A few days ago I posted a house I made (using pixel art of course). I was then linked to the "Goon City" - a pixel city project worked on by the members of SA. This inspired me to try to set up a similar project on MforMature and I have to say it's been coming along rather well.

The project is still a WIP and I imagine it will remain so for the rest of the year but it's already shaping up. So far my work includes the blue house and the big grey building with the rocket turrets stcking out of it. I'd also like to credit my girl Allison who made the clock tower and the white house (which I'll add once I get home from work).

Anyway here it is so far, this image should auto update itself so if you're keeping tabs on it you might want to bookmark this post. Once the project is complete I'll work out someway of giving everyone credit for their work.

It's too big to show here so just click the link.
http://pikzil.halfmoon.ws/image/wipp.png

If you read my recently added tutorial on how to make a house in pixel art you might of had a chance to give it a go. I decided I'd remake the house with a few changes and added in a garden, garage and a road outside. I hope you enjoy it.

Step 1:

Right, this step is nice and easy, you're only just really drawing a rectangle using the typical 2 pixel segment method. Remember to check you're happy with it's dimensions since if you do it too high or slim it could effect how well/bad your house looks.

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/5004/52886349cw6.png

Step 2:

Ok, this is where we start to break away from the conventional methods of pixel art, this time we going up the left side with the 2 pixel segment method, but once you reach the top and start to go down hill on the right you're only placing one pixel at a time, this is so you get a steeper curve.

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/619/98077197el4.png

Step 3:

This time you're just echoing Step 2 a couple of times to make your arch look 3D, if you had no problems with step 2 this should be a sinch, but check the picture below to know where to place them.

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/6607/65914283bm0.png

Step 4:

Once again this is a copy of step 2 and 3 but just on the other side, I'm pretty sure I just copied the layers from 2 and 3 and placed them there and removed the parts that I didn't need. As for the connecting lines they're just two standard lines, by now you shouldn't be finding these a problem at all.

http://img377.imageshack.us/img377/4449/54839349kw7.png

Step 5:

We're going to be doing some work on the top floor now, so draw a line down and across to decide how big you want the top floor to be (I find 60/40 works best). Once this is done you can put in some windows, now these can be as simple as drawing two boxes, but by adding a few more simple lines you can make them look great.

http://img377.imageshack.us/img377/3543/52587595zw5.png

Step 6:

More easy steps! Just a few more lines on the front of the house, we're trying to make this part stick out, if this makes no sense to you scroll down to see final product.

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/8396/62876085yy0.png

Step 7:

Easy again, draw in a door which is just a box really. Now the roof over the sticking out wall is also simple, going across you have a standard 2 pixel set line, but when we want to go up with the lines we only use one pixel to make it look: / , this makes it look like a dipping steep slant.

http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/6540/27970105xe0.png

Step 8:

Once again another window, this one can be two separate small ones, or a long one, I went for long as I wanted to make it different than the upstairs.

It's all strait lines again.

http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/9706/60050636tc3.png

Step 9:

This step is optional, and to be honest probably the hardest to not mess up. We're putting a chimney on, this means it has to slot on to the top of the roof like: /\ - from a side angle, however since isometric pixel art looks at things from a 45 degree angle it isn't as simple as that. The best thing with this is to start from the top and work down, once you get to the bit that looks like / just try to use a mix of 1 and 2 pixel lines to make it steep, not not too steep. The picture below should help clear what I mean up.

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/6192/45343716dx7.png

Step 10:

Colour it in, it's pretty big so this takes up most the time, but go for any color, I also cut off a part of the roof on the left side since I didn't like it there. Anyway here's what it should look like when coloured:

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/989/finci9.png

http://img396.imageshack.us/img396/363/10rd7.png

AND DON'T STOP THERE!

Once you make one, changing the hue on the house gives you another allowing you to make your own little attached houses, add in some grass and a plant or two and it starts to shape up nicely

Have fun, thanks for reading.

Going to be making some changes today so the site may be down. I'll also be adding a few tutorials and what not. Besides that I have a valid excuse to explain my absence, it involves doctors and the hospital and a couple of operations heading my way. Besides that you may notice I have added a new forums link on the site, this link goes to the forums I staff on for the MforMature.net gaming site where I can always be found.

