http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:Kaiseto&section=today deviantART RSS for by:Kaiseto en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:47:25 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/28362098/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/28362098/ Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:21:47 PST

- It's fun to design clothing.

- Spirals always look awesome
- Except in pixel art, where they become increasingly hard to pull off the smaller you go

- Conservation of colors is a good practice to get into

- Enjoy what you're doing. If you enjoy something, doing it won't be a chore, and you'll get better.

- Practice will never make perfect, but it will always make better.

- Every once in awhile, you've got to force yourself to do something you're uncomfortable with.
- Sometimes you'll come back to something you weren't good at a long time ago, and gave up on, only to find that you've improved a lot more than you expected.

- There will always be someone better than you, and you'll always be better than someone else.

- It's good to take in other styles, but bad to copy them directly.

- Every piece of original art, from doodle to masterpiece, is a step towards finding your own style.
- When I started out drawing, I was worried I didn't have one. I'm wouldn't be able to say that anymore.

- You won't always end up excelling where you expected to, but you'll probably end up excelling somewhere.
- When I started out, I wanted to be one of those really good digital painters. I didn't know pixel art exists. Still shooting for excellence in both, sometime in the far future


So yeah, felt like writing something a bit more inspiration than usual? I think Flashy's music has gotten me in a good mood. Go check it out.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/26859844/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/26859844/ Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:49:58 PDT
Wait a second...

Sub-par graphics? I've always thought of E.G.G. as one of the prettiest games of its time. In fact, most of the reviewers agree that it looked great. They also all agree that, because it was 2 Dimensional, it was far behind its time and therefore inferior. It's pretty much universally rated badly in the graphics department. And that really bothers me.

In my experience, the art that goes into a game is far, far more important than the technology that backs it up graphically. A lot of games with great "graphics" are just plain boring to look at, and easily forgotten, because they had crappy art, and no amount of High Dynamic Range and motion blur could save them. Art is always more important than graphics. So why is it that games are always rated on the latter, rather than the former? It's ridiculous.

I think it's this obsession with technology in games that spearheaded the death of the platformer on consoles, which is only now seeing a small resurrection in the former of indie games. The industry kept pushing ahead with 3D, until anything in 2 dimensions was considered inferior, without question, and therefore couldn't be marketed as well or sold for as much. Some companies tried to re-imagine the platformer in 3D, with varying degrees of success. Nevertheless, the general popularity of the platformer waned drastically with the loss of simple control schemes and addition of troublesome cameras.

It's a damn shame, too, because I love platformers. Always have. They're a form of entertainment that don't really have any sort of real-life equivalent. Strategy games can be replaced by board games, RPGs with books and movies, shooters with paintball. There's really no equivalent to the simple fun of a 2D platformer, and its a damn shame that our obsession with technology has all but removed them from the industry.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/26536657/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/26536657/ Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:11:08 PDT
I've had an account on Furaffinity for awhile. I hope it doesn't come as a big surprise to you all that I'm a furry. I mean... seriously...

Anyway, I original created the account to dump sketches on, and a lot of the old posts are old sketches I did, but I've actually taken to using it as a music account lately. I've done a lot of music in the past year, and have had no way of uploading it on deviantArt. So it's all been dumped on FA. Obviously, the older you go the lower the technical quality will be for the music. Still, I think some of you might enjoy it. And I know I have furries watching me, so some of you might be interested in the sketches.

You can check out the account here: [link]

Well, that's all. Finally a journal that's not a rant, eh?

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/25693969/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/25693969/ Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:44:04 PDT
I like to look up music on youtube. I kind of ignored well-known music for the first 15 years of my life, so I've been catching up for the last four. I'd have to place Classic Rock up there as one of my favorite genres. Recently discovered Bad Company (I've got a piece of pixelart coming up soon that was made largely while listening to their eponymous song). I've also been listening to a lot of Queen lately.

And there's something that irks me about the users of youtube. Half of them feel the need to bring up Freddie Mercury being gay in their comment. Either that or something about aids. And it's usually not just a passing comment. It's usually something pretty nasty. Some even try to act as if they weren't homophobic, by appending something like "Oh, but I don't care that he was a fag" to their comment. I see the same shit on most of Elton John's music.

