Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
How exactly did you check? I see 2-pixel wide lines there.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
How exactly did you check? I see 2-pixel wide lines there.
Arg yes, I did a big mistake and didn't realize even after trying to check... 2x2 pen, but I had in mind "4 pixels" and not 4x4.
I'm going to hide in the corner...
(too bad that the text can't fit with 4x4)
I've been working on a tool to convert these images to paths/coordinates for brain age. Here's the first example:
Link to videoHere is what the lower half of that looks like in my tool
Green and red points are the beginning and end of each path I drew, and yellow are the intermediate control points. The game will automatically add the blue points when the touch input jumps between the given coordinates.
You'll see a lot of control points on slanted lines. Right now my tool only works with vertical, horizontal, or 45 degree diagonal lines. I need to add support for other line angles. I will also likely need to tweak some drawings to fit the game better, which would make drawing them quicker.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2794
Location: Northern California
I sprited this for something else and realized that it's something you guys want for the "script", so I de-colored it and resized it to fit the game window. 0 bad pixels on the image parser. For anyone else interested in doing pixel art but is having trouble with the 4x4 pixel limitation: Working in single pixels at 45x49 and resizing to 180x196 in Irfanview (specifically resizing, not resampling) should always produce a workable result with 0 bad pixels.
EDIT: Widened/heightened by 4 pixels to fit the window better.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Working in single pixels at 45x49 and resizing to 180x196 in Irfanview (specifically resizing, not resampling) should always produce a workable result with 0 bad pixels.
The 45x49 grid is a really easy way to guarantee a picture will have 0 bad pixels, but it restricts where you can place your 4x4 squares, so you can't make all valid images this way. As a silly example, have two simple images:
This image is possible to draw with Samsara's method.
This image is not, as the gap between the two lines isn't a multiple of four.
As a further example, the Drain Age and Hieroglyph images, and probably others, cannot be created with Samsara's method. In my opinion, it's a great way to get started on a drawing, but you may well want to manually touch-up the 180x196 version to improve slanted lines and curves.
Joined: 4/15/2013
Posts: 331
Location: In the attic
My thoughts on goroh's images:
#1 (Super Mushroom) - OK
#2 (Fire Flower) - I'm not a fan of the stem and outer rim being filled in. Doesn't look right to me.
#3 (Starman) - OK
#4 (Goomba) - Looks out-of-place from the non-8-bit Mario items. Could you perhaps draw a more modern-looking Goomba as well?
#5 (FreeCell King) - Not a very aesthetically pleasing graphical style. Perhaps give this one a miss.
#6 (Samurai Goroh) - I like the drawing style, but seeing as it's your personal avatar, I doubt that it'll be used at GDQ.
#7 (Captain Falcon) - I don't agree with the choice of facial expression. Perhaps he should be smirking rather than frowning?
#8 (Aerith?) - I don't think this one turned out very well.
#9 (Sonic) - Mostly okay, could do with a bit of refining on the curves.
#10 (Challenge Accepted) - This is OK.
Thanks for the feedback
For the Goomba I looked on the logo here (top-left corner) and decided to go that style intentionally. micro500 used the same style to create Jumpman a few post below (in the youtube video).
The flower has the New Super Mario Bros style because I found it easy to draw and still recognizable (otherwise should had gone with SMB1 style). I didn't attempt to not fill the flower, so I don't know how it would look. But I'll create an alternative version w/o the fill.
Edit:
The Freecell king was just like a joke image :P (Created it because it was simple)
The F-zero images come from F-zero GX. These are the emblems of the characters & that's their look. I created Goroh because of myself & decided to also create Falcon because they are rivals. Like the king above, I created them mostly for myself, they don't have to be used just because they exist (But the F-zero drawings are some of the ones I like the most...).
Yea, it's Cammy and not Aerith.
I didn't put much effort on Sonic and as result some lines didn't look curvy, probably will retouch some details later.
Jumpman was me :). It was originally a part of Drain Age, but I couldn't fit it in, so made a separate one. That being said, I kinda made it for fun, so am 100% ok with it being replaced with a more modern version of Mario.
As for the fire flower, I liked having the outer rim filled, but then New Super Mario Bros was what I know more :). Sorry for all the requests/suggestions, but maybe have the rim filled and stem clear? http://imgur.com/SZFl4zi
As for the other pictures, I like most of them! A few other comments:
#1 (Super Mushroom) - Nice. Consider whether to fill the red bit black?
#4 (Goomba) - I'd probably also prefer a more modern Goomba, though this is a bit hypocritical to say, following Jumpman ^^
#5 (FreeCell King) - Made me smile when I saw it, but I think you need to look at it for too long to really show at AGDQ
#6 (Samurai Goroh) - Awesome art, but a less iconic character than Captain Falcon.
