slynyrd

Danchi Girl

Just a quick one for fun. Thinking of an old friend.

12 colors(mondo)
256x144
Photoshop

Distant Gods

Static artwork from Pixelmotion 15.

256x144
25 Colors
Photoshop

Prints & Merch

Pixelmotion - 15

Distant Gods
How can the landscape of the heart appear so foreign?

Pixelmotion gets the deluxe treatment again this month with a soundtrack and enhanced animation provided by Adobe After Effects. Starting to get into the workflow with this mixed animation style that blends frame animations made in Photoshop with smooth motion tweens in After Effects. There's also a lot of effects and animation tools I can exploit in AA. Excited about the potential of future scene...

100 Patrons!

Just wanted to quickly recognize the fact I just hit 100 patron for the first time. Honestly, it's been a grind to put out the volume of content I have and grow this thing over the past 20 months. But when I step back and look at that number, I feel incredibly privileged to have a supporting audience. You allow me to do what I love and motivate me to keep pushing the boulder up the hill. We're just getting started here!

So it looks like Pixelminis will be getting r...

My favorite place

A quick one for today's pixel_dalies theme, 'lake.' Inspired by a real local lake I frequent during the warm season. There aren't actually any cabins on an island, but it would be my dream home.

Wish I had more time to do spontaneous pieces like this. There's always a nice vibe I have trouble capturing in my more planned out work. Make it when you feel inspired, don't force it when your not.  

188x144

15 colors

Photoshop

45 minutes crea...

Thyrian Defenders - 19

Ok, it's been a busy week with all my other content but I just about got this Titan ready to blast off. We'll see how it goes, I'm much better at atmospheric scenes than fast paced action.

Since the ships are basically the characters in shmups, I think it's important to really develop the design. Including the cockpit and inner components, every inch of this bird has been thought out. We didn't just make a generic sprite and arbitrarily choose it's weaponry. Every ...

Tutorial - 35 - Tree

A detailed breakdown of the illustrations process.

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Tutorial - 34 - Leaves

Learn the basic shapes categories to help identify leaves in nature and inspire your plant designs.

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Tutorial - 33 - Plants

A fun lesson covering the 4 broadest categories in the plant world and several examples.

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Plant Life Assets Pack

This resource share includes all the sprites associated with Pixelblog 15. Have fun using these in your studies and personal gamedev projects. 

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Pixelblog - 15 - Plant Life

A refreshing lesson on the wonderful world of plants. Several tutorials and insights in the full feature.

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Thyrian Defenders - 18

Yo squad! Got some TD updates for you. Above is the current state of the second set of cells in the intro scene. Still working on the large cell with the Titan. I think I got the perspective I want, but the lighting will likely need to be modified when I contextualize the hangar space more. Some details on the gauges are currently omitted, as they will be added in when I animate. Hope I can finish this scene soon. It's been slow going on the story scenes since they are abo...

Duke Nukem pattern

Here's another design from the freelance work I did for Gearbox loot. This infinite wrapping pattern is composed of sprites inspired by Duke Nukem 3D. I remember the game fondly for the sound bytes and random interactive elements, but the 3D graphics of the Build engine were already pretty meh in 1996. Nevertheless, pretty cool monster designs that are both humorous and grotesque. How about you guys, any memories with Duke 3D? 

Life in the Doom Sector

Featured artwork from Pixelcast - 31

Been in a spacey mood lately. Hope to explore more fantastic space environments soon! 

Prints & Merch 

Pixelcast - 31

Life in the Doom Sector

A team of brave scientists research the remnants of a supernova from an isolated outpost.

Prints & Merch

Astrospectra

A haunting scene commissioned for one of Whispernaught's ambient tunes.

376 frames (0.05s frame duration)
31 colors
334x188 (original size for wide version)
Photoshop (scaled and converted to movie file with After Effects)

If you like dark ambient music, please give his channel some love! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyi09ztzUi-6uHkaXaTgwiw

Thyrian Defenders - 17

In every level we introduce unique mechanics to create more engaging gameplay, and strengthen the theme of the level. This week I'd like to show you an ice machine we recently created to make our snow level more interesting. These indestructible towers will generate a long change of ice tiles that often must be broken to pass safely, or sometimes they form around goodies, and things you want to access. The ice tiles are quite high defense so they are a factor that cannot b...

Borderlands 2 gun pattern

Another design I did for the Gearbox Loot store. This was to be a wrapping pattern for apparel and accessories. I actually never played the game, but I'm familiar enough to know it's all about customizing your firearms. Had to do a lot of research on the fictional manufactures to make sure the designs are faithful to the game.  

Opportunity

This is one of several designs I was commissioned to make for the Gearbox Loot store last fall. By the time I realized I could talk about it most of my designs had already made their run, are currently sold out, or perhaps they just never used them. Anyway, I’ll share more from this project soon!

March Schedule 2019

*Realized my first draft of the schedule was unreasonably tight in some places. I pushed back the dates of Pixelcast and Pixelmotion.

March is here and winter is still clinging on strong in my parts. Hopefully we can start to see some warmer weather this month, as I get a lot of my creative energy from being outdoors. Although there is no sign of it yet, the calendar assures me spring is right around the corner, right? Gotta pixel my way to sunshine!

 <...

Tutorial - 32 - City Skyline

Arrange buildings into a convincing city landscape by effectively using color and contrast.  

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Tutorial - 31 - Futuristic Skyscraper

Build unique structures using simple geometry.

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Tutorial - 30 - Skyscrapers

Some basic tall building types presented in my favorite side-view projection. More tips and details in feature article.

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Cityscapes Assets Pack

This asset pack includes all the building sprites associated with Pixelblog 14. Have fun using these assets in your pixel art studies or personal game dev projects!

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Pixelblog - 14 - Cityscapes

Let’s take a trip to the big city! Learn how to make skyscrapers and impressive cityscapes with tutorials focused on urban architecture.  

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Thyrian Defenders - 16

Welcome back to the Thyrian galaxy! In the past 6 months or so we have made dramatic changes to game concerning the gameplay, ui, and formatting. However, in that time we haven't made much progress on the continuation of new levels. Finally, that's about to change. Here's a look at the 3rd and final Hyperspace themed level, Gamma. I've finished the environment graphics and just need to get a few new units organized before we can put it all together to make what will be lev...

Sands of Suffering

Static version of Pixelmotion 14

Prints & Merch

Pixelmotion - 14

Sands of Suffering

This is one of my most complex animated scenes for the sheer amount of things going on. I put a lot of work into the concept and and composition, so I really wanted to bring it to life. Syncing all the animations together in a perfect loop was quite tedious. I don’t know how many hundreds of layers are packed in here. The key to creating these looping animations is planning and organization. Always use a magic number of frames that divides easily...

Thyrian Defenders - 15

Getting back into some gameplay content this week, let's take a look at a new miniboss.

This is appears in Hyperspace Beta, which is the 2nd of 3 hyperspace themed levels. In order to keep these visually similar levels distinct we kick it up a notch with the variety of enemy units. A miniboss is always a nice way to break up the pace and make the level memorable.

You can see it has 2 main attacks, the chain projectiles and timed bombs. After you destroy all 4...

Metro Emperica

Featured artwork from Pixelcast - 30

188x156
16 colors
2.8 hours