Niklas Jansson

Line Art Extraction in Photoshop

Line art seems to print better if in 1-bit (no anti-aliasing). I discovered this during my various boardgame projects where often the reference scan was too low resolution and blurry for print. What I used to do then was to scale up to 500 ppi, sharpening, then go straight to threshold to produce a black/white image (probably a spaceship silhouette & stat text). But this didn't work well when the lines crossed over multiple colours. I used to remove those using various kind of slow method...

Mutoid - Loose Docs

I mentioned posting some text stuff for the RPG project previously, and here it is, still a mess unfortunately. Even if I exclude the rules work and refer people to the Basic RolePlaying System, there is still a lot of world buildey stuff to write. I need regional loot tables, and big character generation chart, then a bestiary. Then, I need to edit the thing, or hire an editor. Still, the whole thing is conceivably doable if I can find the focus...

In the meantime, a smoking hedgehog. ...

More Mutant Sketches

I've decided to gather up some of my Mutant images in a post. I did post them on Twitter, but it's difficult to browse (seems you need an account there to even view the site now?). My ultimate goal is not to make a www page for this, but PDF books (for drivethruRPG?). I've written quite a it of text, design ideas, rules, character gen, loot tables, but unlike image sketches, you can't really show rough text to anyone, haha. Perhaps if I clean them up a little, I can post here next for those w...

Pixel-over Process - Part 1&2

Here's a 44 minute video, and a 1hr video where I wrestle with pixels, painting over some 16 colour PC Engine sprites (from spriters-resource).

Probably best to watch at 2x, keep in the background or skip around.

Part 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_LNkjwIe0M 

Program: Photoshop, using a 1-pixel brush. More info in video comment.

2022-10-29 17:44:40 +0000 UTC View Post

Mech Cleanup

Not much to say about these. Same procedure as every day, James.

Robots in Mutant don't are sometimes (30% chance) obedient to humans, Asimov style, but I think removing player agency like that in an RPG is a bad idea, though might include it as a defect one can get during character creation. I need to do robots for every role.. I think I wrote a list on the scanned sheet. Perhaps, unlike organics, robots have set stats, but have developed quirks over the years.

I'm writing a big ...

Creature Cleanup

I've begun cleaning up some of the thumbnails from the previous post, figuring out colours and nudging shapes. There's not much extra detail. There are a few I might discard, but the rest might make an interesting fauna. Turning birds into larger raptors is a bit too fun perhaps. Quite pleased with Rovspov (predator curlew), a pun on Storspov.

Idea Buildup

I've had the opportunity to catch up on some movies and series so I've been a bit distracted the last week, so I haven't had a long drawing session. But, I'm always drawing in some way. It's easy to carry a paper an pen around. This is such a paper – an A4 that I keep on a clip board, rotating as I go, kinda drawing in from the edges. I also make little notes that I can't decipher later.

This is for the Mutant/Mutoid project. I've been trying to some up with weird birds... maybe rever...

Creatures in Context

Here's a bit of cleanup work (see previous video), testing out animation, as in bringing life and scale into the designs.

The outdoor electrical cabinets are kind of the Swedish version of the fire hydrant. I'm guessing they'd last a long time since they're made for all weathers.

Since the slugs are so slow, they might mostly stalk sleeping prey. That would be the adventurers.

I thought it would be fun if people don't know the old name of things, so the big mantis-like Crane...

Mutoids Thumbnail Sketch Cleanup Process

Here's how I clean up my thumbnails sketches done on paper (15cm squared  in this case). I heavily used reference here (gathered beforehand as I  couldn't do it during video) because I need some Swedish animals and  plants as a base for this project. They'll be heavily distorted, but I  still need to consider what kind of base structures I have to work with.  The rider is an altered version of Necron 99 from "Wizards" (a 1977  postapoc Ralph Bakshi movie which mi...

Duck Woman Drawing Process

I managed to make a video, though it almost broke my old machine (4GB RAM and only a few gigs of drive space left).

It's an hour long screen recording without commentary. Had to record a crop to keep final size down (1.3GB). Not all tool selections are in view but my tool presets are. I'm using Photoshop CS5. 

It also shows how I use liquify to nudge the sketch into shape.