Why the hell do people care? I've never known anybody as openly homophobic as some of the people on youtube. Maybe it's just that I live in a small city in the northeast. Maybe it's just that as soon as somebody jumps on the internet they stop caring what people think of them. I don't know. It just bugs me that somebody should even care, much less ridicule a great singer for being gay. It's, quite frankly, bullshit.

Well, that's it. Just something that's been bugging me lately.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/25379166/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/25379166/ Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:08:09 PDT Why I like Clean Pixels

I like clean pixel art. Always have, always will. For a long time I went out of my way to avoid dithering pieces altogether. The pieces that I saw dithered on Pixeljoint by newer members were often awful, grainy, nasty little monsters that looked like they suited to exfoliating your skin if printed out on a sheet of paper. I always hated that "dithered" look.

Over the years I've gotten better at recognizing good dithering when I see it. Those pieces that I hated back when I started were obvious cases of overdithering. A lot of new pixel artists get the idea in their heads that it is absolutely necessary to dither everything in their pieces. The result usually ends up with an entire picture that would've been good, if not for that nasty, bumpy texture all over it that doesn't fit the context of the image. If you use dithering to color in a suit of armor it will end up looking like a shiny pillow (even worse if you pillow-shade it o_O).

In newer pieces I've employed dithering a lot more. It's absolutely necessary if you want to conserve colors. But that's really not the reason to dither things. The best reason to dither something is to give it texture. Alternating colors close together by using different patterns can do wonders when trying to represent a material in pixel art. That's why I always cry a little on the inside when I see somebody who uses the 50% dithering pattern exclusively. I found this tutorial by Derek Yu to be incredibly helpful at learning some basic dithering patterns other than just 50/50. If you're a pixel artist and want to use dithering to smooth out the transition between two colors, definitely employ some different patterns.

Then there's stylized dithering, my favorite kind. Using different shapes, like circles and crosses and slashes in your dithering can add some really neat textures to the objects in your art. Just be sure your final texture matches the object you're using it on. I have some examples on my site.

Ultimately, I still like clean pixel art a lot, in which little to no dithering is used. When doing a piece in pixel art, you should always consider what it's being done for. If it's for a game, consider the mood and setting. Dithering tends to cause a grittier final product, whereas clean pixel art is often used for games that are more upbeat or stylized. It's also a good idea to create pieces that use all styles of shading/color transition where appropriate. Shiny, flat objects shouldn't be dithered much, where bumpy, textured objects can benefit greatly from some sweet dithering.

Anyway, just my 2 cents on dithering. Might be helpful to some of you out there starting out with pixel art. Mostly, I'm just writing this because I'm engaged in a piece where I'm doing a ton of dithering.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/25310595/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/25310595/ Sun, 14 Jun 2009 14:04:30 PDT Favorites
I don't favorite a lot of stuff. I also don't watch many people. The latter is a result of not liking my dA message box to have anything in it when I get online. The former, because I tend to only favorite art that blows me away. I treat my favorites box like a collection of art that somehow inspires me. You see a lot of really high quality digital paintings in there, because that's the kind of art I'd like to produce, but can't. When I favorite something, I'm not doing it for the artist, I'm doing it for myself. There are, of course, some exceptions.

As a result, when someone gets a favorite from me, it usually means I greatly, greatly appreciate their artwork. Unfortunately, most of the artists already know how good they are. Many are professionals. Once in awhile I'll stumble upon someone new who is excellent, but people like that don't tend to remain undiscovered for long.

I'm fairly sure most people on dA don't look at the concepts of favorites the same way I do. There are many people who have 20+ pages of favorites, all of varying qualities. Maybe people do it in the hopes to get recognized by the artist. I know I've gotten favorites on something, and visited that person's page not five minutes later to see ten or twenty other favorites newer than mine. It really devalues the honor of somebody "liking" your artwork. It makes me think that the point of favoriting wasn't because they liked what I did, but because they wanted me to see their page and return the favor.

