Bring it On

At last! The snowy landscape drawing I’ve been envisioning (and ultimately sidelining) for many Christmases has emerged. And it was completed in good time. What’s going on?

It has been a tough year, probably one of the toughest in fact, which has left me feeling drained and uninspired; I’ve created almost nothing, which in itself is a bit scary as that has always been an outlet. Maybe it’s time for a new hobby?

With all that said, I’m actually looking forward to Christmas this year, so that may be why the card finally materialised. A lot of people put their decorations up extra early, so I’m probably not alone in my mindset. There is still joy to be had, so let’s grab it when we can, then on New Year’s Eve we can give 2023 the middle finger, knowing it can and will never return.

Merry Christmas and best wishes to you all, whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re celebrating.

Showcase Mode

Well, hello you – how are we? I’m still here, just about. There hasn’t been much excitement happening at this end and the summer was very much one to forget.

A friend of mine has been working on some pixel art lately, and this compelled me to look back at some of the stuff I made in years past. That, combined with a quick session of WrestleFest, resulted in what we have here; it’s just another way of showcasing some of my sprite attempts – in this case, the Undertaker ones – on a different platform.

While there are no new sprites in here – and Gene Okerlund reporting from his desk is taken directly from WrestleFest itself – it was some much-needed video editing practise. I got a version rendered and uploaded to YouTube, only to be reminded on publishing that the Shorts player has the title and icons slapped on top of the video, rendering my text unreadable. To say I was annoyed would be an understatement! That’ll teach me for jumping in. I had to readjust the whole composition, which ended up taking about two hours, and upload again; you could say it was quite the undertaking if you wanted to. But I got there in the end.

Now that I have the framework, I may redo it with some of my other sprites, so keep an eye on YouTube if you’re that interested.

Top-Doom Game

What if Doom looked a bit different?

The idea for this just came to me while watching a review of a top-down, maze-style Batman for the TurboGrafx-16 (PC Engine), based on the 1989 film. Other than some impressive cutscenes between levels, the game, while not terrible, wasn’t anything amazing; these days, it appears to be remembered as an “interesting” novelty – if it’s remembered at all.

So, why not take one of the most popular games of all time and see how it looks that way?

I cut a screenshot of Batman into a grid and used this as the basis for my graphics, with the addition of diagonal walls for some added “wow” factor – it’s 1993, guys, Wolfenstein is so last year! It was quite fun trying to make smaller, more pixelated counterparts of famous Doom textures and I like how some of them translate to the smaller scale. Seasoned players may note the lack of the tan wall textures that were ever-present in the game’s first episode; I did attempt them, as you can see below, but I don’t think I did it justice. Too wide.

The monsters themselves were admittedly just scaled down versions of the original sprites, cleaned up a little.

Next, I made a “maze” using the base walls (those yellow ones at the top) before layering over with texture. Shadows and lighting were then layered over that to create the final image. I’ll let you decide whether a working game in such a style would have been a success.

Here’s how it would crop on the actual console, depicted at twice the native resolution, and without consideration for any kind of HUD or status bar:

Finally, here’s a review of the Batman game that inspired me:

Happy Holidays

Another year, another Christmas, and another mad rush trying to put a card together. I probably should take care of them in July or something, but you know how it is… I’d miss the mad rush! Have fun making some sense of that. Of course, as artists and creators yourselves, you’ll know that sometimes a mad rush can lead to better results. I’ll let you be the judge in this instance. I rather like the colours at least; it rather makes me think of Quality Street wrappers and the “homemade 3D glasses” effect. The cool kids will know what I’m talking about.

I must admit to not feeling overly festive this year, but then, I feel like I’ve said that a lot in recent years. Perhaps it’s because these are trying times, or perhaps I’m turning into a grumpy old sod. I’m kidding, of course. I may be a grumpy sod, but it’s perfectly okay to not really be feeling it of a given year. The main event has yet to come and could change everything, and even if it doesn’t, we’ll be here again before you know it.

Of course, my malaise has not put me off Christmas music, which infiltrated my listening at the start of the month in its usual effort to inject some festivity, but is just a case of enjoying some good, warm music regardless. It had been quite a few years since I heard this classic – thank you, Spotify. Enjoy, and best wishes, from me to you, for the holiday season and beyond.

Relics

Let us take a trip back to 2017, the days when I used to post… well, not actually that regularly… with a couple of random windmill drawings from those days that weren’t quite good enough to meet my exacting standards. Apparently they are now, five-and-a-half years later. Actually, they might have ended up on my short-lived Instagram, so if you were one of the dozen or so who followed me there, you may recognise them. But you probably weren’t and don’t.

