Birdwatching

| TF

I and my daughter made some bird sprites in PICO-8 quite some time ago, and only now have I got around to posting them to the PICO-8 BBS. Here is the link to the post with the details, along with the cartridge for you to download and use in your own PICO-8 creations:

https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=34245

What is PICO-8?

From the website:

PICO-8 is a fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs. When you turn it on, the machine greets you with a commandline and simple built-in tools for creating your own cartridges and exploring the PICO-8 cartverse.


Specifications
Display

128×128 16 colours
Cartridge Size

32k
Sound

4 channel chip blerps
Code

Lua
Sprites

256 8×8 sprites
Map

128×32 cels


The harsh limitations of PICO-8 are carefully chosen to be fun to work with, to encourage small but expressive designs, and to give cartridges made with PICO-8 their own particular look and feel.

Creative Tools
PICO-8 has tools for editing code, music, sound, sprites, maps built right into the console. Create a whole game or program in one sitting without needing to leave the cosy development environment!

Shareable Cartridges
PICO-8 cartridges can be saved in a special .png format and sent directly to other users, shared with anyone via a web cart player, or exported to stand-alone HTML5, Windows, Mac and Linux apps.
Any cartridge can be opened again in PICO-8, letting you peek inside to modify or study the code, graphics and sound.

Explore the Cartverse
PICO-8 comes with a built-in cartridge browser called SPLORE, for searching and favouriting carts from the online collection.

Spring Cleaning

| TF

Spring has sprung and I’ve got round to updating my site (it’s actually early summer, but I’ve been busy). I’ve put more of a focus on my work portfolio, as my kids and dog eat a great deal of food. I’ve added to my About page, made a new contact form and have added a mailing list for those who would like to be kept informed of my new work (drawings, comics, prints, animation etc). I hope you like it. Take a look around.

Messing with Clip Studio

| TF

I’ll always prefer “real” analogue pens, pencils and paper, but I gave Clip Studio another go at the weekend along with my Huion GT-220 v2 tablet monitor and I ended up enjoying myself. This is a very early work-in-progress from something I’ve been thinking about while I work on freelance gigs.

Clip Studio’s drawing tools are second to none I’d say, and I particularly like the vector ink pen(s). The pencil tools have a very authentic feel and behaviour. As for the Huion, I bought it for a job and when that was done I stored it away for a while, but I’m glad to re-visit. If you’re looking at a good, value-for-money alternative to a Wacom Cintiq then I’d recommend it. The pen stylus isn’t the greatest quality, but the display itself is very good inded. Considering the GT-220 cost less than half of the equivalent Wacom, I’d recommend it for anyone who doesn’t want to spend too much on a first drawing monitor. Obviously, you could argue that an iPad Pro would be a better choice (and Clip Studio has a reportedly great version available for iOS), but personally I like having my work tools on a “proper”operating system such as Windows or MacOS (as far as I’m aware there is no Linux support from Clip Studio or Huion)