There's not really any point to be making here. Just curious to know if my view on favorites is as unusual as I think it is.

Community
deviantArt is a community. It's the MySpace of art websites. I'd be curious to know how many accounts there are on this website that exist solely for the purpose of trying to network with better artists.

The power of the community is immense. I've seen fairly mediocre artists get on the front page simply out of connections. People who watch others tend to get watched back, building their network and visibility regardless of the quality of their art. The focus of the site slowly becomes more on who you know and how much you can be seen than it does on improving your skills as an artist.

That being said, I'm not entirely sure why I'm here. I joined up in September over 4 years ago. Luckily, pixel art is a fairly small community on dA, and the moderators often frequent PixelJoint, a site that is structured to focus on the art and never on the gallery stats (as such, it doesn't have a pageviews system, and people usually have small buddies lists). I was able to get the meager amount of pageviews I have now thanks to my first Daily Deviation, given to me by ShoneGold. After even a small amount of networking, meeting up with Flashy (who's musical skills I admire very much) I was suggested for another, and my pageviews have rocketed to nearly twice the amount they were at since before then.

I'm not here to network. I generally just use the site to show off the things I create from time to time, and look for great art once in awhile. Nobody that has watched me or favorited me should take offense to me not returning the favorite. The whole networking thing just isn't for me.


Wow, that was tl;dr if I ever saw tl;dr. Just felt like rambling I guess.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/24415914/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/24415914/ Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:34:40 PDT
Pixel Mirage

This was done for a Web Page Construction class at the college, but I'd like to continue to maintain it afterwards.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/24168064/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/24168064/ Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:02:51 PDT can produce the artwork, I should be open to working with them. I'm sorry, but it's just not true.

When I make pixel art, I usually do it with a lot of love, because I enjoy what I'm doing. It all comes down to enjoying what I'm doing. If someone approaches me to work on a project of theirs that I just hold no interest in, even if I accepted, the quality would be lousy, because the art would cease to be a hobby and become a chore. This happened back in high school, for a game project we had to create. Not much of that artwork ever made it online, because it's low quality by my standards.

I'm getting VERY jaded about working with other people. I keep getting messages asking me to please help them on their game, then they can't even provide me with a synopsis about the game, how much they're into it, or if they can even program or write. WHY should I help you on your game, or comic, or animation, if you can't even prove to me that you're organized enough to finish it. You can't just have an idea and expect everyone else to bring the skills they've worked years to refine to the table.

I draw because it's fun. I pixel because it's fun. I play the piano and compose music because I find it fun. It helps me escape the absolute pointlessness of living. Instead of coming up with an idea, and expected everyone else to do the work for you, I urge you, I beg you, take some initiative and learn how to draw, or write, or pixel, or create music, so you can contribute at least one major part to your project. PROVE to me, prove to all the other artists you might want to help you, that you're putting just as much effort into this as you expect them to. In fact, you should be putting MORE effort into your project. It's yours, not theirs.

And in the long run, if you can point to a part in your finished project, and say "I did that. I stayed up until midnight one friday editing and retooling it until it was finally just right, and I'm so happy I did" you'll be far happier with yourself, and far more satisfied.

Sorry about the rant, but I have a lot of things on my mind, and missing an exam worth 20% of a class grade, along with not getting any sleep last night, didn't help in the least.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/23855606/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/23855606/ Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:00:53 PDT
I bet you can't guess what my topic is...

So yeah, it's incomplete, and hosted on the school's network, but I've got the start of a pixel art tutorial up, along with links to a bunch of great pixel sites. I figure some of you will be interested. So if you're so inclined, check out Pixel Mirage, my work-in-progress website.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/23702724/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/23702724/ Sat, 14 Mar 2009 22:01:38 PDT
I'm not open to trades, I'm not partial to the idea of commissions, and bugging me to help you on your game isn't going to work. I've had a LOT of people start approaching me on MSN in the last three or four months soliciting help on their various game projects. Some of them have been very pleasant, and reasonable. Others have had no idea what they're doing, and been pains to deal with. The requests became annoying enough that I removed my MSN contact information from dA and Pixeljoint.

