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I'm a freelance 2d artist; My portfolio can be seen here.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
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  A bunch of art | 
Posted - 6/26/2008 1:20:00 AM | Mostly just art to show tonight.
Aragon Online
Elf buildings:
I spend far too long on these things - but they have to be unique and perfect, every one. It seems that I may be somewhat obsessive.
Check out the game, the developer is a good fellow.
Pixel Art Formalism
I'll take a moment to say that I don't much admire pixel art formalism (intentionally limited palettes, adherence to the styles of old console games), as an end unto itself, and nor do I think pixel artists should in general limit themselves to these modes of working unless they are choosing to evoke a particular kind of nostalgia ... or they're working with devices of limited means, granted. I guess the gist of it is that I don't think that anything that denies new, creative styles and solutions should be taken too seriously. Yes, sock it to the man, smash the system, etc etc!
But what else would I say? More on the treachery of aesthetics to follow.
[Inspired By] Some Project I May Or May Not Be Doing
I haven't agreed to anything yet, but I'm investigating isometric character animation as well as collaboration with another artist (who would do the heavy lifting in the character drawing department). Perhaps my talk of being an artist wrangler will come to something.
Sketch of some fighters:
Isometric character animation test:
(Jeez, I haven't touched a pencil and paper for far too long!)
This could lead to some cool things with more expressive linework or digitally painted characters. It'd be a lot of work, yes, but very cool and quite unique.
(I wish I knew how to [easily] implement a 2d bones system so I could do digitally painted side-view character animation; that'd just rock.)
Miner style painting
I combined dual-brush texturing with my usual methods for this image. Compelling results, I think, which will require further efforts.
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| Miner & Dual Brush & Business | |
Posted - 6/19/2008 12:16:06 AM | Ugh, enough art theory for a while.
Project: Codename Miner
The game: You're a debtor whose contract has been bought by [the corporation]. Your personality and skills have been run against the company's labor requirements so it has been
determined that you are to pay off your debt by working as a miner on a remote asteroid. To buy off your contract you must earn one million credits.
[So: The player has an in-fiction reason for being forced to stay in one place and earn points through the game activity. The goal of the game is, in the story, to game the game, so it's OK to power-game: it's roleplaying!]
Here's a mockup of what an early build of the game should look like built from placeholder graphics:
Here's the actual state of the what is displayed:
It isn't particularly interesting, granted, but it shows at least that the map structure can be built and displayed.
Oh yeah, the specs: Python, Pyglet, so effectively it's OpenGL (for all the shiny glowing effects). Controls will be arcade-style using the keyboard, so pretty basic stuff all around. If this goes well I can double the size of all the graphics, polish the crap out of it, then release it commercially.
And I've got a sequel sort of thing in mind (Project: Codename Orcus) which ... might turn out to involve AI that doesn't want to kill all human for no reason. I'm thinking that this AI thing may turn out to be the central Macguffin of the game, but if handled properly it could be an actual working part of a story. Could be fascinating.
But then I'm going to have to figure out how to script all this. And that is why it's a somewhat distant plan.
Adventures in Digital Painting
Rather than focusing on life-drawing I discovered and played with the dual brush option! Basically a brush texture is applied onto a brush, so it's like a "dual" brush, ya'see?
Neat! And it's the way to get some interesting texture into digital paintings and I can't really say why I haven't been using it all along. As you can see, it produces brush strokes that look much more like analog materials.
Boring? But look at the texture!
Now we're talking. Sort-of concept art for the home base for Miner.
This was going to be a crowd scene but if it looks like I dropped it halfway through sketching that's because I dropped it halfway through sketching. I do like how the brushstrokes look like pastels on rough paper (though let it be noted that I loathe using pastels in real life). The plan for the next while is to use textured brushes with figures rather than doing this wishy washy landscapes.
More Miner concept art, I guess, on more interesting terrain.
A Word On Freelance & Rates
1: I think I charge too little, on one hand. But game-specific art is a very popular field, so it is saturated with artists. But then many game artist wannabes are kids who are only good at one thing, maybe. So heck, I should be able to charge more -- if I've got the CV to back it. And it's growing all the time, heh heh.
2: Apparently people like it when an artist posts their going rate(s). Understandably, because negotiating rates and money business is a thoroughly unpleasant experience for people who aren't Business Types, and a Known and Quantifiable value just feels good.
