers reblogged
Boat background walkthrough
Today I’m going to show process for my boat background, which has a day and night version.
bishopmyers reblogged
Mansion background walkthrough
Hey, I’m not dead! I’m currently working on a cool visual novel about wizards with guns called The Devil’s Broker, and I wanted to show the process for this background I made for it.
bishopmyers reblogged
Tilemancer
Speaking of artistic centaurs and tools, here’s a generative tool you can use right now. Tilemancer is a node-based tile-generator for limited palette 2D tiling textures.
The UI has some counterintuitive bits (click and drag up and down to change numbers) but it’s a nifty little tool. This tutorial may help.
I’m sure you can think of some creative ways to use the tiles you make.
bishopmyers reblogged
Neural Doodle and Pixel Art
A little while ago, @santiontanon suggested trying to use neural-doodle to upscale pixel art. Alex J. Champandard added some tweaks to improve the support for the process, and now we’re off to the races.
I’ve been running my own experiments, as you can see above. It doesn’t work for every texture, and there’s still a few occasional issues, but the combinations that do work are pretty astonishing.
NeuralDoodle generally takes a content image, and a style image, and translates the content into the style. You can also give it just the style image and seed data and have it synthesize a new image based on what it sees in the original style image.
Here’s a blue rock texture I made with Tilemancer getting interpreted as vines:
And here’s some more textures that used that same blue rock image as a seed. These were done with just a style image (the photographs, in this case) and a seed image (the pixel art blue rock), but no content image.
Also using a content image results in a final output that more strongly resembles the content image, though with more discontinuities if there’s too great a mismatch between the content and style. You can see how this one doesn’t quite work:
These, on the other hand, came out much better:
As you can see, if there’s a huge mismatch between the content and the style, you may have trouble seeing the content in the result (though playing with the settings can sometimes find a better blend). But they still make for some pretty good images anyway.
Now, there’s a virtuoso pointillism to the practice of pixel art, so this isn’t going to replace all pixel art. Pixel art has already found its evolutionary art niche; new technology replaced all of the pixel art that had technologic reasons a long time ago. (Though we’re likely to get some Minecraft texture packs out of this.)
But as part of a larger workflow–sketch out a rough idea of the texture you want, let the neural network dream up the details–this is going to be an interesting tool in the toolbox.
Pretty interesting highlights from an interview with one of the lead concept artists for Final Fantasy XV. In particular it touches on some of the challenges of designing the unnamed NPCs in the game.
bishopmyers reblogged
Moving House
Hey guys, this is Kate. You might know me as the voice of Kanaya in Let’s Read Homestuck, or as the creator of a webcomic a while back called Fan Dan Go, or maybe as the host of the Youtube channel katethemongoose which features the “Chilled Art” tutorials and a Let’s Play of Mass Effect about a lesbian space wizard called Shepard Shepard, or maybe you’ve watched my Friday Night Dungeon Crawl streams, or maybe you’ve played The Vestibule, Ars Harmonia, Vacant Sky Contention or Encarmine (lol kidding, nobody bought Encarmine), all of which I worked on. You might know me as felicitousArtisan, or if you’ve been on the internet a while, Darth Mongoose.
Cutting to the chase, due to a shitty situation involving my rented house turning out to have a basement without proper damp proofing leading to dangerous mould growth that nearly killed my girlfriend’s asthmatic sister, and the landlady being… I am going to refrain from typing everything I want to say about her just insert a Karkat Vantas esque string of rage here… I’m having to move to new accommodation very suddenly. I could really use an extra grand to do this with, and could do with it within the month. That’s a grand in British Pounds, by the way, which is equivalent to $1420 (blaze ittt…I have never smoked weed in my life who am I kidding).
I don’t like just asking for money because I’m fully capable of doing stuff and I’d rather work for it, and I don’t think you lot want to just throw money at me for nothing… so I’m instead taking suggestions. (but if you DO want to throw money at me for nothing I’m not gonna complain: paypal.me/KateHolden )
Commissions are open as always, just email kefholden@gmail.com My rates are reasonable but they are professional rates, so they go from £25 up usually (assume £25 is a full colour line art and cel shaded head and shoulders portrait of you or anyone you like, painting costs extra, full body costs extra, detailed background costs extra, I’m negotiable within reason). I have an online portfolio at: www.kateholdenart.com and I’m generally fast and reliable; I have a reputation to uphold after all! I’m happy to do album art or book covers, posters, portraits, game art assets, even whole comics (warning, comics aren’t cheap, especially if you want full colour and stuff, they’re a lot of work)… anything really except stuff that’s excessively smutty or involves topics that are awful like inappropriate images of under-age characters or anything degrading to… basically anyone.