The truth is, I've already agreed to work on a project for someone, who's paying me to produce tiles for an RPG. I'm not open to working on any other game projects.

So here's the final breakdown of my stance of helping you work on various projects.

---

Games: No
Trades: Depends on the person
Commissions: Depends on the content and the person asking.
Requests: No
Gifts: I'm not big on social networking, so the chance of getting a gift out of me is unlikely. If I like you, I might do one. Soliciting will only hurt your chances.

---

I THINK that's everything. So hopefully everyone can read this before sending me notes or digging through the internet to find out email/IM contact information.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/23566252/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/23566252/ Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:17:42 PST
Anyway, I just managed to get it uploaded to youtube. It merges Fisherman's Horizon and The Extreme from FFVIII with Dark Messenger from FFIX. I'd appreciate if you checked it out. This is the only way I can submit music to DA at the moment, seeing as I don't know my way around flash. So consider this a kind of side-submission.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/23562191/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/23562191/ Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:29:32 PST here.

This is in no way an attempt to get PixelJoint pageviews. Mostly because PixelJoint is a morally superior art site to DA, and it doesn't have pageviews.

The main reason I'm putting this up here is because the RPG Characters set I put up here was too large to adequately double in size, so it might be kind of hard to make out some of the finer details on the characters on high-resolution monitors. I'll have them posted up on PJ in several days, probably, once I've finished everything. That site allows you to zoom in.

Just beware, if you're running Firefox 3, anything zoomed in will look weird and blurry. We all hate it.... So yeah, best viewed in any browser other than Firefox 3. Version 2 is fine. Use that.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/23083750/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/23083750/ Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:50:51 PST
So yeah, I'm hiding those comments so nobody clicks them.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/22877559/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/22877559/ Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:44:13 PST
It was a neat game. Not without its share of flaws, but I enjoyed it a lot and it continues to be one of my favorites on the Dreamcast. Still, to this day I have yet to meet another person who has played the game. Some sites have reviews here and there, but it's almost like the game didn't exist. Has anyone else played this?

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/22855848/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/22855848/ Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:34:55 PST
I can never seem to express them before they're gone and forgotten, at least for awhile.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/22704222/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/22704222/ Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:29:31 PST
Pixel art is a big hobby type thing for me. When I'm working on artwork for myself it doesn't feel like work. A project, sometimes, but not really work. I've done artwork for groups in school projects and it's much less enjoyable when I'm doing stuff for someone else. The artwork also doesn't come out nearly as good, because I just generally don't care about the project as much as I could.

Also, as unlikely as it is for either of them to get done, I have two game projects of my own that I'm working on by myself. There's Toc's Tale, a Multimedia Fusion 2 game that only barely started to get off the ground, but has some potential for me to continue working on it in the future, and Harmonia, which is entirely in the conceptual stages, and will probably remain so for awhile.

So basically, seeing as I don't like to work in groups, and I have not one but two game projects of my own that I'd rather work on, I'll probably never agree to work on someone else's game project, regardless of how good it is. It's nothing personal. So ... you know. You guys can probably stop asking me.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/22625260/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/22625260/ Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:31:21 PST 50th Deviation. It's something halfway between a mockup and concept art for Harmonia, my own personal game project. I highly encourage people to check it out. It deserves as much, if not more recognition than Fields of Harmony, the piece I got a Daily Deviation on awhile back.

The characters and background were done separately, and underwent several changes during the process. The background without the characters on it can be seen here [link] The characters alone can be seen in the piece titled "Sampler" submitted directly before this one in my gallery.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/22400120/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/22400120/ Sun, 04 Jan 2009 17:40:37 PST
The video quality isn't great but the songs sound correct for the most part. I'd be great if some people gave it a listen.

The three songs are named Knight, Dragoon and Specter (same as the enemies). The backgrounds were pretty quickly thrown together, but you get the point. The final image also cuts out before the song finishes, but it doesn't affect the song quality.

Anyway, working on a new piece of pixel art. It's the biggest one I've ever done, and happens to be a redux of an ooooold piece I submitted, although admittedly I took it in such a different direction that it's losing its resemblance altogether.

