More girls finished. More are in the works already. Kunimitsu is up there as one of my top favourites I've finished so far now. Which is good since Christie came out as a total shit-fest when I started her.
I've found my mood at work can be directly tied to the Effective PPI of the images I have to work with. Dad tried conspiratorially telling me last night that they use big pictures in magazines so they don't need to write as much. To a certain degree this is totally true. And the other half is that big pictures always look fantastic. Also people feel ripped off if you have a little bit of text floating in the middle of a page with an equally tiny image above it swimming in a sea of white space. Those are my wise professional industry words on the subject. Take that to the bank. Get interest on it, and send the interest back this way to this post plz k thx.
We've had a few amusing phone calls at work. The first I recall was when the app version of the magazine was released. We have a deal that allows subscribers of the magazine to have a free subscription of the digital version. Which is nice. Anyway, some guy called up demanding a free iPad with the app version installed on it. Worth a shot I guess.
I've heard tell of another caller who rang up to abuse us over an article published in a gay mens magazine. I don't think they figured out that ours was a totally different magazine which has none of that sort of content in it.
Anna Williams needed to be reworked, the original one kept getting mistaken for Ada Wong from Resident Evil.
I've started to develop a way of doing "cute" feet rather than sharp points. Hopefully this won't be a jarring style change when I do the final group shot at the end.
I bought Tekken Tag 2 today! Just to make sure my nostalgia of the series wasn't ill placed. I have to say it's definitely a step up from Street Fighter. It flows better, and the control scheme and instructions for how to do moves make sense. Street Fighter showed you how to do moves by way of arcane scribblings which vaguely resembled a controller and nineteen billion times out of ten the move didn't work. Feel free to put this down to me being a noob. But with Tekken you can learn your character pretty quickly and then get down to the business of figuring out how to juggle your opponent for as long as possible.
Unfortunately everyone who plays online already knows how to do that. I think of it as the mode you go on to to say "Ha, look at that idiot with that random arse character, he couldn't do shi-" and then promptly watch your character not touch the ground for the duration of your shameful visit to Put-in-your-place-ville.
Quin
Work has been going well! A lot of funny stories are starting to leak out of the place which I'm enjoying. Deadlines galore, but let us assume that this is always the case and not worth mentioning. One of my first came from Quin when I totally hooked him up with a job there. He was gonna act as our online marketing guy, playing on Facebook and stuff all day. After our morning meeting (and about an hour or so into the day) he comes to me and tells me he may have got another job somewhere else, and then promptly buggers off. Andre (Editor) comes in and says "I didn't think my morning meetings were that bad."
The aftermath was that the job he was told he got somewhere else was twisted into being "Oh we found some more people and now your all vying for the same spot."
Fortunately he's found himself some decent work now which doesn't require a week of unpaid work and parking fairs.
Ben
Later on Ben heard of the event and tried applying as well. Tim sent me an email asking if I knew who Ben was. I said I did but quickly added a disclaimer that I'm in no way responsible for friends and acquaintances who suddenly ditch the premises. The great thing about these run ins is that I got to have a fun look at their CV's. Ben appears to put "Ladies man" at the top of his skills list. It's a very long list. Which makes sense, since chicks dig guys with skills. Having so many skills starts to snow ball after a while.
We've had our first positive reviews on Spark and M2 Australia. I've found out that Apple is deceptively fragmented. Reviews and ratings seem to be all over the place willy nilly. Some only show up on the website, or iTunes or on the app store on your device. It's a real pain in the ass.
While we're on the topic of iTunes being a (surprise surprise) pain in the ass, I've been trying to copy over my Walking Dead data so I can keep my save for the second season (whenever it comes out, I don't want to leave 3gigs or so of data clogging up my pitiful amount of space).
So I start it up, "shit not enough space on C:, I better change where everythings getting offloaded... Ok that Should have worked, but it isn't, fair enough. Can't expect it to move everything over half way through an operation."
So this part was forgivable. But what I didn't appreciate was when iTunes found my meticulously arranged folders of games and apps & decided to go spasticated and THROW EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE. It felt like it was saying "Haven't you seen an average mac desktop?? We despise foldering systems! HERE! Have everything spread across 4 or 5 screens, now it'l be much easier to click on what you want!" "But won't it be harder to find it?" "Ha ha, we made the search feature for a reason and we don't need organised people like you thwarting that magical feature."
Screw you iTunes, I wish I didn't have to rely on you for a career.
So I finally got a Beta key for the new Simcity, which much like the new Star Trek Movies or anything else which is attempting to be a reboot, doesn't have anything appended on the title. Which is a little confusing I admit, because as far as my brother is concerned, he's never needed a beta key to play Simcity.
At the tender age of kindergartener I learnt the concepts of "residential", "commercial", and "industrial" while watching my brother play. I remember asking Mum whether we were driving through an industrial area once, which surprised her. But it was easy to tell where we were, the geography had a yellow tinge about it.
When I wasn't allowed on the computer me and my friends would scrabble around in the dirt recreating Simcity, but we simply called it "The Game". I'd play the arbiter, or what I'd later know as the dungeon master, proclaiming things like "Your residents are getting overweight! What are you gonna do about it?"
Once we got a post hole borer and made a bottomless shoot to hell which our citizens would through sacrificial offerings down. Overnight a hedgehog fell down it and we spent the afternoon trying to rescue it.