Buuuut not everybody might want a bespoke commission, so I’d like to gauge interest about things people would be willing to donate/pay for. Ideas include: -Art Streams or online workshops. I’ve been running art workshops all over the country professionally for about eight years for schools, events, even the BBC, so I’m confident I can deliver and help level up people’s drawing. -Something related to Dungeons & Dragons. I’m a seasoned Dungeon Master and I love to DM! Ideas could be: 1. Hiring me as DM for sessions over Roll20, 2. I do a special fundraising Dungeon Crawl, 3. People donate to participate in Dungeon Crawl themselves along with the regulars. -Crap, I dunno, t-shirts? Merch? Obviously the answer is a “Fucking Ice Cream Van” shirt. This would solve all my problems… ¬_¬;;;;; -Voice Acting. My current place makes this frustratingly difficult because it’s next to a main road, but I have a nice mic and I can do voice acting and voice over if you need it and don’t mind giving me a week or two leeway to make sure I can get quiet time to do it.
Comments are open for your thoughts. Ideas?
bishopmyers reblogged
One of my favorite things about getting to voice Dakura Maladorr in Vacant Sky Awakening is that I get to cross two things off my bucket list.
- Play a hero in an rpg
- Play a villain in an rpg
bishopmyers reblogged
Naora voice: Look at me I’m Naora I’m the best character in this whole damned series and nobody knows anything about me
@faisdm tfw it’s four in the morning and you don’t own a single article of Naora’s outfit but you’re gonna closet cosplay her because #yougotta
Please, Stop Writing Happy Endings
I’ve been promising a post about this for ages and now I finally have the opportunity to procrastinate on something, so I’m going to do it.
This is a plea to other writers and game designers to start seriously considering the power you wield so that you can use it ethically and responsibly.
bishopmyers reblogged
Forgot to tumbl this one! New Chilled Art video where I ramble about character design and give some easy to follow practical hints and tips.
You can support Chilled Art on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/kateholden?ty=h
More Chilled Art videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNqE3D0gtmZw8vT4JL_ReJR77MM5G-Img
A neat how-to on character design from Kate!
bishopmyers reblogged
Hi Kate! A while back you made Ars Harmonia and I wanted to ask what programs you used to make it. It was super fun and it looked awesome // Have a nice whatever time of day it is :)
Oh thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed the game!
Ars Harmonia was kind of a mishmash project, put together in a very short space of time by largely three people; Me, Bishop and Julia. Because of this, a bunch of different programs were used to make it!
The game was built in the Unity Engine, which is a pretty good and affordable general game making engine. The last few months, my feelings have been leaning toward Unreal Engine 4. Both have pros and cons. It’s a good idea to check out what engines there are if you want to make a game; pick one that suits you.
The art in the game is… interesting hahaha. The 2D character art is obviously drawn by me, and I did the inks in Manga Studio (the new version of which is called Clip Studio) and the colours in Photoshop, so the same techniques I tend to use for comics. The backgrounds are interesting. They’re largely made by Bishop, putting together 3D assets and textures into scenes, rendered in 3DS Max (I think the rendering was in VRay? I’m sure Bishop will correct me if that’s wrong) the various high resolution layers (light, shadows etc) from the render passes were given to me and I composited them and tweaked the levels and colours in Photoshop, touched up rough bits etc. There are a handful of 3D models that we didn’t already have made from past projects and we’re able to find online that were needed for the plot, and those were made by me. I think the ones of note are the violin case, the calendar, the newspaper and I retextured a couple of book models we had. I did the modelling in Blender and texturing in Photoshop, sometimes using Quixel Suite. Towards the end of the project, we were running low on time and energy, so a number of the backgrounds for scenes are just straight-up stock photos, sometimes edited.
Voices were provided by CoLab friends, who all did a wonderful job. They were edited in Audacity by me. The music was all found online.
Please note that it’s perfectly possible to make a game with fewer programs than this! AH was kind of a strange creation process, trying to get the best looking game with our short timeframe and ragtag skill assortment!
Yup, that’s right! To expand on the backgrounds a bit, the general process was this:
-Find free models online that suited our needs where possible.
-Failing that, reuse existing models we’ve made before (the hotel room, some of the props in the Laveau residence)
-Failing that, model from scratch.
-Compose the scenes in 3ds Max and configure the lighting and materials (the most time-consuming part, as each test render took 6+ hours!).
-Render out final image with Vray, export out different render passes (diffuse, reflectivity, ambient occlusion, shadows were the main ones). Send off to Kate to composite.