Edit: Changed to link to add &fmt=18 to the video URL. That sends the video to high quality. The music quality is a bit lower in normal quality, as well as the images.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/21288126/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/21288126/ Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:23:15 PST [link] all of which are pretty excellent games.

His new one, however, caught me off guard. Noitu Love 2 is a sequel to his vaguely Megaman-ish Noitu Love. And it costs $20 to get the full version of. I was going to pass it by, but realized that there was a demo so kindly offered on his site. And believe me... it's worth the money.

Noitu Love 2 is at once similar to and nothing like the original Noitu Love. The gameplay is innovative and yet easy to get used to, and every level is something new and fresh. There are so many times when this game caught me by surprise with an especially fun boss or unexpected level design quirk. It channels everything that was great about SNES era games, only without the limitations of being on the SNES.

I've nearly played through the game once, on only one difficulty setting (still have to tackle the final boss), and just with what little I've seen I'd recommend the game. But from what I've read, the game also includes 2 extra difficulty levels and 2 other characters who play differently from the main. And if the game takes a chapter from its predecessor (and I'm sure it does) higher difficulties will add new dialog and even bosses to an already great game.

So I highly recommend trying the game out. Head over to the site and give the demo a download.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/20651321/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/20651321/ Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:45:31 PDT origamihero.com as well. There are some great games on the site created with Multimedia Fusion 2 (ultimately the reason I bought the program).

My personal favorite is AGwaK2: Darkside Adventures, but they're all great. I haven't checked out the adventure games, but the sidescrollers have a great sense of humor, so I'm sure the point-and-click games are well worth your while as well if you're into that genre.

I suppose that's all for now. Check it out.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/19888395/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/19888395/ Sun, 10 Aug 2008 23:37:06 PDT
I can't be the only one.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/19670974/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/19670974/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:24:53 PDT
I see a lot of that going on, people with horrifyingly long lists of friends, converted into a menacing wall of link-icons and bumping and jostling every which way on the screen. They have journals full of stamps and clubs and usually little bits of drama about why nobody appreciates them (accompanied by ten or two-hundred people jumping to console them and assure them that they're the best). And I'm not even talking about the REALLY popular folks.

I also see a lot of these people who have been jammed into that wall of 'friendlicons' favoriting everything a particular person does on their page. People who have been around for mere months and have managed to establish a big network of "close friends" get a lot of recognition, and I mean a lot, dare I say more than deserved. What should primarily be a site about art turns into a site about social networking, and how many friends you say you have. I won't get started on the influence of fandoms and fan art. That's a totally different (and undoubtedly a much longer and angrier) rant.

I guess the thing that bugs is is that a lot of these people aren't terribly good artists. I think I'm better than a lot of them (though I must admit to that not being an unbiased opinion) and yet I feel unrecognized in comparison. I suppose you could say I'm jealous, but too stubborn to change my beliefs for pageviews. I don't believe your art recognition should be based on the size of your social network. But I guess, in the end, that's my problem.

It's not going to change much. I mean, I don't like going out and associating with large groups of people I don't know online, especially nowadays, after having become very disenchanted with the whole forum and chat scene. Just me spouting, I guess. And maybe someone else out there, reading and agreeing.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/18715833/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/18715833/ Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:36:01 PDT
I've got a good couple of songs hanging around on my computer, ranging anywhere from as short as 16 seconds to over a minute. I know that sound pretty short and... well, it is. But, to be fair, they're all designed to loop, and I don't mind, so long as they sound nice.

I highly recommend people check it out.
There's an English tutorial here. There's a download link on the top of the page. You can also download it from Pixel's official page. The only difference is that this version is natively in Japanese, and comes bundled with an extra library of .wav samples, a collection of 99 slightly different blips and bloops.

Check out that version right here.

---

In a related note, I bought Multimedia Fusion 2 recently. It's a great program for someone like me, who has the artistic ability to design a game, but the programorial (yes, I know that's not a word) inexperience to do so.

