Digital Shinies
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Modern image editing tools allow even the untalented to produce curious sights.
On my behalf, these are all available under
CC0, which is like public domain. However, some of these are derivative
works, so parts of original copyrights may apply.
Vector art
Practical Love (in three HD panels)
Originally a laconic stick figure scribble, I redrew it with vector
characters, and later redrew it again in HD. I still find it darkly amusing.
This is the cheese
By request, a rendering of Gerard brie.
Marketing in a Nutshell
Another vectorised stick figure scribble. Modern marketing uses a few
basic methods to make people want to buy whatever is being sold. How many
methods can you recognize in this advertisement for a fictitious brand
of toothpaste?
Legend of Swiftseeker
Postcard from Marimea
A title card for a vector-graphic comic.
Vector comic page 1,
page 2,
page 3
I've got a big script with lots of great moments, but it lacks overall
direction so I only produced 3 and a half pages. Perhaps I'll find
some way yet to knit the script into a tighter whole
Sprite comic page 1,
page 2,
page 3,
page 4,
page 5,
page 6
An earlier sprite-based version of the comic.
Sprite comic sprite sheet
I drew a bunch of sprites before rebooting with vectors. Some of these are
quite good, so it'd be a shame to keep them to myself. These are
obviously modelled in the style of spritework in Final Fantasy 3, and
Brian Clevinger's 8-bit Theater.
Fanart
An expansive fanart of Colonel Jade Curtiss from Tales of the Abyss.
This combines official art with vector-tracing to produce
a high-definition result. Click the image for the full 3836x1440 version,
as well as all its parts separately.
Forum avatars
The above cutesy little avatar images are shown zoomed to four times their
actual pixel size. The first four are slightly enlarged and colored versions
of character sprites from Final Fantasy 3. The profile is a similar
hack of Cecil's picture from FF4.
The first of the last three was built using parts of the QfG Hero and
Captain Wilco from Space Quest 5, with lots of further editing to make
it look like something I'd wear in a fantasy (urban) setting. The yellow
squiggle is a tail. The last two images are redraws of the first,
clothed for a fancy party and cosplaying a sailor.
Forum tags
Signature tags or banners are small pictures used for individualisation
in some online forums. Below are all tags I ever made. Tags are commonly
based on artwork made by someone who actually can draw. Mine likewise make
heavy use of graphics ripped from elsewhere without any permission, although
I always added significant touch-ups.
The first tag I made. I glued pieces of Princess Maker 2 on stars from
Master of Orion, and manually retouched all the PM2 images to eliminate
dithering. The result is overly chaotic.
For my second effort, I tried for a less chaotic result by focusing on
a young Spirit of the Spring from PM2. Instead of removing dithering by
hand, I used PSP filters, which don't look as good. The background is
a real astronomical photo from somewhere. I arted the low-fidelity
purple bubble from scratch.
An adorable Mrrshan kitty from Master of Orion. She'll bite your head clean
off. Although it's not obvious at first glane, I made the starry area much bigger
than the source, and completely redrew the lower part of the feline, which has
a fade-out effect in the original.
This star background is from Princess Maker 2, the planet is Caladan
from Dune 2, and those things hovering over it are a pair of eyes
from a green-haired chick in Mayclub, I think. The barely visible
eyebrows I added myself. The stars suffered during JPEG compression but the
lettering fits in very well.
Natural beauty from an elven rampart in HoMM 3. I drew the rainbow.
The griffin was ripped from the resource files of Pinball Fantasies, and
touched up a lot. The beautiful PM2 star background is used again for
the lower background. I drew the funky top part by experimenting with visual
filters on a random colorful mess.
The original scene shows Sailor Venus standing against an orange-pink
cityscape. (I think it's from a late first season episode, must watch them
all again to check.) Since the original looked a bit flat, especially after
careful noise removal, I used beveling and manual lightening and darkening to add
a great deal of depth. The background combines two real space pictures
with a sunflare.
The iconic title screen from Prince of Persia, with lots of recoloring. Note
how the name emulates the original game title text.
I touched up chibi-Usagi with a bevel, and added the name. I tried a few
other ideas, but ended up scrapping them as uninteresting. The background is
from the PC version of The Lion King.
Miaka had a red ribbon twirling over and around her, which I laboriously
edited out manually, then cut her loose from the original picture. Minor
beveling was added to give the dress depth. Noise removal, minor touch-ups on
a randomly found wallpaper background. The composition is fairly pleasing.
The background is a portion from another random wallpaper. The
chibi-pegasus is a heavily enhanced clipart I'd found somewhere, originally
monochrome and quite grainy. Regrettably, its art style clashes with the background.
Another style clash. Aside from the real stars and real phantom tiger, the
frame and lettering are based on the credits screen of Quest for
Glory 1, smoothed and recolored.
The blue ball here is actually my purple bubble from tag #2, just retouched
for higher fidelity. The pegasi are from HoMM 3, and the sea fading
into the distance is from a random wallpaper. Notice the depth effect in
the shadows over the ball.
Using multiple editing layers turns out to be quite powerful. The hills are
from the intro of Ultima 6 and the sky is from HoMM 3. The eyes are
actually drawn by the recipient herself, although I retouched them. The
reflections on the water took the most effort. The reflected letters should
probably be a little further behind the hills.
Another grainy pegasus, enhanced. The background is a random
attractive dark sky, with some simple effects thrown in to make the colors
really pop.
This last tag turned out really well. Rather than drawing on top of
a Sierra logo, I drew the disc from scratch to get a fully smooth
gradient. The head is one of the main characters from Final Fantasy 2,
whose inventory portrait I enlarged to about ten times the original size, then
boosted the contrast to maximum and applied the blindshading effect by hand, pixel
by pixel, to match the style of the original logo's Half Dome silhouette.
Wallpapers?..
Classic blue Commodore 64 bootup screen as a desktop wallpaper,
with a subtle gradient.
These are mathematically generated with a simple X XOR Y
statement and a nice palette. Just something I wrote with QBasic on
a sudden inspiration around 2002. The cyan-purple one is a tribute
to glorious CGA. These are kind of violent on the eyes, and as such work
wonderfully as desktop wallpapers.
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