Anyway, eventually Simcity 2000 came out but we only had the demo to play. But we played the crap out of it anyway. Concepts like making water pipes and things baffled my brother, who to this day still only plays the original.
The first one I bought was Simcity 3000, which wasn't much different. Simcity 4 stunk out loud and Simcity Deluxe on the iPad was ok. I quickly swamped the map with my city, which only took a sitting to do. The constant alerts were annoying, and no matter what I did, the water was never just good enough for my sims.
Then came the new Simcity. I watched a few play throughs and aesthetic concepts and fell in love with it. I went and applied for beta early on as well. I'm assuming everyone got a key by now if Gabe has one. Heh heh.
The game seems a lot more accessible than previous titles. It also cuts out a lot of the bells and redundant whistles that had started to spam up the game. But it holds true to the feel of Simcity somehow, and the music is awesome! For that alone I'm going to definitely go get the game.
The game seems geared toward creating multiple citys that work in conjunction with each other. You can build a city right next door to your old one, and hire the facilities like waste removal and electricity to help run your new city more efficiently. One place can be for the average Joe, the other could be the vacation getaway city where that same Joe goes to blow his load of money.
It's kind of invigorating starting a new city, plonking down some houses and then watching the people walk to their place of work if it's within dawdling distance. It makes the little world your building feel just that little more believable.
You don't mess around with power lines or water pipes anymore, instead everything is done via the roads. Zoning areas are built immediately adjacent to your streets, no more painting cubes of geography. Even handling dense, medium, light zones is done with the roading. If you upgrade the roads I assume that it unlocks the zones ability to become a dense residential or whatever.
After playing it Becky told me to buy it immediately. She'd never been a Simcity fan prior to her one hour demo.
I can't wait for this game. March 5th is gonna be awesome.
Although I'm personally blaming EA for how short and "advertisery" the "beta" was. it's more like a consumer demo than an actual bug/stress test.
Been getting these out at a fair clip I reckon. Today we have Jaycee & Julia Chang, who are apparently the same person, But I figured it didn't really count as an alternate outfit, since It's so radically different and comes as a separate character. So whatever.
I've decided that my pet hate is digital devices that beep forever. These are probably the most annoying things I have ever come across. It feels like Chinese water torture when you can't go stomping around the house waking everyone up to neutralise the watch or whatever it is that needs so much attention.
Today at work we got some analytics back on one of our digital magazines. Turns out the Editors letter section doesn't get read as much as every other part of the magazine. Even the ad got more hits. There were some jokes flying around about insolent employees who point this out get to loose their chair etc. On the way out the door for the evening I stop by the editor. "Don't worry man, I read the editors section." "Thanks." I start to walk out then stop and turn around "...For spell checking."
Oh if you have an iPad you should totally go download Spark and give me some critique or whatever. Maybe even read the editors letter. It's a totally free magazine. So you really have nothing to lose other than some bandwidth.
Two more Tekken girls for your consumption. I'm super stocked that +Rob Wood is using Ling Xiaoyu as his display pic. He actually suggested she be the next girl I pixelate. Using my art to represent yourself is one of the highest forms of compliments online in my opinion. Coming equal is when you use my art and link back to me! That actually gives me some pay off. You know who you are.
Alisa is one of my favourites at the moment I think. It's hard to get past chainsaw arms in my opinion. It does a lot for a girl, ya know?
I figured out all this stuff by myself, after trying a few different methods. It may seem like a no brainer, but a bunch of people I know use Illustrator and "Snap to Grid" to build their pixel art. I find this waaay too laborious and inefficient. using my method and doing it in Photoshop actually allows you to publish at any size you like with no blurring or any of the problems that would make vectors a more preferable choice.
Anyway, let's get started. I use CS5, but version shouldn't be that important. Make your canvas quite small. I usually make it 100 x 100px and then just extend it out later if I get ambitious. Resolution can stick to 72pi.
Once you're inside, change your brushes to pencil, and make the size 1. Do the same with your Eraser.
This isn't a drawing lesson. So I'll assume you go nuts and draw something awesome.
Now you're done with your masterpiece. Go File/Save for Web & Devices
Now this is the bit that makes it all worthwhile. Change your image size to 1000%, this makes it a nice decent size for showing off to your mates. Change Quality to "Nearest Neighbor". This means your pixels won't get blurred or go all crappy when you make it larger. You could make your final published image massive and it will still stay super crisp.
Publish away!
After publishing it I take it back into photoshop where I use the brush tool to do what I call "post-pixel" effects. So I'll do smooth shading and lighting. But that's up to you and your style. If you do make sure your magic wand and paint bucket are Tolerance 1.
Hope this helps! If you have any questions don't be afraid to comment! Also if you have an even better method I'd love to hear it.
Since I haven't had time to do more than a few doodles I've taken up the pixel art again. I got a hit from google when someone image searched for lewd 8bit art. Apparently there is a market for that sort of thing. I guess it's up to me to fill it. This time I'm revisiting the girls from various Fighting games. I've started off with Tekken since that was the first and pretty much only punch up game I ever played with fervour. Personally I played as Marshall Law in Tekken 2. Nina was pretty much the only chick I remember from then. That and Michelle Chang.
In the next post I'll go into detail on how to set up Photoshop for pixel art.