Well seeing as retro are what inspired me to get involved in pixel art I thought it might be worthwhile to mention the retro review section over on MforMature I have started writing myself there and hopefully in a month or two there will be a decent amount up there.

Anyway if anyone reads this I must apologize for my absence as of late, I have been busy with Valentines day and in general with my lovely Allison, so I'll try to get some updates posted hopefully tonight or tomorrow on the stuff I'm working on.

Well since I can't sleep after spending all night earning achievements on mformature's Team Fortress 2 server with EvilSeph, I decided to post the general plans for a game I'm working on. The game is currently under the name of "Life" and the best way to describe it is via a comparison to the Harvest Moon games. Copying Harvest Moon however would be pointless, I don't have the skills or time to produce an exact replica of what they have done, nor do I want to.

"Life" contains interesting and possibly nostalgic content for our older gamers or those into emulation. Where as past farming games have allowed users to raise cattle, chickens and sheep on their farm, Life does things differently, instead of chickens, think chocobo's (commonly seen in Square's Final Fantasy games), you also won't be milking cows in "Life", instead you will be taking dreams from your heard of Curbys you get the idea by now no doubt.

Another thing that's different in "Life" is the implemented combat system which allows you to catch some of these guys, but I will expand more on that at a later stage.

The game will be for PC and will be more of a pick up and play RPG/Sim.

With Gutya's completed script all that's left to do now is finish up some of the pixel art. For those of you who don't have a clue what I'm talking about "Post for Pikzels" is a simple add on webpage which works externally with any vBulletin forum. The page reads the total amount of posts in the forum it is assigned to and as the collective posts of the forum rises and certain milestones are hit a page containing a pixel city updates, so you may start off with a few fields and the odd shed, but in time you may end up with space stations ect ect. Obviously it will have different graphics packs (one of the defaults being a Pokemon city).

I'll have a working version of it with the forums from http://mformature.net up soon, then after I do some more graphics packs I'll put it up for download.

It's not everyday I bother to sit down and do up a sprite sheet for a character staring in a PSP RPG, mostly because of the time and concentration it takes. Today I decided to sit down and grab the bull by the horns, the new PC RPG Maker uses smaller sprite models than previous ones so I decided to try to come up with something using their naked and bald character template because the older versions I had been basing my sprites on for the game were a bit too large for the PSP's screen. The RPG's (which has yet to be named) main protagonist is a man named Michael, to be honest I don't know much else other than that, all I was told was to make him look good and give him red hair, dark clothes and a cape. and I like to think I delivered rather well, here's the sprite so far. Hoping you all like it.

Every now and again I get asked to do work for different projects, and recently a fellow MforMature member asked me to do one of the graphics for an upcoming iPhone game he is developing. I'm normally rather skeptic about these things as they rarely get finished, but with one product already for sale on the apple store I thought this might end up going somewhere. The ship may well change between now and it's final release, but given the small workspace I had (30x30) I'm pretty happy with how it came out.

My only issue with it as of now are the colours, they might be a tad too dark, however I'll deal with this another time, hopefully I'll be able to see a video of this in action soon and I can post it up here for you guys.

One of the biggest problems with being a pixel artist is often the lack of things to do with your finished product. There are countless games out there for 3D modelers to make graphics for, Jedi Academy comes to mind, or the countless mods for Valves Source engine. Sadly the pixel artist is often left out in the cold, I often feel like this. I am however lucky enough to be spriting for two separate game developers, but what about those of you who don't get this chance?

Before I started typing up this article I had planned on having a rant about how games such as Harvest Moon should never of gone 3D, and while searching images to back up my point I came across the Game Maker site. I was briefly intrigued by this as I remember this program for years ago, and to be honest it had never really impressed me. However, looking through the games other people had made and seeing clones of popular games like GTA, Super Smash Bros, Sonic the Hedgehog and The Sims, I suddenly thought "Wow, this gives people who love pixel art but can't code and opportunity to make a game".

I'm not sure how difficult the program is to use, I just downloaded it myself so I'll post updates once I get my head around it.