Perfectly Peculiar Pixels #10

This semester’s endgame is nigh!
There is no substitute for hard work, but working smart while working hard will get you dramatically further. Thus, in the interest of receiving dramatically better work at the end of the semester, here are a few tools to help you work smarter. All of these should be your standard tools going forward anyway.

Impressionism, expressionism, cubism, pointillism, and similar -are these things outside of your current skill wheelhouse? Do you have a good reference image you can use that displays the style well? That’s all you need to start generating images in the style of the reference. ‘Advanced’ mode offers you the ability to use a ‘source’ image, so you can go from an existing image or photograph to something (more or less, obviously) in a different style. Not a be-all-end-all, but a (free) arrow you should have in your quiver when attempting styles you think are out of range.

With the current state of Google Search being arguably a much worse experience than it was 2, not to mention 5-10 years ago, finding images of decent quality for your final presentation might be more work than it’s worth. While not perfect, this upscaler can help you get the sharpness at the resolution you need. The main drawback I found is that it also attempts to sharpen parts that are purposely blurry, but by now you should know how to deal with that in Photoshop ;)

This is the biggest discovery I made this week, possibly this year so far. Well organized, well tagged and categorized, this is an amazing tool for all your game UI references. Well worth bookmarking as no matter what kind of genre you’re working on, you will find useful references from this website.

While the graphics can be cynically referred to as the “shader heavy texture light default pleasant 3D indie game”, there is one mechanic that sold me. Whenever a game offers you the ability to combine different magic effects, and lets you have at it, I remember Elder Scrolls III. Whether or not this gives you the freedom to conjure up an absolute overpowered mess like you could in Morrowind, I’ll need to play more to find out. But I added it here for you to remember that making games isn’t all about synthesis, but a lot of analysis as well.

This had to be worse than playing Dark Souls with a Guitar Hero controller…