#8 (Cammy) - Seems a bit sloppy and unclear
#9 (Sonic) - As you said, needs touching up
#10 (Challenge Accepted) - YES WE NEED THIS AND I ONLY JUST REALISED HOW MUCH WE NEED THIS <3
I was thinking on doing the SMB jumping, just like the one used in the favicon of the site, with the pixel style used on the goomba (and Jumpman).
As for filling the mushroom (or fire flower), you can open Paint and use the bucket to do it. I tried and didn't quite liked it, hence why I left it as it is.
Here are 2 more images:
xy2_ wrote:
AdituV wrote:
)#10 (Challenge Accepted) - YES WE NEED THIS AND I ONLY JUST REALISED HOW MUCH WE NEED THIS <3
Write clearly the right answer, manipulate it to be recognized wrongly, erase, draw "Challenge Accepted"?
Yea I like that. I was thinking on using the meme faces with some sort of story & that's a great idea.
Also had in mind drawing a tic-tac-toe, but that's to simple to bother creating an image out of it that I haven't done it.
I much prefer your dome fossil! While the current one is relatively true to the game sprite, it just looks super messy to me. For me, I just want to see the best overall result, so please don't hold back your submissions for little reason like that :)
(Also, I don't think I should really even have partial credit for the fossils as I just tweaked the lines slightly to remove bad pixels...)
Continuing to work on stuff that's on the script. This is what I assumed you meant by "Why not Zoidberg?" Since it's the usual meme. Can be easily changed to actually "Why not Zoidberg" If you meant it literally.
edit:
I am loving the images you guys are coming up with! Nice work everyone!
One thing that will help me out a lot is if you try to reduce the number of times lifting the pen is required. Take a look at these pictures:
The left is the unedited picture, and on the right is where you would touch the pen to draw the image. If you zoom in you can see there are many pixels that are not connected to any others, meaning that lifting the pen is required to start each segment. Lifting the pen adds 1-2 frames per extra segment required, so reducing the number of segments is a good idea.
You can see that a lot of those pixels form a line in the resulting image. A lot of times you can add a few extra pen taps and connect the points that were previously separated without altering the resulting image too much.
I did a quick edit to the picture above as an example:
I left some places alone where small important details would be lost and the result isn't dramatically different from the starting image, but will be much quicker to draw.
If you guys could try to reduce/eliminate those small segments before submitting the pictures, that would be really handy. I can/will do it if necessary later on, but I prefer to let you guys touch up your images to look best. I've updated the tools to allow you to generate the blue images above. The tools are now hosted on github: http://pjgat09.github.io/BrainAgeTools/. I will also update the link in the previous post.
But I don't know why I have this result with all those bad pixels, I made sure to use 4x4 for each "pixel" in the drawing:
I sprited this for something else and realized that it's something you guys want for the "script", so I de-colored it and resized it to fit the game window. 0 bad pixels on the image parser. For anyone else interested in doing pixel art but is having trouble with the 4x4 pixel limitation: Working in single pixels at 45x49 and resizing to 180x196 in Irfanview (specifically resizing, not resampling) should always produce a workable result with 0 bad pixels.
EDIT: Widened/heightened by 4 pixels to fit the window better.
The Freecell king was just like a joke image :P (Created it because it was simple)
The F-zero images come from F-zero GX. These are the emblems of the characters & that's their look. I created Goroh because of myself & decided to also create Falcon because they are rivals. Like the king above, I created them mostly for myself, they don't have to be used just because they exist (But the F-zero drawings are some of the ones I like the most...).
Yea, it's Cammy and not Aerith.
I didn't put much effort on Sonic and as result some lines didn't look curvy, probably will retouch some details later.
Really appreciate it! :D
edit: 
The left is the unedited picture, and on the right is where you would touch the pen to draw the image. If you zoom in you can see there are many pixels that are not connected to any others, meaning that lifting the pen is required to start each segment. Lifting the pen adds 1-2 frames per extra segment required, so reducing the number of segments is a good idea.
You can see that a lot of those pixels form a line in the resulting image. A lot of times you can add a few extra pen taps and connect the points that were previously separated without altering the resulting image too much.
I did a quick edit to the picture above as an example:
I left some places alone where small important details would be lost and the result isn't dramatically different from the starting image, but will be much quicker to draw.
If you guys could try to reduce/eliminate those small segments before submitting the pictures, that would be really handy. I can/will do it if necessary later on, but I prefer to let you guys touch up your images to look best. I've updated the tools to allow you to generate the blue images above. The tools are now hosted on github: http://pjgat09.github.io/BrainAgeTools/. I will also update the link in the previous post.
