Today I'm showing my process for creating an old-school RPG battle screen in Photoshop. As you can see, it's heavily  inspired by games like Final Fantasy IV and Lufia and the Fortress of Doom which were two of my favorites growing up. Apologies for the lack of narration this time. Life has had me really busy the past couple weeks so I didn't have time to record and edit audio. I think it's still helpful even without narration though.

Contents:
(0:00) - Laying out the screen
(2:55) - Outlining the background
(5:22) - Shading the background
(12:02) - Cleaning up the sprites
(20:38) - Adding the menus

Want to know more about this project? Check out popcornsundae.com

Today I demonstrate various techniques for drawing pixel art while creating a retro-RPG overworld map for my animated series, PlotQuest. Although I use Photoshop to create this particular piece of art, the techniques I show will work in just about any digital art program.

I'd like to get a jump on planning my next series of tutorials so if there's any animation technique or software you've really been wanting to learn, please leave a comment and let me know. Thanks!

Watch as I strive to answer the age-old question (as it relates to creating pixel art anyway) in Photoshop (1:03), Clip Studio Paint (6:28), and Gimp (9:13). 

Topics covered: 
1. How to resize an image. 
2. How to find the layers panel. 
3. Getting the Pencil tool to just create a 1-pixel line without anti-aliasing the heck out of it. 
4. How to do the same thing with the eraser (which you'd think would be the same process but it never is). 

Hope you enjoy and if you have any questions just leave a comment! 

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My current project: PopcornSundae.com
https://twitter.com/popcorn_sundae

​This is the first in a series of tutorials I'm doing on my work for the web series, PlotQuest. This one goes over some tricks for creating a quick pixel art look in Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint. So if you've ever wondered how to take a piece of art you've already made and make it look like pixel art without having to actually redraw it as pixel art then you may wanna check it out. 

If you have any questions, comments, or just wanna show off what you've made using this trick please leave a comment. 

More about PlotQuest at http://www.PopcornSundae.com and on the Popcorn Sundae channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5k7XLDT8KRQ-J12TVkRVug

The Popcorn Sundae team and I have been really busy working on the show. Lots of concept art up on our site now. http://www.popcornsundae.com/production-blog

Just a quick holiday sketch inspired by my Thanksgiving.

Momentum continues to build! Tommy just finished some new concept art for Amy and Pltnm06Ghost has been busily boarding Episode 2. For my part, I've been working on animation and setting up our social media so we have a YouTube channel ​https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5k7XLDT8KRQ-J12TVkRVug, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. now.

​You can find all the concept art and video of Ghost's storyboarding process on our Production Blog. More to come very soon!

Sorry it's been so long since I've given any sort of update. After the panel at Archon my team and I had a LOT to process, discuss, and figure out how to implement. Thank you again to everyone who was there for your great feedback, it's really been helpful! We're now in full production mode on  PlotQuest so updates will be coming much more regularly now. 

The storyboards for Episode 1 are up as well as some more concept art and info on our heroine, Ivy. You can find all on our production blog. More art coming soon!

For the past few months a couple of my former students and I have been working on creating a pilot for an animated series. I can't say too much about it at this point but what I can do is show you a couple shots from the pilot.

We completed the animatic back in January and it debuted at the ARTrepreneures Showcase hosted by the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis and the Cortex Innovation Community. The animatic was very well received so we decided to move forward with finishing the show. Because this is a passion project right now, we've mainly been doing this in our spare time, however, I'm happy to report that the pilot episode is in final editing at this point and we'll be scheduling a screening soon. More on that as things develop.

Credits:
Me: Animation, Camera, Clean-up & Color, Sound Design, Backgrounds
Pltnm06Ghost: Character Designs, Storyboards, Backgrounds
Tommy Benoist: Storyboards, Clean-up & Color, Backgrounds
Taylor Gooden: Character Designs, Backgrounds
Music: "Nontinde Vendor Theme" by RoccoW