Who needs pencils when you have pixels?
Today I took my first step towards being an artist. A pixel artist that is. Actually what it's called is isometric artwork, isometric being a technique where 2D shapes are rendered and shaded to make them look like 3D. It's been around for a long time, nothing new, but it's only been recognized as a true art form a relatively short time ago. It's pretty much like how you draw a square or a triangle on a piece of paper and add lines and shading to make it look like a cube or a pyramid, except this time it's done in pixels. It's a pretty popular form of digital art, mainly used to make landscapes or buildings because you can only really make simple shapes and it doesn't really lend itself to impressionist art. One big use of it is in the online game Habbo Hotel but I found it in a webcomic called Isotown. That's kind of a misleading descriptor though, it's not just a simple webcomic. It's pretty much the chronicled growth of an isometric town called Isotown. Both are really good examples and it's amazing how complicated isometric stuff can get. Take this isometric City 17 that was done by the guy who made Isotown. The real kicker though?
It's made entirely in Paint.
It was hard for me to believe that such amazing pieces of art were made in Paint of all places. I had written Paint off as a crap program, something used to make stick figures and bad Megaman sprite comics. But all that up there was made in Paint, and it only gets better. I stumbled on a website once that was dedicated to the growth of an isometric tower that was several hundred floors tall with each floor dedicated to a different person or website or something. To think that all that was made in something simple like Paint is mindboggling.
I tried my hand at a few simple shapes and for my first go I think they turned out pretty well.
The pyramid and cube turned out pretty well and I'm fairly pleased with the brick wall. Obviously it needs more work with the bricks themselves; the spacing isn't as regular as it should have been and I shouldn't have used basic black for the mortar lines. I think that just a deeper orangey-red would have done better. That weird structure on the right is pretty neat too, it goes to show that art is basically just a bunch of simple shapes stuck together in interesting ways. The shapes are just the first step though. The coloring is a big deal too; if you're doing outside structures, which you probably are, you have to worry about light sources and getting the right shades for it. The brick wall is the epitome of this with the different colors. The brick side is the darkest, the side has to be a few shades lighter and the top a few shades lighter still, with the highlights a really light shade of the orange. With the cylinder and the sphere you have to dither your colors to get a feel for 3D. That pretty much means you have to blend the different colors you work with; dark on the edges and progressing lighter towards the middle to show the light source, and you have to kind of smudge that all together to make the color change more smooth. I'm going to wait a bit to try it since there are probably a couple ways to do it. I could either blend the pixels by hand or use something like Photoshop or GIMP that does dithering automatically. Oh yeah, that green square up top is supposed to be a grass tile. It didn't really turn out. I think I may try to base the grass of the Isotown grass instead of the grass in the tutorial I'm using.
All in all it's really cool stuff. It's kind of a pain to put in those small details, like the brick texture, but the finished product looks so dang cool. I hope to be able to do my house isometrically soon, but I'm definitely going to need some practice.
It's made entirely in Paint.
It was hard for me to believe that such amazing pieces of art were made in Paint of all places. I had written Paint off as a crap program, something used to make stick figures and bad Megaman sprite comics. But all that up there was made in Paint, and it only gets better. I stumbled on a website once that was dedicated to the growth of an isometric tower that was several hundred floors tall with each floor dedicated to a different person or website or something. To think that all that was made in something simple like Paint is mindboggling.
I tried my hand at a few simple shapes and for my first go I think they turned out pretty well.
The pyramid and cube turned out pretty well and I'm fairly pleased with the brick wall. Obviously it needs more work with the bricks themselves; the spacing isn't as regular as it should have been and I shouldn't have used basic black for the mortar lines. I think that just a deeper orangey-red would have done better. That weird structure on the right is pretty neat too, it goes to show that art is basically just a bunch of simple shapes stuck together in interesting ways. The shapes are just the first step though. The coloring is a big deal too; if you're doing outside structures, which you probably are, you have to worry about light sources and getting the right shades for it. The brick wall is the epitome of this with the different colors. The brick side is the darkest, the side has to be a few shades lighter and the top a few shades lighter still, with the highlights a really light shade of the orange. With the cylinder and the sphere you have to dither your colors to get a feel for 3D. That pretty much means you have to blend the different colors you work with; dark on the edges and progressing lighter towards the middle to show the light source, and you have to kind of smudge that all together to make the color change more smooth. I'm going to wait a bit to try it since there are probably a couple ways to do it. I could either blend the pixels by hand or use something like Photoshop or GIMP that does dithering automatically. Oh yeah, that green square up top is supposed to be a grass tile. It didn't really turn out. I think I may try to base the grass of the Isotown grass instead of the grass in the tutorial I'm using.
All in all it's really cool stuff. It's kind of a pain to put in those small details, like the brick texture, but the finished product looks so dang cool. I hope to be able to do my house isometrically soon, but I'm definitely going to need some practice.