For fun, I'm thinking about throwing some of my PxTone projects into an exe, coupled with a few visuals, and releasing it for download online, mostly to show off the music. Too bad there's no Music Uploading option on dA.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/18692554/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/18692554/ Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:13:12 PDT
In any case, just as a general request to anyone who wants to favorite something on my page, don't be afraid to leave a comment. That includes those which point out errors or give constructive criticism. This is directly especially to pixel artists.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/16410322/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/16410322/ Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:47:09 PST
Was it really the color that attracted viewers from the front page? I'd always downplayed its importance... something to reconsider, I guess.

Oh well, I can't complain now, can I?

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/15799105/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/15799105/ Tue, 04 Dec 2007 19:52:25 PST Praise is a dangerous thing when in the hands of the easily impressed. Praise can encourage artwork, bolster morale, and generally make an artist feel good. But there is, of course, a dark side. The dangers of accepting praise include becoming headstrong, overly self-satisfied, and unwilling to accept criticism. Criticism can be harsh, and it can be painful to accept (a feeling I know all too well). But criticism is far, far more important than praise in the artist's journey. Criticism is the driving force towards improvement. It is the help others are willing to give, to infuse into another's artwork, on their endless journey of refinement and development.

I hear it all too often at school. I'll be doodling quietly, attempting to gratify my own urge to draw without being bothered by other people, when a voice from over my shoulder sounds. The pitch may vary, the direction from which it comes may not always be the same, but the message is always the same. "Wow, that's so good! Let me see it!"

It doesn't matter what I'm drawing, no matter how lackluster, unfinished, or unimpressive to me the doodle is. The people around me seem to invariably be impressed. That doesn't mean that my drawing is good. I have the urge to snap at them, tell them that they're dead wrong, because they aren't looking at my artwork as what it is. They think my artwork is good because they themselves can't draw.

I am a person they can see and interact with. They might not know anyone else who draws. Because they can relate to me, and I can draw better than them, they think that my art is amazing. They don't make the connection that every piece of art, from the logo on their energy drink to a painting by Van Gogh, was created by a person who is, or was, just as tangible as I am today. It's this mentality that a person you know can't possibly be as good as a famous artist, so it's amazing to see me drawing anything recognizable at all.

I could fall into the rhythm of praise. Sometimes I desperately want to. I want to convince myself that, as long as I'm impressive in the average person's eyes, what reason do I have to improve? What point is there to spending hours and hours practicing, developing and learning when I'm already good enough for the majority of people I'll meet?

It's a self-destructive way to think. There is no reason that I should stop progressing just because other people are impressed with my work. It may be a selfish way to think, but all that I want, in the end, is to be impressed with my own work. I want to be able to drive down a street and see an illustration I've done on a poster, or in a magazine. I want to be able to express the landscapes and characters I can conjure up in my head as accurately in print as I can in thought. Why should I settle for what a 15-year-old thinks when my own aspirations, my own legacy, will be with me forever?

And it's impossible to improve if everyone a person meets praises them. You aren't doing an artist favors by overlooking the glaring errors in his or her picture. It isn't just about giving telling someone that you like their illustration. I can't express the annoyance I felt when I spent hours detailing and finishing my sketch of an old wizard, only to receive the comment, "Cute".

That doesn't tell me anything. It tells me that a person appreciates it just enough to tell me that they like it, and then leave. They won't waste two words to tell me what I did right, and god forbid they might risk upsetting me to tell me what I could change to make it better. No, I suppose "Cute" will suffice for the person who's willing to take the safest path and give some mindless, uninspired praise.

deviantArt trains people to do this. We have artists, popular artists, who can't stand the sight of any comment suggesting that their work is anything short of amazing. They're on the front page every day, so why should they need to improve, right? So instead, we get a slew of cheap, worthless comments without a hint of insight. If I want a page filled with "Kawai!!!! X3" and "OMG luv!" comments... well... ... no. I can't finish that sentence. There is no way I can imagine wanting to have something like that.

