Art Guide

Pixelists are MeemosPlanet contributors who specialize in designing custom artwork for the site. They create icons for biomes , items, recipes , enemies , weapons, armor, item drops, GUI art and any other artistic need the site may have.

Art Guide
Below are some rules and tips to help artists quickly produce materials.

In the end all patterns should be at 4x pixel zoom. This can be achieved by: Especially for beginners it will be easier to use the 1x1 pixel version and scale it up in the end. This is what I prefer, since then I can use items as recipe sprites as well, and use a zoomed version for say inventory and game world images.
 * 1) Create your pixel art with 1x1 pixel units. After completing the piece, scale it up 400%, but send me both sizes in *.png format

Canvas sizes for texture packs:
Example Templates to start with:
 * Beings / Robots / Animals: 16x16px
 * Characters, mini-boss, enemy: 16x16px
 * Items, Eggs, Potions, Food, Equipment: 8x8px
 * Recipes: 8x8px (I dont zoom them)
 * Boss: 32x32px
 * Machines: 16x16px
 * Shop, Character Upgrades (Item Store, Armory, Costumes): 8x8
 * Biggest Ever: 64x64px (but must have a very good reason for this size)
 * Title Screen and Marketing images can be any size as long as it fits the style and on a 640x480px maximum screen resolution.
 * Floor Tiles: 8x8px (but then zoom them to 32x32px which is used in the game)



Fig.1: Character - 'Meemo' from a 16x16pixel source sprite, sprite strip for animation



Fig.2: Character - 'Vacumer' from a 16x16pixel source sprite, sprite strip for animation



Fig.3: Item - 'Toaster' from a 8x8pixel source sprite, single image. (need more of them here, so feel free to add, remember all in .png format, with transparent backgrounds or solid color backgrounds which I can remove in Game Maker Studio)

Character Sprites
Currently the character sprites are on a 90x90 pixel canvas. New items for the character (eg. hair, accessories, armor, weapons) should ideally fit within the same sized canvas. (This is currently under discussion and the dimensions may change, the final game may have character upgrades) The image should have a transparent background with the item positioned within the canvas the way it should be placed on the character. The following image may be used as a guide for item alignment:

??IMAGE??

Colors
==== ?? A rough guide to colors ...? ====

GIMP
GIMP-related tips.

Use an existing image
Warning: Please avoid using existing images, and be creative (or at least be 100% sure that the image can be modified and commercially reused, which is not the case in the following video !) full

In this video are shown the following tips:
 * Search a reusable image on google.
 * Scale an image
 * Add alpha layer to remove the background color
 * Change colors with posterize and contrast
 * Pixelize an image
 * Set half-transparent pixel to black
 * Draw a border around the image.

Pixel Art Threads
The simplest way to submit art would be to post the image(s) into the appropriate Pixel Art Thread on Github. In order for pixel art to be integrated into MeemosPlanet, the pixelist must give MeemosPlanet legal permission to do so exclusively. If you have art that you would like to submit, please contact the Staff for the relevant permission form. When MeemosPlanet has the art and your permission to use it in hand, an engineer robot will then insert the files to the appropriate place. The threads are also a good place to get feedback on your art.

Integrate art in repository
The following ?? explains the new system and how one should commit new images to the repository?? ??? For now feel free to post a page for your art ideas, or send it to our staff email or forum topic, etc. We will figure it out in due course...

Nomenclature
The names of image files needs to be consistent within each category. The standard for file names is category-object-descriptor-index.png (using underscore). Object, descriptor, and index are optional depending on whether the category folder name would make object name redundant or if there are no variations requiring a descriptor or index (i.e. no colors or no multiples). For example, the third blonde beard option is named beard_blonde_3.png.

Keep in mind that all the art files should be zero indexed, but zero means none of that option, so don't use 0 as your file name index.

(Credits: This page has been adapted from HabitRPG wikia page - a game I recommend)