Aquaria's Art Style

[Echolocating]

I've been looking into creating a mod for Aquaria and I'd like to make sure my contributions match the existing style as best as possible. I realize there's the whole library of graphics available to look at in the installation directory, but I was wondering if there were any tutorials or concept art to look at for more inspiration and guidance.

I found this post...

http://www.bit-blot.com/forum/index.php?topic=185.0

...and it's awesome. Is there is any more art tutorial stuff like that for Aquaria? I'm not a practiced/professional artist so even if someone knows some good techniques for brush properties and such (or can point me to a digital painting tutorial that is close to Aquaria's style), that would be awesome. I use GIMP and MyPaint so hopefully those two programs can pull it off. If there are any other free paint programs that work with a tablet, I don't mind suggestions.

I really appreciate Aquaria's deliberately painted look. Unfortunately, I find my own artwork looking either too airbrushed or too flat-shaded.

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Speaking of creating a mod... if I didn't end up finishing my mod, but the graphics and animations looked good enough, I would make them available as is. That got me thinking that if more modding activity were to occur, it might be nifty to have an official community expansion pack. I realize it's not quite that simple, but I just thought I'd throw that out there.

[Yogoda]

Mm... sorry nobody else did answer you, I don't know if there are a lot of people on those forums that can help you with digital painting.

I use MyPaint myself and I love it. I'm more a scripter than a painter however, but my brother makes really nice drawings with it, I think you will have no problem replicating Aquaria style with MyPaint as there are a LOT of tools available, the problem is finding which ones to use

[Sindhi]

You know about this, right? http://docs.gimp.org/2.6/en/index.html the online Gimp manual? And the website Deviant Art has tutorials in Gimp and Photoshop both; tons of ideas, new brushes to download... I just draw stuff on paper, color with pens, scan into PS or Gimp, and shade. I haven't worried much about matching Derek's Aquaria style exactly... I mix and match tiles from both and think it looks ok (see our post on Magic of Aquaria with the link to the Photobucket screen shots). Derek uses a pad and stylus; I find it easier to just draw stuff and mess with it after scanning. You can e-mail Derek for advice; he was very kind is answering me about specifics.

[Echolocating]

Thanks for the responses, Yogoda and Sindhi.

I've tried to paint in GIMP before (I use a Bamboo tablet) and, for whatever reason, GIMP seems to react a little slower to my input. If I make a broad stroke with moderate speed, it creates a bunch of straight lines that give the impression of a curve. Maybe GIMP is more of a processor hog than my machine can handle. MyPaint, however, reacts almost perfectly to the input. The only problem is that MyPaint is very limited. I can't move or scale selected parts (or even select an area) or adjust hue/contrast type things. I suppose I need to buck up and use both.

Yogoda, you hit the nail on the head regarding MyPaint when you said, "there are a LOT of tools available, the problem is finding which ones to use". I've tried all the brushes that came with the program and the only ones I feel comfortable with are the charcoal and pencil brushes. I'm looking into making my own brushes with MyPaint though, which is a bit more complicated than I anticipated.

I do really appreciate both of your responses though. I may give Derek an email on the matter, but I think I've just got to try and fail a bit more with GIMP and MyPaint first. I'll post something soon and maybe all I need is a few pointers from there. I've had some luck with the charcoal brushes and scaling things down 8 times to get rid of the scratchy look of coal strokes. My biggest problem is that I'm a bit of a perfectionist... which is not a good thing to be when I don't have the skill to meet my own demanding expectations. 

[Yogoda]

Ok, here is my brother's drawing, thanks to him for sharing this For me it is not too far from Aquaria's style.

All he used for the coloring was the tool : ramòn -> Paint Hard.Soft, nothing else.

[Echolocating]

I like that a lot. That's more the direction I want to go. Thanks for sharing, Yogoda.