The subject matter is Mutant / Drakar och Demoner ducks. These are fairly Disneyesque but I like t...

Traveller PSDs

If you've been following my activity on Twitter, you may be aware that I've been drawing some Traveller RPG art, which is related to my Last Imperium art... I might migrate some of it into my own setting. I've also made a Traveller page on my site:

http://androidarts.com/Traveller/Traveller.htm

Attaching some of the PSDs. I use my usual work method, with a sketch / line art + shade layer, a warm...

Last Imperium - Ship Continuation

I've been working on ship language and scaling a bit more.

A party is probably about 3-6 people, which might call for a Millennium Falcon sized ship. I'm generally not a fan of obscene ship sizes, so perhaps the current warp core technology (a single known working design?) puts a limit on the min and max size. This makes the player ship generally competitive in 1 on 1. If the ship is the character, there needs to be an upgrade system with expensive, high quality components (and missing,...

Last Imperium - Direction for Weapons

For the weapons I wanted to do something a bit different from what I've done elsewhere, and different from say, fictional modern looking guns, and different from sci-fi cool-guns with lots of mystery greeble. Since I have a slight medieval thing going on, I decided to mix antique forms with sci-fi detailing. I also wanted to come up with some sort of consistent detailing so I went for a sphere with a thing going off to the side. Perhaps it's a mini reactor or combustion chamber. Other types o...

Last Imperium - Slimes & Ships

The Slimes might have a natural base form that's the most comfortable for them. Taking on a more elaborate human shape might require a lot of strength, time and training if it's something more elaborate than squeezing through a crack. While it could be fun for a player to instantly change shape in the game, realistically, perhaps any new form could require some rewiring of the brain, and body regrowth/modification taking days. Perhaps most average-joe Slimes get by just fine using their basic...

Last Imperium - Stuff

I've been thinking a bit on what humans would look like in the far future, and it really kind of depends I guess. In my setting I don't really isolate ethnic groups on various island planets as that would be cliché and tasteless ("planet Danish Wienerbrød"). With my 12000 years of space faring history, trading, tourism, emigration, etc, it seems more probable that you'd get a stronger averaging effect. With early history erased, people then would not even know what humans looked like in the...

Last Imperium - Creature Process

I managed to look up the book format used by the old Swedish D&D and Mutant. It's called G5 and measures 169x239mm. I cut that out of a paper just to get a physical feel of it again since I lost my old RPG books. Then I inevitably jotted down some ideas on the paper (not very structured as you can see), scanned it at 300ppi, cleaned up, and here it is. Still quite rough and needs a second line pass and colours.

Invasive species might be vermin, or useful stuff like livestock. Probab...

Last Imperium - TTRPG

In Sweden we didn't really have American role playing games, but quirky localized versions, so I'm still learning about what's out there. This time I decided to look into Traveller and Cepheus which is an open version of it. Since I wasn't wowed by Traveller's setting, and since I enjoy making my own, I started on just that. I plopped some of my early Lore notes here and might update if I get any further.

http://androi...

More Monster Roughs

I've been meaning to post something, but designing monsters is really difficult. Perhaps part of the difficulty lies in the fact that new monsters have no narrative legacy to give them weight and justification as designs, so they just appear... arbitrary.

Anyways, I suppose the only approach is "spray and pray" design. See what sticks. I think maybe some of the Pokémon designs weren't actually evolutions, but alternative designs that were thrown in (some don't seem morphologically conn...

More Monster Stuff

This is also stuff from a few years back, when I figured out which type of presentation to use. At first I wanted to do some hand drawn animated graphics, but I didn't actually want to draw a million animations. So maybe a gameboy style could work? But then the resolution would be too low for Kanji and basic UI.

Then I remembered the Famicom manuals and MSX FAN, which were printed in duotone red & blue. If I present the game as magazine pages, then I have both space and no expectati...

Edutainment Prototype

So, the Not-Pokémon game I mentioned earlier is actually not much like Pokémon. I think the main appeal of Pokémon is probably not the battle mechanics, or the grind, but the idea of collecting/hoarding and levelling up/optimizing, the same kind of appeal present in MMOs.

A thought occurred to me. If a player puts up with boring grind, why not turn the grind into a useful association/memorization training game? In fact, having complicated combat decisions every turn will be very disr...

