Back With The Killer Again…

Posted by oddbob on April 17, 2006 · Lovingly Filed Under Personal 
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So, its been a busy time since my last entry which has found me with next to no time to do anything codewise, between Mrs Bobs array of hospital appointments, an erratic sleep pattern, a small child and a fair amount of time spent on the organisation side of the Retro Remakes 2006 competition I’ve been pretty much exhausted most nights and quite frankly, the last thing I’ve fancied doing was level building.

Nowt done on VI at all then, as you probably expected.

As I was found bemoaning the lack of creative flow that comes from level building in an earlier post, when I did actually find myself some time this Easter weekend, I decided that perhaps its time I got back into practicing with the olde pixels and needed a small project to tide me over. One thing I’m definitely not short of is things to pixel for people having promised a fair whack of stuff which due to life taking over (and in all fairness, getting lost in a VI shaped haze for a while) I’ve been unable to deliver, so I took a glance through my projects folder to see what would be a relative quick job to clear off. There’s 3 major games I’d promised to lend a hand with, Project Future for Sokurah which I made a start on quite a while back, but theres a huge amount of tiles there so no way I’d clear that off in a weekend, Finders Keepers for Scottige which we’d attempted to get done for Xmas but I got ragged off to do some wallpaper removal and furniture shifting around the house then as usual for a holiday period managed to catch the Flu and ended up tied to the sofa barely able to wrench myself from the cushions - and the third and final one remaining in my projects folder was Automania for GeeKay.

Given the fact it was the smallest job out of the three, there was no competition really.

Gordon (of Retro Relevance) has been trying to get this off the ground for around 5 years now, and aside from a very early beta a long time ago, very little ever came of it as it was a game that he wanted to do utmost justice to, which meant he’d need an artist. As is the way with pixellers, there’s a long trail of people who promised to get it done and never delivered - I’d love to say that I was the last in that trail, but really - I wasn’t. I was never happy with what I first produced anyway, tried to do a rush job so that he could get it out of the way and as you’d expect, the end result wasn’t so great and I kinda stalled for a while with it.

Time to make good on the promise then, and have a blast at it.

Pro Motion is my tool of choice for pixelling, its very similar to Graphics Gale but I find the interface easier to navigate. As with all these things, its just a matter of what you’re comfortable with - and I’m happy with Pro Motion. Of course, I have niggles with it and its far from perfect - but then I have niggles with just about everything.

I opted to tackle the more difficult stuff first - and the first thing that struck me was I have never really had the need to pixel a vehicle of any kind before, nor did I really have a clue as to where to begin. This was going to be a bit more difficult than I first expected.

Still, even after clearing off all the vehicles now, I really need to sit down at some point and get some practice as whilst the results are certainly passable - they’re not up to the standard I’d like. Of course, if Gordon was to wait for me to reach that standard, then he’d probably have to wait another 5 years to get his sprites, so its a case of just do the best I can with the rips he sent me and call it a job done.

Some of the sprites I’m incredibly pleased with, others - like a couple of the vehicles could do with a bit more work. But I’m glad to report that I managed a good 99% of the work over the course of the day, so tomorrow I can go back and touch up a few bits and bobs then fire the rest over to the good man and hopefully, very soon - you’ll have an Automania remake to play.

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