I did up a concept drawing for a new protagonist, but the grainy texture bothers me. I seem to have the most control with MyPaint's acrylic, charcoal, and texture-grain brushes. I like to color with scribbles, like pencil crayons.  I'm going to have to wrestle with those hard and soft paint brushes after seeing the results your brother produced though. I'm comfortable enough with my drawing skills, it's the painting/coloring thing that I struggle with.



I'm going to grab a bunch of Aquaria's art and put them into one single graphic image that I can reference for style and color selection while I draw. I'll give those two brushes a go and see what I come up with when I get some more time.

Kind of unrelated, but as I was drawing the fish woman creature (she's a little more ferocious than Naija ), I wanted to add more fins and stuff... then I was concerned about how she would wear clothes. Wouldn't clothes somehow damage the fins on her back and such? So I made her a little plain on purpose until I can figure out a way to dress up her appearance.  Sorry, Alphasoldier.

[Yogoda]

Wow, your art is amazing, that's really impressive. I really love the shinning in the eyes and the double ears.

It really looks a lot like an aquatic ET, with the big eyes and no nose.

Even if it looks great, I think you should not put black lines inside the drawing if you want to mimic Aquaria's style.

[Alphasoldier]

Sorry, Alphasoldier.

Why are you saying sorry to me? D:

[Echolocating]

Even if it looks great, I think you should not put black lines inside the drawing if you want to mimic Aquaria's style.

Yeah, I completely agree with you. I created a simple collage of bits and pieces from Aquaria's art and I think this will help me quite a lot. Hopefully.



GIMP's filters for changing the hue of a picture seems like a great way to get new colors, while keeping the flavor of Aquaria going.



I'll have to see where this takes me.

Why are you saying sorry to me? D:

Well, I figured you of all the people around here would have appreciated some nakedness in my concept picture. It was a preemptive apology towards your anticipated disappointment.

[Hiro]

That hue changed image is...bizarre in that it still looks like aquaria stuff. o.o

[Align]

Oh, cool. Colorful like a bag of candies.

[Sindhi]

Yeah, I used the Gimp color changing tool a lot to change both tiles from Aquaria and my new drawings for the Magic of Aquaria mod; to do gold and earth tones or pale blue scenery , or the Pandora night forest type scene to intensify the colors and make them look fluorescent (see the post on Magic of Aquaria for examples, also the Photobucket link there). Yogoda had to hold me back from having ten colors of anemones... You have to be careful to save them to your mod graphics file under a different name or you can change the main game. This is why we can't add graphics to the main game in that folder (someone was talking about adding some new graphics (tiles and entities) to the Aquaria game) without having everyone change their game with some kind of upgrade. Yogoda explained it to me but I kinda lost the details. But Gimp is great for changing the colors of an entire tile; Photoshop can't do that.

[Yogoda]

Nice idea to put all together to "get" the global style.

Shindhi, yes, for changing the graphics in the main game, you have to overwrite the Aquaria files, you can not do that with a regular mod.

This is what Alphasoldier does with his "nude mod" . So for this type of mod you have to keep a back-up of the original files to be able to restore them.

[Xiagan]

I like them!

[Alphasoldier]

Hue changed image seems natural to me, gawd it sucks being colorblind.

A whole addition to the main campaign would have been completely possible, all you would have to do is change a map, add a few graphics to an empty spot to make it look like an entrance and you can introduce a whole new world.
It's too bad this community has never grown as big as many others I've seen because this game has so freaking much potential to be expanded in so many ways.
You could simply make new levels or perhaps for the creative ones change the whole scenery, you could make it go into outer space or simply into the air, making the bubbles into tiny tufts of air.

I really cant express enough on how useful this kind of system system, this game and the coding is.
If there's ever EVER a part two, I hope the game will be either backwards compatible or simply stays on the same kind of engine.


But to get back on the topic, as far as I know the art style used in most of Derek's work of Aquaria is only having a black outline and everything in there is just layer over layer over layer or brush over brush, I'm not really sure. I've looked at almost every picture in Aquaria and all I can say is that everything fits well together.