[ART] Dualität

Abend auf dem Land

 

Resources used: Quake color palette, Some of my own sprites and textures, Lost Civilization, Quaddicted texture wad collection [jf_obtex - textures by John "Metlslime" Fitzgibbons; qedsamp - not sure where they're from, might be this], Foxhead's Comtex, Mek's Box 'o Skies

Wad file: included together with the next painting's wad, see bellow

 

Mittag in der Stadt

Resources used: Quake 2 color palette, Some of my own sprites and textures, Lost Civilization, Happy Time Circus 2, Zekhmet, Biolage texture pack this skybox, /3/ Anon old stuff archive [Artbeats, Dosch, Marlin Studios collections], Texture Town, Foxhead's Comtex and Foxtex, Juggernaut textures found here, midreja2 texture by Rencoret.

Wad file: >download< 

 Dualität

I feel it's appropriate to talk about both of these paintings at the same time, since they're very much connected, and contrast each other in interesting ways. The first painting, Abend auf dem Land (evening in the countryside) started out as a simple scene, and I wasn't sure who would inhabit it. I had an idea of featuring a character inspired by a late family member, who was remarkably photogenic back in his day. At first I tried to make a simple solid-color silhouette, but after some thinking I decided to draw said family member instead. I used one of the photos of him as a reference, and gravitated towards a more realistic presentation, which in the end left me dissatisfied. The way he looks feels more awkward rather than elegant.

Mittag in der Stadt (noon in the city) came about in response to the previous piece. I conveyed my subject in a way that's more in-line with my regular artstyle, and the atmosphere feels closer to the one in the photos that inspired these paintings. I originally him with way more exaggerated proportions, specifically with really wide shoulders, which I progressively narrowed until they looked more natural.

What I find most interesting about both of these is their various differences, which is why I included them both in this post and titled it Dualität (duality). There are many aspects in which these differ: setting, atmosphere, stylistic execution, lighting, and what I find particularly interesting - color. The color palettes from the first two Quakes have become a mainstay in my art ever since I began using them in August. I find the slightly less saturated look of their colors pleasing, and they've both become dear to me. They both convey different feelings, and have each a unique character even when they exist outside of the respective games they belong to. Exploring them has become something I really enjoy. Besides the palettes, the colormaps are different - the former piece had its colormap generated with the default, RGB palette conversion setting in Slade, while the latter had its colormap unintentionally generated with the CIEDE2000 setting; I was experimenting with CIEDE2000 in the context of converting graphics from one palette to another, and I hadn't switched back to RGB when I generated the colormap for Mittag in der Stadt. I think CIEDE2000 and the other CIE color settings in Slade have a lot of untapped potential. 

PS. The titles are all in German because the photos I mentioned were taken in Switzerland. 

[ART] Dump of my older art 2

 Verdant

 Resources used: Rosy256, OTEX, Lost Civilization assets, sky from 32in24tex.
 Wad file: >download<

 A more quaint scene compared to my previous piece but I really like it. I got permission to use stuff from Lost Civilization and I went ham with it lol. Thanks to the tree sprites I pretty much made the entire scene in UDB and only did a tiny touch up and added my signature in post.

To me the highlight are some of the textures used here, which are made from scratch by me! I'm really happy with how they look. The custom textures in question are the dark grey block with the glyphs, the oval shaped stone embedded into the green ZIMMER texture and the white concrete making up the valley (the vines covering the texture aren't mine obviously)

 Custom textures like these allow me to add my own element to the scene and I'll definitely be making more. Eventually I could make them public, though these ones were specifically made with the Rosy256 palette so they can look pretty bad in the default palette.

 To touch on the theme itself, I was originally gonna have this be a bunch of brutalist looking buildings that were overgrown with vegetation, but after I started making the scene I instead opted for the details you see here. I felt like adding too much detail would be detrimental to the scene. The nighttime theme was inspired by the recently released Catnip II. In the end I accidentally made a pretty fitting piece for Halloween!

-31. October 2024.

I completely forgot I made this on Halloween :P It still goes hard, and I remain proud of thes custom textures I made for this.

Blue Map

 Resources used: Weezer Blue Album cover, sky by Roger Ritenour, my own sprites.
 Wad file: >download<

Yesterday I got an idea for something quick and silly to stay creative in spite of having to use my grandma's shitty tv as a monitor. I was gonna draw a bunch of characters made by the Doom community posing in the blue album cover. I was thinking of Plerb's mascot, Bank's Cacogirl, MundyC's Sanahaid and maybe Umbra's main character. Then I had the idea of using the drawing as a texture and making the kind of scene I did here with it. But when I shrunk and converted the album to Doom's palette it looked so goofy that I just wanted to use it on it's own. The spacey scenery was inspired by Baphomet's Satelite by Cacodemon187.

 I made two new sprites for this (the light grey trees with the blue stuff on them). I was kinda considering keeping Plerb's mascot but eventually I just made the edits of Doom's tree sprites while using some basic element's from the mascot (colors and round form). The other sprites are recolors of some older sprites of mine.

 -27. November 2024.

 This painting made me listen to Weezer for a short period, though I never ventured beyond the Blue Album. Pretty fun music but it's not something I've got much of a connection with. In essence, I did this for shits and giggles, not because I'm much of a Weezer fan, which I think makes me quite a poser lol.

