Some old pixel art done in GIMP(2019-2020)

[TumbleRocks]

Hi all, at the risk of being a doofus, i wanted to share some work i did a few years back(I think it is better quality than what i have shared before). I want to post it somewhere, instead of letting it rot on my hard drive. It is pixel art from a collab that never got published.

Here is the collab: https://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=31210.0

I'm not a very experienced pixel artist, so participating in this collab was a good learning experience for me, and taught me a lot about GIMP and graphic art in general. Sadly, i haven't been doing as much graphic art lately, though I do occasionally still find the opportunity to open GIMP for one reason or another, and very much appreciate that this software exists. Anyway let me post images:

T2 Mirage:
   

T7 RNA Stream:
   

T31 Dr. Devil(MD):
   

T40 Hoax Man:
   

...well, I'm not sure how to upscale the attachments in the post, and i kind of prefer to submit in the original size. Maybe there is a way to magnify in the BB prefs? IDK, if people respond with interest, I can provide some progress shots and reference stuff illustrating the process i used.

Take Care!

[TumbleRocks]

No biters then? Oh well, I understand; the more i look at them, the more i find little nitpicks. Two are actually still WIP. Actually, i posted an old version of Mirage(i'm just not happy with the way it started looking).

here is the last version:
   

I'm just not happy with how the caravan ended up looking; i think i maybe got the perspective wrong. There were though some other changes too, that I think were positive.

If anyone is genuinely interested in my process, i do have some screenshots and intermediate exports i could share, though it's mostly pretty simple stuff: layers, paths, channels, color-select, fill selection with color, merge layers. ...path-to-selection, etc.

I'm happy to leave it at that then.

[PixLab]

Why gif and not WebP?
Your intention was to have few colors?

gif ➤ https://ibb.co/0ZPdSb2
animated webp ➤ https://ibb.co/S7X4nJG

[TumbleRocks]

Right, i understand webp is actually a superior format, though the main goal of the pixel collab i was drawing for was more aligned with the mindset of pixelart as artform preservation(ie retro-style pixelart).

On that note, it turns out GIMP is actually a great program for making old style pixel art.

Also, about WebP, I think it's cool, though it's not really supported all that much - at least plenty of platforms don't support it(like my old mac). It would be smart if gimp.org published a WebP viewer applet. Otherwise i can't view them on my desktop.

[PixLab]

All browsers after 2020 support it.
It's not GIMP who should provide a viewer but Google, (WebP is from Google)
XnViewMP (free for personal use)  or digikam does see WebP as many other free viewer
Anyway I'm on Linux, I have no problem to see webp with Caja (file browser)

[Ofnuts]

(05-16-2024, 03:40 PM)TumbleRocks Wrote: Right, i understand webp is actually a superior format, though the main goal of the pixel collab i was drawing for was more aligned with the mindset of pixelart as artform preservation(ie retro-style pixelart).

On that note, it turns out GIMP is actually a great program for making old style pixel art.

Also, about WebP, I think it's cool, though it's not really supported all that much - at least plenty of platforms don't support it(like my old mac). It would be smart if gimp.org published a WebP viewer applet. Otherwise i can't view them on my desktop.

You can always open them with your internet browser.

[TumbleRocks]

xnview requires minimum macos 10.13 and digikam 10.15 - i guess i just need to buy a new mac.

Firefox-esr did open the file, though i had to override "recommended apps" to get it to open.

What distro of linux are you using Pixlab?

[PixLab]

(05-18-2024, 02:31 PM)TumbleRocks Wrote: What distro of linux are you using Pixlab?

Ubuntu-MATE and MX Linux

[TumbleRocks]

Cool, I have been using MX on the side for awhile now, since i felt like Ubuntu's UX became degraded on some of my old machines. Sadly now I've started having a funny problem on the latest version of MX where windows overrun the bottom of the screen. I'm able to work around it by by switching the window to full screen mode, though it's sort of a troubling development. I've never worked on operating systems before, so i don't expect to fix the problem, and the whole reason I started using MX was because it had the best UX and was easy to install. I'm not looking forward to struggling with BSD again(or Debian).

[TumbleRocks]

So, still no biters then? Maybe i'll just post a few intermediates and screenshots, just to test the waters a bit; you never know who might be interested later on.

...and you never know when my HDD might spontaneously combust?!


So, here you go. Here is one of my early versions of the mirage tile, after i finished the background:

   

When i started i had a more 2D design for the ruined city. Also the mirage effect more a bit more wavy. Later on i think i messed up a lot of the added detail by making it too busy with my half-baked-mirage-effect-version-2. And then i made the mistake of mixing techniques that didn't really match with the addition of the car caravan and the color-cycled dust cloud. IDK, maybe i'll fix it some day.


Here is another shole.gif, with the other words he likes to say.

   

The process wasn't exactly simple. Here is an early screenshot showing my bezier lines used to create my base image. Yes, i did trace a reference photo, though the process did not end there.

   

Here is an animated dithering experiment i made while trying to figure out the background for the covid tile.

   

I ended up with a lot of problems where the differently dithered sectors in the tile met each other, and I didn't really figure out a good solution, so i ended up with another tile that had some funky spots(maybe i have 3 unfinished tiles).

And here is me using a soccer ball to figure out shading and also the layout of the spike proteins on the phage-body.

   


Oops! I have reached the maximum number of attachments allowed per post....

---

Well, maybe i can finish up part 2 here.

On to the Dracula MD tile(you could probably tell i just discovered color-cycling on this one), here is a screenshot showing the sketch-lines for the architecture

   

And another screenshots for making the cape blow in the wind.

   

I guess that's it. I didn't really finish the floating Dracula head; the style doesn't match the rest of the tile. There were also some other problem spots the still need touch up, but at this point i'm not sure if i'll ever get around to fixing them, so there it is.

For anyone interested, the kanji is a play on the original Japanese title for 80's video game Castlevania(悪魔城ドラキュラ), so I was thinking 悪魔医大 might roughly translate to something like Castlevania M.D. - it probably sounds stupid to a Japanese person, but the important thing is to always think twice before ever going to the doctor, or maybe things are  better outside the USA? ;P

...the more I look at these tiles the more i find little problems. I'm not sure any of them are finished. Maybe i will fix them some day. Maybe i will make something new. I think that is all for now.

Wait, one more of my little color-cycling template for the sky background. I basically just mirrored, rotated and dragged around the same template to create (not quite)all the cloud effects for all the mirror surfaces.

   

That's all folks!