In any event, it's probably good to post a higher rate and say it's negotiable than to post a low rate and say the same because it puts you (well, -me-) in a better bargaining position.
3: I wish I had someone I could fob all the business crap off on. Like an agent. There's an idea for some creative Business/Art Director Type: run a freelance artist pen. Have a bunch of artists on call, handle promotion and dealings with the clients and take a cut of the fees.
Weren't there a bunch of Dutch guys doing something like that around here last year? Maybe that dried up.
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| Games as Art, Again HL2.2, Mass Effect | |
Posted - 6/17/2008 2:17:22 PM | Games As Art, Again
I was thinking about it and it seems that a game is not necessarily art. Is checkers or poker or Bejeweled art? It would be hard to argue for, unless the game was in some context treated as art. Some things are much more readily treated as art: oil paintings, novels, movies. (And video games are taking a lot from novels and movies, so these games are just asking to be treated as art objects.)
But even then how do we compare decoration to fine art painting? What's a Star Wars tie-in novel to James Joyce's Ulysses? What's the new Iron Man movie to anything by Kurosawa?
Is it just snobbery to posit some better quality to the "high art" among what I mentioned as compared to the "low art"? (A: Maybe. Often. Perhaps not necessarily.)
How about this: Ulysses puts itself into an artistic context because it was made with the intention of being treated as art and its form demands it be treated as art. A D&D tie-in novel is not particularly intended to be treated as art; it's more supposed to be "a good yarn", something to read in and of itself without necessarily making reference to the tradition of art or anything outside of itself except in the broad sense required to tell a story.
That's not the end of it though -- the D&D novel can still be treated like art if an aspiring critic wants to do so, though they may find it wanting from many perspectives. Many works we consider art were considered low forms of pulp entertainment at their time like Shakespeare or H. P. Lovecraft [look up the connection between some obscure continental philosophers and Lovecraft, it's wild!]. This process of turning from low to high art doesn't just happen, and I'm not holding out for it with the D&D novels. The reasons for each are a can of beans in themselves: Shakespeare might have something to do with English nationalism, Star Wars by Lucas and Campbell scratching each others backs to make big bucks, and H. P. Lovecraft is ... well, weird, and also fascinating as a sort of atheist/orientalist horror.
Back to games.
So a game can be art if it is treated as art and put into the context of "an object of aesthetic reflection" either by its creator(s), it's form, or by an observer. Whether it is "good" or "bad" is not a particularly rational question except in particular qualities discussed or values posited by said observer. Maybe a D&D novel is not a good piece of art, but it can be a good read. ('Least that's what I thought when I was 13, heh!)
(A side note on the Ebert-type nay-sayers: Games are a new medium, new mediums take time to build up an intellectual tradition which treats them as a subject worthy of discussion. This process is ongoing in academics, in the art-stablishment, some parts of the industry, and on the internets on all kinds of fascinating blogs. Don't worry about games getting respect -- it's happening, it's inevitable.)
So there's an overview of the position I've come to - for the moment.
[Nato: I apologize for staying in the realm of generalities! But having built this part of the argument, I can then proceed to more particular issues.]
On a lighter note...
Half-life Episode 2
I finally played this through now that Half-life 2 isn't saturated with yellow (?!) and consistently crashing a third of the way through the game. I was impressed. Sure, it's the same old run&gun, but it's done so well; Each area has an overarching theme and the plot thread follows through; you're never just wandering random corridors shooting stuff. Hmm, and it's a bit like single-player co-op with Alyx around, and not super annoying like most NPC-allies are.
Well played Valve, you awesome and terrible leviathan of PC gaming.
Mass Effect
I don't particularly like the new style Bioware RPGs with their linearity and awful console-centered UI design (which is fine for consoles, 'course, but I'm not a console). Laura is into 'em, so she can play them while I watch.
The back and forth scanning motion of the character's eyes is a really good effect and does tons for believability. Well done! Now it bugs the crap out of me that HL2 doesn't have the same thing. And points to Bioware for the cinematic style, it's done better than I've seen a game do before.
Question is, is it trying to be too much to use the language of a movie when it should be using the language of a game? It's interesting to compare Bioware's cinematic approach to 'cut scenes' to Valve's in-game-character approach. I think that Valve's is the one breaking new ground, but as said, Bioware did it well.