If it sounds convoluted, as Kate said, you can easily make a game without nearly this much work. In the case of Ars Harmonia, I wanted to experiment with implementing some techniques I had been playing with but hadn’t had the opportunity to use in practice. The workflow definitely could have been improved and streamlined, and probably will be if and when the game is continued.
An insightful article by a professional pixel artist on the relevance of pixel art for games made in the modern day.
bishopmyers reblogged
“Kate Greatly Disapproves”
I’ve been playing Dragon Age Inquisition, and a thing occurred to me: I don’t really like character approval ratings.
Or at least not how they’re generally put into practice. I like the idea of befriending your partymembers and of building that friendship and being rewarded for doing so, and of making it into a gameplay mechanic, but I feel like how most games implement this is weird, frustrating and even a little unhealthy.
There are a few major issues with character approval ratings:
1. Not attempting to get everybody’s approval maxed (or your love interest’s in a Ren’ai) is sub-optimal in gameplay terms. It may lead to missing out on useful abilities, equipment and XP from special quests, put you on course for a bad ending or cause you to lose partymembers. 2. Most characters react well to being agreed with and told what they want to hear. 3. Most of these decisions take place in a case-by-case vacuum ignoring previous scenarios usually with only rare exceptional events where telling a person one thing then doing something else or saying a different thing to somebody else leads to a greater loss of approval than saying something they disagree with then doing so.
The idea that the Marvel films are an appeal to people’s hard-wired desire for stories about people better, stronger and faster than they are isn’t necessarily a bad thing. At the same time, they don’t serve as a model for inspiring people to do more in the face of crisis than watch, worship and wait to be saved. It isn’t just boring dramatically; it’s perilously close to social conditioning.
(...)
The point of Marvel’s cloak-and-dagger skullduggery with S.H.I.E.L.D. is a familiar line of argument and entertainment we’ve become perilously used to: the plot where an unscrupulous, power-hungry arm of the intelligence apparatus is thwarted in their plans…by a scrupulous, public-service-minded arm of the intelligence apparatus. Again, the status quo remains intact. Even Ultron’s put-down in Avengers 2—“You Avengers want to save the world, but you don’t want to change it”—gets neutered by the follow-through: Ultron’s idea of change is killing humanity, and so the status quo of mere survival is ringingly endorsed above annihilation—which is really not that much of a choice.
A post that’s not about games for once! This is an essay that examines the unsettling impact of archetypal heroic fantasy stories, drawing specific examples from Marvel’s recent works.
As the classical hero story becomes more popular than ever, it’s important, as creators, that we take a step back and recognize the subconscious social conditioning we reinforce by telling these stories. What values do stories about heroes promote? Are these the values we want to propagate?
Whatever kind of stories you write, it’s important that you think about what it is you’re saying through your story. Even if you don’t write heroic fantasy, this is a worthwhile read to help you identify the subtle, pervasive ways unwanted messages work their way into our stories.
bishopmyers reblogged
Vacant Sky Awakening menu portraits. Naora (top right) is the latest one, since she joins the party last, so the three Orkans were obviously the priority since they’re in the game from the very start. Since Naora was done last, of course she’s my favourite one, because like most artists I consider my latest work better than my old work!
So, the menu portraits here are laden with Symbolism, and no, that wasn’t inspired by Dragon Age Inquisition’s Tarot cards, I started making these before that game was out and was surprised by their similar approach! I wanted to use painting for these rather than cel-shading like the dialogue portraits for two reasons: 1. We already had battle portraits for enemies painted by Anna from back when the planned battle system was 2D that we decided could be used for turn order and journals and stuff, and I wanted to at least have a look that’d feel cohesive (Anna actually taught me to paint, so we have similar styles which helps), and 2. I feel like it’s hard to get a really impressive look for a single illustration with cel shading compared to painting.
Each character in the game, we came up with a list of symbols and ideas and words we’d associate with them. In gameplay terms, each character has a “nature” word that describes what trait gives them power. I think my favourite one is Sarian’s nature of “Subversion”, which I depicted by inverting the portrait so that she’s head-down, which of course also works because Sarian’s weak legs give her trouble walking and she’s associated with heraldric snakes as her family symbol, so a lying down pose worked really well. With an English Lit degree, I’m trained in analysing things to look for symbolism and dissecting texts and images for meaning, so being the one putting that stuff in there for other people is fun! Everything from the poses to the expressions to the things surrounding the characters here is meaningful in some way.
I really hope somebody completes the game and goes back to look at these portraits later in the series and goes “Ohhhhh you sneaky sneaks, I get it!”