The Guardian Legend quickie

This game has a lot of fun enemy designs, doesn't it? The protagonist design varies a bit between cover, localizations, concept art and sprite. I thought I'd try something quite robotic since she can transform, otherwise it gets a bit too weirdly contortionist. 

Including here a bit of a rare image I think I saved from twitter(?), enhanced and colour blocked to try to figure out how the thing folds together. It was kinda hard to read with just the lines. Might be a rare image from ...

DragonMech Original Cover

This is my original cover done in 2004. It has some good points, with the glowy sparks, ruthless onslaught, and all the nonsense in the background. The composition is even more nonsense. I never could figure it out despite reading all sorts of tutorials on the subject. I was commissioned to do several covers but couldn't do it because of compositional hurdles (cities in perspective).

My style at the time (no line art) didn't really lend itself to figuring out joints so a lot of them are...

Another DragonMech

Here's "The Dignitary", a type of secure transport. I'm not really sure if this style is working here, the lines are very subtractive and I tend to not push hard shadows to build form. I was perhaps more concern with working out the mechanical aspect of the design. Might be more suitable to make a quadruped as with two legs it get this unbalanced T-shape.

The original has a bunch of issues, like being mostly big boots, wonky shoulder attachment. I thought it would be fun to put some emp...

Revisiting DragonMech Work

I illustrated an TTRPG called DragonMech (for Goodman Games) back in 2004. It was more work than expected, so I rushed most of the pieces (<1hr each). Back then I was in the midst of my one-work-layer-sloppy-brush period. Looking at the stuff now, I find it quite lacking, but I thought it would be fun to redo a few of the pieces (maybe just do some line-overs) and post here.

This is one of the less awkward pieces... if it looks like my Chozo that's because they were done around the s...

Doctor Who Page

I've put the Doctor Who stuff on a Patreon version of the old page. It's mostly the same material as here, with some text cleanup. It's easier to browse on a proper page, I feel. I suppose it'll will become public at some point but for now it's our little secret.

http://androidarts.com/doctorwho/doctorwhoPat.htm

V1-STRIKER

I've worked on this project some more, keeping it mostly 16 colours for simplicity's sake, or perhaps old habit. The Amiga gets a few more colours for free with the 3-colour sprites though. Since sprites are vertical bars a single sprite can be used to make vertical beams. The sprite bars can also be skewed or sinus waved along the horizontal scanline axis making for a cool effect. The pointer to the image can be changed, which makes it possible to use the bars for bullets as long as these do...

16 Colour Shmuppery

Detour: There's a 1987 arcade game by Taito/Toaplan called Flying Shark that I looked into recently for no particular reason. It has a few ports for other systems, including the Amiga. Often Amiga games were actually limited by the Atari ST specs as developers apparently wanted to publish on both systems.

The Flying Shark port features redrawn graphics and a new palette rather then the original richer arcade graphics. The palette they chose is quite garish, which is fine for readability...

AOoo it's a Snake

Sorry about not posting recently. I've been actually working, almost like a normal person.

Anyways, I just looked at the Amiga OCS (500) version of UFO (X-COM) and got thinking about the GUI presentation. The DOS version probably runs in 320x200 VGA mode 13h or something. A PAL Amiga can easily do a higher vertical resolution, especially on static (retain mode) GUI screens as these lack moving action. The Amiga might run out of chipmem for the graphics though, but I don't think reducing...

X-COM UFO...ufo

I decided to explore the idea of a front even though ufos are traditionally radial. Perhaps it doesn't quite make sense for it to be pointing straight down at what's a 45 degree angle to most other stuff. It's unclear how walking on the roof would work with all the extra detail there. Could just ignore it and draw sprites on top as normal I guess.

X-COM Avenger

And here's the Avenger. I was trying to give it a bit of a turtle shell look. I angled the hull sides inward to make it a little bit more interesting than a plain tile box. I put some Macross Valkyrie intakes on the front edge of the shell to echo what I did with the Skyranger intakes (and also borrowed some other details).

The Nacelles are a bit long so I decided against turning them and put some landing thrusters in the hull instead. I think the nacelles might echo a bit of Star Trek ...