As for writing/setting, I read Iain Bank's SF novel Matter right before Laura played Mass Effect, and the comparison is not so kind to Mass Effect. I guess it is that I don't think that ME has a very science-fictional plot and setting; It plays out like a fantasy plot in a TV-version of the present (Spectres = CIA! agents, etc) with a Future! look to everything. Plus awkward RPG traditions, like the inability for someone to give you stuff for free because you're saving the world from evil, no, they have to sell it to you. But this all is to be completely expected considering past Bioware games and the direction of video game marketing and design that they're following. And as has been said, video game writing is so bad generally that to be adequate makes a game really good, relatively.
[Could you imagine Alien Legacy on the Xbox? I don't think it'd happen. Though they did pull the psychic powers thing there, too, which I'm not a fan of.]
And seriously, if there are ever AIs or robots in some expression of popular culture (like ME), they most often only want to kill kill kill everyone for no particular reason. A recurring theme of anti-technology could be it, sure, but from a design/marketing perspective it is perhaps more OK to commit AI genocide than any other kind because what would a game be without hordes of mindless enemies to kill? And you can sell it in Germany because they're not people.
I'm going to have to make a game with a benevolent AI.
But I shouldn't go without saying that I bet that Mass Effect will do good things for showing that science fiction games are viable and interesting, and That's A Good Thing!
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| The Qualities of Games-as-Art | |
Posted - 6/13/2008 1:32:32 PM | A response and addendum to my previous post:
My friend Nato came up with a very cogent response to my latest ramblings:
Quote:
In response to the "quality" of a thing, I'd have to say that the only intelligible way to make a clear case that sales does not represent quality is to make an argument that something else does. And, at that point, it really only becomes clear that commercial quality does not equal [insert context] quality; in other words, that it simply, obviously, isn't the same as other kinds.
What matters mean depend upon why meanings matter.
Does commercial success indicate the quality of a game? Well, yes, so long as you limit "quality" to its ability to sell. If that's not what you mean, then you owe it to whomever you're trying to communicate to what you mean INSTEAD, rather than floating a vague nothing and having no alternatives with which that form of quality is to compete.
It's like whether or not you "need" something. What are you arguing that it's needed for? Failing to answer questions like that isn't helpful, and it isn't your reader's fault if you fail to communicate it.
There is no general quality; only qualities.
This seems to be the problem with defining art. Except now, I'm considerably more comfortable with not caring.
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He cuts right to the conclusions that I wish I had come to:
1: In art, "there is no general quality; only qualities." (Drop that classical Platonic ideal of Ultimate Beauty right now! Art hasn't been about that for a long time unless you're painfully conservative about such things.)
2: "What matters mean depend upon why meanings matter", or if you like: We must decide what qualities are important and why.
So the instigation to further critical rigor I was faffing about with in the end of my last post should be the process of defining those qualities which can-be-seen-in or are-important-to games as a form of art. (I admit my error; The natural response of an artist who doesn't know what they're talking about is to fill the air with complex nothings; It pays the bills and gets you through crits.)
So if I may restate in short my original objection to sales-as-quality: I am interested in investigating games as works of art, as objects which are something more than commodities, objects whose most meaningful quality is sales.
What exactly the hell those qualities are, well, I'm working on that.
And does it matter? No particularly ... except as a matter of politics or social prestige or something. Game makers argue that they are artists so that their work is granted more social and intellectual prestige. Economic motives may be a part of this, but I think it's about wanting to have what we do matter deeply and truly.
Besides, the way the world is going, hyper/constructed/networked/virtual/telepresent realities/games/simulations/communications/communities are going to matter more and more and more.
New Computer
It arrived with the video card loose inside (things a frickin' brick!) because the little metal plate that held the board in place was missing a screw. Some metal bits and the SATA 0 plug were bent. Expectations low, I straightened things out with some pliers and plugged everything in. It all works. And damn is the thing ever quiet, I feel like something is missing in the room ... in my life ... without the sound of clogged-up overheated 7-year-old fans struggling toward their death.
It's nice. Photoshop is a breeze and can smudge with a very large brush at decent speeds. I recall when a 9 pixel brush smudge was slow - oh, the future is nice. Just hope my box doesn't blow up randomly.
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| New Computers, Painting, Academic Wankery | |
Posted - 6/12/2008 1:21:10 AM | New Computers
We got some new computers, one of which arrived today the other of which shall arrive tomorrow. It's amazing, really, that my computer is 4 years old and I never particularly noticed while in school. I recall now why - it's because I stopped playing computer games while in school! Wow, I really did that?