Once again, the people who leave those comments may only lavish praise on others because those other people are better than they themselves.[1] Just because they think that a piece of artwork is amazing doesn't mean the artist should be satisfied and give up improving. That's just foolish. Never stop improving. You owe it to yourself as an artist to know that nothing you do is perfect. It's always possible to get better. More importantly, it's okay if others tell you so. It's even okay if a person just outright doesn't like your artwork. Ask them to explain why, and maybe you'll come out with some advice that will help you i... ]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/14834115/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/14834115/ Fri, 28 Sep 2007 22:31:04 PDT
A lot of people get very uppity about art-theft. I can see why. I would be furious if someone took praise for a piece I spent a good two or three hours of my day on. I'm not quite so paranoid as to think everyone is out to steal my work, bt it's something I've thought about in the past. Still, with the hundreds and hundreds of journal entries, articles, and watermarks we see on this website, it seems to be a pretty common thing for inexperienced 'artists' to post artwork that isn't their own in any way.

I'm not going to get into direct theft of art. Yeah, we've already heard it a thousand times, it's bad, don't do it, yadda yadda and so on and so forth. What some people don't seem to realize is that it's just as bad to take official artwork from a game or movie and post it on their page without any disclaimer that THIS ART DOES NOT BELONG TO THEM. Posting screenshots of anime is, as far as I can tell, tolerated by the website, but if you fail to put that screenshot in the right section, it is as if you're claiming that you did the artwork yourself.

Some of the things the website does tolerate I personally don't even agree with. When it comes down to it, this is supposed to be an art site. If you're not an artist, you shouldn't be posting things on your page. That doesn't mean you have to be a good artist. You just have to limit the things you put up on your page to those that you've actually done yourself.

I can't stand to see a "piece" in the pixel art section made by copying and pasting sprites from a videogame with no editing whatsoever. That isn't artwork, unless you find some way to put some real effort and creativity into it. Nor are color edits of other people's work. Changing the hue of a character's hair doesn't make that character your own. At the very least, give a link back to the original. I don't think that tiny, simple edits to artwork count as art at all. Cutting a character out of a background image isn't artwork, it's minor editing. It doesn't take long, and it doesn't require any creativity or artistic vision.

I think I've gotten my point across. An art site is NOT a place for people to host their images or their favorite pictures. It's a place to show off what you yourself have actually done. In most circumstances, if you didn't make it yourself, it has no place being here.

I know that this journal entry won't reach too many eyes, and those it does will likely not be the people it is directed to. Still, I hope that at least one person can read this and get my point, and maybe make a change, however small, for the better.

Edit: By the way, this includes you, people who post your Gaia avatars as artwork. You did NOT make those.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/13106879/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/13106879/ Sat, 26 May 2007 22:30:58 PDT I was... skeptical at first glance. What were these screenshots? The sprites were so ridiculously simple, and the backgrounds seemed far less than impressive. Hell, I only counted 7 colors on the main character (yes, I really did count them...). Its description certainly wasn't putting me in awe:

Cave Story is a jumping-and-shooting action game.
Explore the caves until you reach the ending.
You can also save your game and continue from where you left off.

From what I could understand, this was a freeware game with outdated graphics and the 'groundbreaking' ability to save your progress. Still, against my supposedly better judgement, I downloaded the game and installed the patch. If it was as dissapointing as I expected it to be, I could simply trash it. No harm done. I was about to find out how sorely I had underestimated this game.
After playing through the game twice, now within minutes of beating it with the (well hidden) good ending, I can safetly say that Cave Story is by far one of the most impressive games I have ever played. No, the description doesn't lie about the content, but rather leaves out so much about the overall product of the game.
The graphics I had originally leered at in still screenshots worked so amazingly well with the game I could actually call them beautiful. They were charming in their old, 8-bit appearance, and wonderfully augmented by more modern effects such as particles and smooth animations.
The music manages to be beautiful, both delightfully catchy and at times invigorating or sad. It is amazing to me to hear a few simple beeps and buzzes (because the entire soundtrack is composed using computer generated frequencies rather than soundfonts or midi files) come to life and engender emotion within me. It is something I've actually taken to listening to outside of gameplay. Even more amazing, the sole creator of the game programmed the application to make the music used in the game and has it circulating on the internet.
And finally, I come to the story. While a little convoluted towards the beggining, Cave Story narrative is leaps and bounds beyond most any other retro game. You become attached to many of the characters in the short time it takes to complete the game. The strong main storyline helps keep the game interesting, and it rarely if ever becomes a drag to play. Once you truly get into the game, you will want to keep playing until you have seen everything unfold. The game isn't without its share of powerful moments, and without spoiling too much, it can be a very depressing game (especially upon recieving a bad ending).
All this, topped with very refined, simple gameplay that stays fun to play throughout, makes Cave Story a game that no gamer should go without playing.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/13081850/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/13081850/ Thu, 24 May 2007 21:23:21 PDT
JPEGs are a terrible way to save pixel art. Not only are they far larger than GIFs or PNGs when used for this sort of art, but they muddy up the images and destroy all the hard work a good pixel artist puts into their image. Pixel art is about being able to carefully place each little part of the image by hand, having control over the colors and shapes used. Pixel art is an art form of knowing how to limit oneself, and to let an outdated, lossy compression system such as the kind used by JPEG files is figurative murder.