I’ve photoshopped them beyond all recognition today; lots of big, textured brushes and coloured overlays to try and make them in some way worthy, and produce something similar to my pylon studies from earlier this year. In the landscape piece, layering a negative replica slightly offset appeared to create something reminiscent of VHS artifact, so that was a rather interesting development, even if I wasn’t necessarily going for anything like it.

Indeed, the whole exercise consisted of throwing stuff around and seeing what sticks to these poor old works, but at least we got some nice colours in the end.

Pix ‘N’ Mix

Just a selection of oldies and (some not so) goodies from the pixel art archive here. It’s a bit of a weird selection of treats, kind of like raiding your grandparents’ pantry or sweet jar. Speaking from experience of that situation, I do have some advice: in the midst of your temptation, always ensure that those treats aren’t fifteen years out of date.

Some of these studies might be a bit past their best, as they’re a mixture dating back to 2019. Others were made just now, so that I wasn’t just posting a big fried egg for you. Hopefully it’s not too hard to tell which are which.

Oh, for the days of heading into Woolworths (RIP) and spending ages agonising over the pick ‘n’ mix selection!

Street Fighter Bigelow

Here we have the legendary Bam Bam Bigelow in the style of Capcom’s equally legendary Street Fighter II. What with this and WrestleFest, there certainly was a lot of stunning pixel art floating around in the arcades in 1991.

Basically, I drew Bigelow directly alongside the Zangief model, trying to copy one of his poses and deviating from there. This mostly entailed bulking him up; he was a big chap, but also incredibly agile with it. That’s what made him so impressive to watch.

Of course, the magic of pallette swapping allows me to come up with alternate colour schemes for multiplayer mayhem, should several players wish to be Mr. Bigelow – and who could blame them? He bore the flames for much of his career, so it was actually quite easy to mimic some of his other outfits.

I do think the facial likeness could be better, but it got to the point where I felt like I was going backwards with that. Who knew it would be harder to get a face right in pixel art? That said, I’m happy to have finally got this done as it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a week or two, only I kept hitting a wall with it.

It’d be great to see him in RetroMania someday.

Power Lines

Using a rather different pallette to recent adventures, here we have twin electricity pylons which stand near to the village of Haddiscoe. Due to their position next to a waterway (called the New Cut) they are rather tall – exactly how tall I’m not sure; I haven’t climbed them, and won’t be doing so any time soon. Of course, on the Norfolk skyline such a construction is visible for many miles around, so these have never really been far from my eye, but I kind of like pylons and their weird, ominous presence, so this isn’t an issue for me.

That personality was the focus of these developments. The sketch came from wandering around the area in Google Street View, just out of curiosity really, after a local news report of some weather damage to the railway embankment there. There’s just something about the way these pylons have stood so tall in the remoteness for so long, effortlessly looming over the space.

Though the sketch from Street View goes some way to depicting the atmosphere, I feel these more graphic pieces better capture their “power”.

Wintermill

Following on from the snowy conifers, we have a rather different take on the snappy winter weather, and a subject making its welcome return. Rejoice, the first windmill in over a year! And even that one was just an animation of a model made in 2017. The last one before that was a drawing back in March 2020.

Well, I must confess this isn’t entirely new, either. In fact, it’s a repurposing of several elements. It’s my Post Mill model from way back in 2016 (which was very much inspired by Stanton Mill in Suffolk) decked out with new sails and a coat of paint. I then added some grids, randomly distributing squares and rectangles which use textures I created years ago but still really enjoy playing with. While I have applied them to the mill model, using the favoured frontal projection, I really like creating bumpy, displaced 3D textures and sending them to a two-dimensional plane. That might sound counter-productive or plain silly, but the results are quite exciting to me. I’m a sucker for that harsh, icy aesthetic, and this method creates it in such a way that I probably couldn’t draw or paint, even if I tried. It’s possible that the end result is a little heavy-handed with the squares, but I do enjoy the frosty vibe. It’s not often I “frame” work, either, but I felt like it added a little something in this instance.

How nice to spin a few old bits and bobs into something new.

Here’s a curious little programme about windmills from more than half a century ago:

Quick Dusting

On an unseasonably warm winter afternoon, here’s a quick sketch of some snow-capped conifers. I would say it’s like a half-finished Christmas card, but that would be an obscene suggestion to make in January so I shan’t do it. There’s really not much more to say in terms of rationale, but I will say that trees are good. I like trees. Hopefully, you’ll appreciate this little wintry blast. I’m off to change into shorts and T-shirt.

Whilst looking through some old school exercise books recently, I found a set of haikus about the seasons. Here’s what I came up with for winter:

Winter time, snow, ice
Evergreen trees standing strong
High above the rest

That’s better than I could do now.