It has blown me away how good a computer can be, how good a computer can be for so little cost, and how good a computer we have gotten for what seems like little cost compared to my last golden age of computer building and LAN partying 6 or 7 years ago. I can actually play games at above the lowest settings again! I can play games that have graphics beyond ASCII characters! (But do not worry Dwarf Fortress, my love, I shall ever be true to you.)
This was prompted, I should add, because Laura's computer failed to meet the minimum specs for Mass Effect. My box has a generation better graphics card but a not-as-good processor. ... I know, 'eh! I don't even want to think about how much smoother Photoshop is going to run. It's like how we didn't replace a faulty router for a year and a half out of shear inertia even though DNS service would fail and require a reset if any stress was put on it at all; A bizarre hardware failure, I know; Sheer intertia.
Digital Painting
Crowd scenes I said? Maybe next week.
I think my problem is totally that I'm trying to be macho by drawing from my head but I pull from the same old set of habits and symbols to draw people rather than from what people actually look like. My habits and symbols may be trained to more closely resemble reality through the practice of figure draw from actual people. I shall have to take that approach.
Right, so I read Iain M. Bank's SF novel Matter and thought I'd do fan art.
Djan Seriy Anaplian & Turminder Xuss
tyl Loesp
I ought to regret posting whatever I draw because it can possibly reflect poorly on me as an artist and therefore as a freelance artist. Too late, though! Or I'm just being a whiny possibly pseudo self-effacing perfectionist. For attention? For honestly? But in retrospect I've gotten phenomenally better at digital painting than I was less than a year ago, when all I could do was flail about feebly with the airbrush tool. Either way, keep clear!
Warning: Total academic wankery follows.
The Quality of a Game
In art school a prof. of mine suggested an assignment in the upcoming "Show and Sale" event (at which students can sell artwork) each student would try to sell a piece of artwork. Whoever sold their artwork for the most money would get the highest grade, the next amount the next highest grade (perhaps following a grade curve).
So the instigation is this: Is the artwork sold for the most money the best piece of art?
(Honestly, the point was that he was fed up with students skipping class and assignments to do Show&Sale stuff. We could get into ever-rising tuition fees, high even though it's cheaper in Canada than in the US ... ) ... but the point I'm making is that I deny that sales indicate quality. Sales indicate the quality of marketing, of running a business, sure, but do not necessarily reflect positively on the critical quality of something. Like a game. Oblivion*. What?
But everyone reasonable knows this, right?
- Maybe. People have a funny way of coming up with theories that legitimate their economic well-being. In our case as small to medium sized game-makers, entrepreneurial types will want to advance a sales-centric theory of game quality while artistic types, being generally awful at making money and popularly accessible works would advance a theory which rejects sales as a quality indicator.
Perhaps I can be dismissed on that point as an artist taking the artist's side.
Some arguments on quality:
1: A buyer can never know the quality of a product without buying it, and a seller will often do all they can to manipulate the pre-purchase perception of quality.
2: Even worse, expectations and perception of quality can itself be induced! What if we lived in a world in which all games were tedious so we had no way to gauge how bad they were? That world was the 80s. No, I kid! But all knowledge of what quality is, "taste" (if you will), is learned/socialized/brainwashed into us observers. This can be done for commercial gain, or for some other kind of elite artistic prestige (which is what most of Fine Art is, I'd say).
This is getting to be a bit much. One could argue that because perception of quality is so manipulated, quality is unknowable, and/or all we can do is use a limited and flawed metric of quality (eg. sales). I say not! Knowledge is not a boolean state: we do not either know or not-know. This sort of critical engagement is both accumulative and a dynamic process rather than a static being. The complexity of the issue is a challenge which ought to provoke all the more critical rigor toward engaging with it ("solving it" would be too strong a description of possibility). The quality of games, then, is a question that can and should be discussed.
So this raises two points I'd like to get into:
1: How can computer games be art? That's right Ebert! (The quick answer: it's a matter of prestige, tradition/institution, and academic/ideological backing)
2: How form and content of a game can be determined by the economics game-selling; What does this do to games? (The quick answer: games are cast into commodities, which they theoretically might not otherwise be, eg. I'd argue that Dwarf Fortress is a non-commodified game, which is part of what makes it so interesting to me.)
3: Aesthetics and responsibility in games. (Or if you like: "Realistic" isn't realistic.)
But that's all for later.