This doesn't just go for pixel art, but most any hand drawn art, digital or traditional. In many cases it isn't a huge problem, such as complex paintings or even pencil-sketch lineart. However, in anything that uses sharp edges (including text, straight lines, or fine details), JPEGs can be a huge hit to the overall quality of the image.

JPEGs are useful for things such as photography and screenshots. In these cases, the colors can often take lossy compression with nearly no impact on quality, while greatly reducing the file size. In the case of pixel art, GIF files are a great choice. Pixel art rarely goes over 256 colors, and GIF files are small, lossless files that are supported by nearly all web browsers. As an added bonus, they support animations. Another healthy alternative is the .PNG file. These lossless files can sometimes be even smaller than GIF images while supporting any number of colors. PNGs also have an alpha layering ability that lets an artist mask an image with many different strengths of transparency. Some browsers don't support all PNG files, such as those that use 24-bit transparency, but many browsers, like Firefox, are very compatible with this format. PNGs are recommended for any kind of traditional or digital art that don't need to be needlessly compressed.

Guess the rant wasn't so little as I'd anticipated. :s

---------

On a side note, I did in fact post something recently, albeit in scraps (because I have some crazy notion that I might try to color it). Some sort of dragon-like monster, a bit like the Behemoth's of Final Fantasy fame. I also have another bit of pixel art in the works. Pixeljoint's weekly competition is the creation of an animated fighting game sprite in idle pose. While I doubt I'll have my piece completed by the deadline on Monday, I have a 2D, animated, Darkstalkers-esque sprite in the works, based on my little animated Lizardman. The lineart is nearly done (still wrestling with the hands), and I have a pretty good idea of the shading scheme I plan to adopt (nothing too detailed, not because I can't do so, but because the time required will be significantly less, and I happen to like the minimalist look of the Darkstalkers characters in relation to shading and details). All that leaves is the animation.

Wish me luck.

Also, I somehow got to begin pixeling again. He has at least one thing up on his page. Go check it out, if you so desire.

]]> ~Kaiseto http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/12503733/ http://Kaiseto.deviantart.com/journal/12503733/ Sun, 08 Apr 2007 00:15:52 PDT
Browsing pixel art will yeild pages full of ... well, oekaki and other things that just plain aren't pixel art, small color edits of pixel art ripped from a game, numerous Dollz and other premade templates that people dress up, and even some people who post their Gaia avatars (how you could call that art in any form I'm not sure, unless you're manually editing the thing yourself).

Now, some of these things are legitimate pixel art. As much as I don't respect Dollz and Micro Heros and color edits, they do involve some ability to create art with pixels. But in general, the amount of made-from-scratch, real pixel art is very, very small compared to what it should be.

I suppose the comfort I can take in that is that when I post my art, it sticks out from the rest of the pieces in that category. (If its not swallowed up by the other entries that don't even belong in that section to start with.)


Anyway, rant over. I made an account over at Pixeljoint. Probably nothing that won't be posted on this account, but you never know.

Check it out if you so desire.

]]> ~Kaiseto