The A to the D to the P
First up, I have been moving along nicely with the art for the Arena Depixelization Project (a name only a nerd could love). Not only have I got more new stuff done, I have been revamping the ones I don’t like as I go. I’m focusing on one location at a time in game and redoing all the wall/floor textures I find unfinished or that need a redo.
Brownout 3
I won’t post much on this for a while, but the previously unnamed but heavily hinted project is Fallout 3. Yes, another Bethesda game….what can I say. Oh yeah, I don’t have to say anything it’s my project so pbbbbtttt. Really, I tried playing Fallout 3 and like what I played but the artwork in the game is so (intentionally) degraded; it hides the games true potential. All they did was make super crappy textures and add a bunch of “noise” (dithering and random speckling) and a LOT OF BROWN.
Cellout implies the wrong message
I know what you’re saying “I sure wish he would give it a cartoony makeover”…. ME TOO! See great minds think alike. In reality, I’m using it to perfect my take on the Borderland (game for the computer) cell shading style. While inspired from that game, my style deviates in many small ways from it (besides my not truly knowing how they did it).
So much brown
It really struck home when no one realized that Megaton (the first city you reach in the game) was built with pieces of a plane. There are pieces all over but the textures were so bad, you never realized that you were walking on pieces of a wing or that the shed above was part of a fuselage. Oddly enough, despite inspiring to make this a full project, I really not happy with how the jet pieces turned out and plan to eventually redo them. I used them to learn how textures in FO3 worked and struggled to figure out the strange multiple way alpha maps were used along with normal maps. For the longest, I couldn’t get them to be selectively reflective of light. They were all shiny or no shiny at all, regardless of light. I worked it out (more when I actually talk about the project).
It just needs a good scrubbing
Ultimately, I want to remove the noise, define the textures better, add visual interest and color: all while trying to maintain the feel of a world in decay. I still haven’t honed the process down completely, but I am learning and pushing my developing Photoshop skills to the limit (TAKE IT…TO THE LIMIT…ONE MORE TIME). I want to perfect them before I return to my favorite game of all time, Morrowind. Oh yes, I’m not done with you yet, sweet Morrowind (too creepy?). Here are some more before and afters (note: some are still early prototypes or have already been reworked to be smoother and cleaner):
I’m gonna focus on ADP for now and honestly, this Fallout 3 project is going to take years since I’m just working on it sporadically until I have enough free time to hit it hard.
– Martin
Art In Pinkerton 