*[With my aged computer, the graphics were not my primary focus; I saw the point made that graphics removed, the gameplay of Oblivion is actually somewhat less than a number of mature roguelikes. Damning, no? But there's no need to get into a full discussion over a throwaway line just yet..]
[Confession: Sometimes I write stuff just to be clever to myself. I think to myself, Self, I just contrived the most tortuous sentence full of ridiculous and (intellectually) offensive statements, what a laugh, ha ha!. The incidence of such writing increases with the incidence of me having a brew before writing a post. Given enough time it is likely that I may degenerate all the way into concrete poetry written in a personal constructed language about meta-themes. I bet I could get a grant.]
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| AO, Self-critique/self-reflection, Schedule | |
Posted - 6/5/2008 1:47:59 AM | Aragon Online
(AO plug:) I finished these a while ago but forgot the post them. More buildings for Aragon Online, this time for Goblins. So ugh, too many round buildings. (But then I'm drawing the Elven buildings now, and while most of them aren't round, I had to go and make the rooves weird shapes so they're causing me architectural angst for that. I bring this upon myself!) The graphics:
Tileset For A Project
(This section has been added in later to pad the post.)
I've been working on this tileset for someone, and I think what I'd like to do is sell it for rather cheaper than my per-hour rate as non-exclusive, as in, I can sell tiles to a bunch of people to use, and I could do this with textures meant for 3d models as well, either in the manner of this site or through it.
I mean, I figure there are enough people out there who want nice RPG Maker tilesets. Problem comes up with copyrights -- first, well, is the matter of legal wording of distribution rights above and beyond the ad-hoc me just saying "use this, have fun, don't resell it as a tileset or give it away please". I suppose I'd need to find some kind of media lawyer to write something up for me ; Ugh!
Though I'm getting ahead of myself, this is why I like the Dwarf Fortress commercial model -- it is donationware, so the payment has no particular legal connection to the product, and the product has no particular legal status beyond the baseline. That's a very convenient setup for someone who doesn't want to deal with "business stuff".
Someone could even just "steal" my picture above this text if they didn't mind blurry and distorted tiles. I wouldn't particular care, but I suppose I've got to make money, right? Honestly, I've got to get a grip on the legalities of everything because I imagine at some point I could get burned, though everyone has been extremely honest and eager to pay me, even, so far.
Digital Painting
I like the colors/light and loose brushwork. Though "painterly brushwork" goes against the aesthetics of current gaming media except in some concept/promo art; I guess what I mean is that it goes against the strong Anime/Manga current in current gaming media which emphasizes strong, clean lines. But then again I use far too much of the default circle brushes when I ought to be taking advantage of the textures one can get out of custom brushes. But then I'd have to have to have some custom brushes to use. Perhaps I should invest some time and effort in this because to create texture I otherwise have to zoom in with a 2 pixel brush and make my own texture which is just tedious. Not that I mind that much.
To return to the image, I don't like what could pretty clearly be fixed by planning ahead & sketching. And the terrible figure drawing irritates me, especially when I don't see it when drawing the first day and see it when I look at the picture again the next day. Sure, I can draw broken machinery in endless variety, but when it comes to human figures I am often unsatisfied with myself. Especially when I don't sketch. Yes, "to work on".
This brings up something I notice about myself and my approach to art: most artists draw single objects/characters or scenes with at least one primary element while I tend toward drawing landscapes or crowds with many roughly equally weighted elements. I think this has something to do with how I think about things; In world-building, say, I thrive on making up societies and economy rather than individual characters. I'm systems-oriented, I suppose, and I am drawn toward an aesthetic which reflects this in both drawing and game design.
Perhaps I'll try a crowd scene next to force myself to do figure drawing but not get caught up in one particular figure.
Scheduling
I'm thinking that I'll save Wednesdays for posting art and work and about art & work, and maybe I'll post thoughts on other things (read: game design, or possible art-in-general) on other days as they make themselves available.
This comes up because I had planned to write about a few issues about indie games (eg. comparing the effect of economic context/distribution method of Dwarf Fortress with Armageddon Empires and how each affects the games' design) ... right, I planned to write, but was both busy and didn't feel like writing today. So I'll write when I feel like it while maintaining the posting-on-Wednesdays diktat, the discipline.
[And apparently more people read this than I thought, it's weird and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Showing off and being paid attention to is great, but on the other hand I'm a fairly shy person. In any case I've made a commitment to myself to keep at this even if no-one reads, so no worries.]
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