When I said "my grandma's shitty TV" I meant it. The colors looked like ass on it, and if I used it for long enough my eyes would get irritated and strained. I suppose it made the moment when I finally got a proper replacement monitor for my laptop all the more sweet, as its colors are really good and felt like a blessing to my eyes.

I did end up revisiting the original idea that sparked this piece:

 

Pictured left to right: Cacogirl OC made by Bank (AKA wallh4x), Plerb's mascot, Ayba and Manu Chao

Finitude Engine

Resources used: COMTEX, OTEX, Arch_tx, Pyddtex, Lostres, 32in24tex, Biolage textures, personal edits of aforementioned textures, personal palette
Wad file: >download<

One day early this year, perhaps in February, I remembered an old idea for a setting that I never got around to realize beyond a rough MS Paint sketch. I imagined it as a black sand desert dotted with patches of weird red plants. The sky was pink and occasionally one could find oases host to civilization. These oases and settlements would have featured iridescent colors contrasting against the black desert quite heavily.

On that fateful day I got inspired to try and make a wad based on this aesthetic. To keep it short, I never made anything finished. I got too caught up in trying to make the perfect palette for it. However, all this wankery eventually led me to start doing this painting thing out of frustration. Good decision. After a while I had another a crack at this idea. I got inspired by a certain area in Fractured Worlds and combined the fleshy aesthetic with the iridescent colors. I made a palette and tried to use the advanced features of the Eternity engine. As you can see that went quite awry. While I did manage to fix the bugs you see here, I lost the motivation to keep working on this and with the Eternity engine as well, and so I switched back to Nugget Doom and a bit later Woof. The fucking iridescent color aesthetic feels cursed at this point, like it was never meant to be part of any kind of finished product lol.

I have no plans on finishing this so this post is for the sake of posterity.

-1. December 2024. 

Never tried making anything in Eternity again lmao. I am still fond of the engine, despite how little I've actually used it for playing Doom and especially for mapping. I find the idea of an engine sporting really advanced features that nonetheless feels fully like classic Doom quite compelling. While Eternity never did gain much popularity, I have a feeling that the Boom derived port family is moving in a similar direction. MBF21 brought a lot of new possibilities to the community, and I've got a feeling the more classic Doom oriented port family is going to move into the direction of integrating advanced new features into the existing Demo-compatible/classic feel framework.

[ART] Dump of my older art 1

 Hello and welcome! This is the start of my blog. Without further ado allow me to get down to business and share some of my art! Most of these works are a form of mixed media I've adopted as my main form of art, and it involves creating a scene in the Doom engine, taking a screenshot of it and subsequently drawing in various details. Think of it like retouching or editing a photograph. I imagine these will be the main subject of this blog, however, that does not mean that its scope will be solely dedicated to them. I intend to use this blog for other stuff, such as talking about the things I like or announcing the occasional Doom wad I might make. 

 The following pieces, as well as their original descriptions, are all taken from the following Doomworld topic, which is where they were first posted to:

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/147064-97th-century-exhibition/?page=1

Sunrise over MtPain

 

Resourses used: 32in24-15tex v2

 Wad file: >download< 

 My first go with this. I juggled several ideas before settling on Dean of Doom fanart. Idk why I settled on that in particular, but I'm happy with how it turned out. Depicted here is a crossover between the titular MtPain and Sunlust, which is planned to be reviewed at the series finale of DoD, so that's what inspired the scenery here. 

-14. August 2024.

 This holds up fairly well! Definitely experimental, and I feel it stands out in certain ways compared to my later art. Drew/edited a lot more detail here than would be the norm in my subsequent art. I haven't watched Dean of Doom in quite a while, thought the show has certainly left a big impression on me back when I was into it. For better or for worse, it made me enamored with the concept of the Doom community and its history.

Riverside 

 

 Resources used: pyddtex (now known as Doomworld Resource Archive)

 Wad file: >download<

 I'm starting to get a hang of this thing. Made a new palette for this one, and interestingly enough ended up using far fewer textures then I anticipated. I'm improving with the way I draw pixel art, which is always good to see! This scene was inspired by my connection with the Bosnian countryside. 

-26. August 2024.

 Riverside was the first time I felt doubt in this medium. I remember not feeling too confident in it, and I had a feeling it wouldn't turn out well. Yet it absolutely did! I'm still really fond of it, and consider it to be my first proper Doom painting.

 Dusk

 

 Wad file [map & palette]: >download<

[textures]: >download< (lostres textures not included) 

 Resources used: Biolage, Celtic Shrine, Plantation mansion, Lostres texture packs; Alpha Centauri wad; modified Arcadia Demade color palette.  

 This became quite a detailed scene, which is to be expected of the more industrial/urban setting. Another step forward for me. For this one I used a texture pack I compiled myself alongside the Lostres pack. I used various textures from Biolage and Celtic Shrine as a starting point, and made more by editing or drawing on top of the existing ones. I definitely plan to release the pack in the future, but I'll wait until the pack becomes a bit more substantial, and I also need to organize it better. 

-22. September 2024.

 Never did release that texture pack lmao. Texture situation for this one is a bit of a mess :P This is the first painting I made custom textures for, and I'm still quite happy with them. The tall house on the right, the one with a sloped roof connected with the power grid, gave me quite some trouble when I was making it. It was in an unusual orientation, and that made the engine freak out.

 That's it for now. I'll be making these posts dedicated to my older stuff alongside posting newly made art, and whatever else comes to my mind.