HAPPY COMPUTER ICON STAND FOR iPHONE

A smartphone usually is laying on your desk without any additional purpose. Once I decided that it can be turned into a classic pixel icon — the «happy computer». The only thing you need is a special stand that looks like a small computer case. The easiest way to create such case is using some paper and glue. The papercraft is the way to create such thing. It took me few days to design a blueprint and now it is ready! The idea is pretty simple: you create the stand, then put a special wallpaper at lock screen of your phone , then put your phone in the stand. Voilà! You got a real life happy computer icon, which looks especilly good at a night

To create the stand you need heavy paper (you need something about 240-260 g/m2), it is better to use the matte one. A paper glue of a good quality. A paper cut knife and a ruler. Remember that you create the stand at your own risk! It is made of paper and it is not pretty solid, your phone can fall out and can be damaged, so be careful.

There several blueprints you can choose from (All are PDFs):

You can also download the assembly instructions

Download a proper wallpaper for you Lock screen. It would be better to turn off the Perspective Zoom feature for the wallpaper (in other case the image would not have a fixed position at the screen). That can be done at wallpaper choosing menu of your iPhone.

Then simply cut out all the elements from the blueprints and assemble them. Try to keep your hands clean, otherwise some black marks can be put. After the complection of the stand give some time for the glue to set. Meantime you can use a black magic marker (or black ink) to sweep under the carpet all seams

The Diacritics CD Album Cover

My personal project inspired by visual look of different diacritic symbols. A concept of a cd cover for a fictional music band The Diacritics and their album called “A”.The main idea is to utilize a special envelope with a slot in it. The slot helps to behold the diacritic symbols printed on the surface of the compact disc. The disk could be rotated since different symbols would appear on the cover

Cover design for Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I’d Known

I’ve designed a cover art for the book Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I’d Known, written by american writer Chantal Panozzo. The original part of the design are special bookmarks that expand the space of the cover and create a visual game. The idea of the bookmarks is originated from my famous concept called Jackets+Bookmark. You can find more details at the project’s page.

BUTTONS+LETTERS

I’ve always wondered why t-shirts and some other clothing only have fixed artworks and texts customers can’t change by themselves? That is so boring! So I decided to change the situation. The plan was to use simple tools that are near at hand. Various digital screens are good, but they are expensive and require some special experience. Since I chose objects each ordinary person has: a bunch of buttons and a skein of bright thread. The concept BUTTONS+LETTERS was born. All you need is to put all buttons in a grid (10×10 buttons) sewing each of them very carefully. Then you have to take a snippet of the thread and reel it on the buttons creating letters or simple images. Voilà!

Continue reading BUTTONS+LETTERS

Quick ways to create pixel art

Creation of pixel art graphics is not an easy job, it requires proper experience and, most importantly, time. It is not easy to create a complex pixel art scene quick, because you need to plan all the elements well and it is hard to automate the routine; a lot of components of the image must be developed pixel by pixel manually. Remember that only the artwork that was French polished (which needs more time) would be perceived by the audience as a professional one, any other attempts could look like pixel gimcrack.

So what should you do, when you need a pixel art assets for your game, but time is not an option? The answer is vector graphics. You are not misheard. The vector editor may help you to create pixel art scenes pretty quick, automating many routine procedures. The tool I’ve chosen is Adobe Illustrator, it is popular, it is powerful and in most case it is very handy.

There are several scenarios how Illustrator can be turn into the pixel art editor. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages. Some of them are simple (moreover they can be called elementary ones), but some other ones require more patience. The general idea is clear: you draw vector shapes like you usually do in a vector editor, focusing mainly on drawing itself and having all the editing advantages. But then you turn (or stylize) the image into pixel art style.

Way 1. The anti-aliasing option turned off.

Simply uncheck the the specific checkbox in the Edit>Preference>General… menu or the same checkbox in the Save for web option panel. Voila! Now all the artwork you are working with has no anti-aliasing, so all graphic elements have hard edges.

The easiest one. It is very simple, but the result can be far away from the ideal. It is suitable for large geometric elements, but it is hard to control tiny elements, like outlines and so on. It is also very unpredictable, sometimes it is hard to imagine the final result. There can be some graphic artifacts.

Continue reading Quick ways to create pixel art

I’ve written a book: iPhone Game Blueprints

I’ve written and illustrated a book about the development of games for mobile devices: particularly for iOS platform. The book is called “iPhone Game Blueprints” and it was published by Packt Publishing. It is available both as a traditional paper book and as eBook.

Book Details

Language : English
Paperback : 358 pages [ 235mm x 191mm ]
Release Date : December 2013
ISBN : 184969026X

The book can be found at the publisher’s website:
Or at Amazon.com:

The book was created to inspire people to create wonderful games. It tries to cover such important topics as generating an idea of a game, creating proper plot, working with graphic assets, considering the screen resolutions, planning game characters (introducing factors that can help to create either a cute or a scary character), working with animation, knowing the ergonomics, including the some info about players with some special needs like persons who have some forms of color blinding

There are concepts of seven games inside the book:
  • Gesture game
  • Card game
  • Puzzle game
  • Platform game
  • Adventure game
  • Action
  • Augmented reality (AR) game.
Each concept has the full description of the game mechanics, game plot, objectives and so on. It also include some graphic templates of game pieces, characters (both protagonists and antogonists). Each game idea is fully customizable, since some new interpretations can be easily generated.
You can see some pages and illustrations from the book here:

Sweet-tooth game concepts

Various concepts and sketches for a mobile puzzle game utilizing the platformer game mechanics. The main character is a sweet-tooth, since he is always trying to find some sweet food. He is living on some some small islands floating in the air. Find more details here: https://www.behance.net/gallery/14525073/Cute-sweet-tooth

Rail Maze 2 game graphics

An update in my portfolio. For a puzzle game called Rail Maze 2 I designed all graphic assets that include 3D models of train, textures, game level tiles, UI elements, animation and many more. The project took around a year to complete. Find more details here: https://www.behance.net/gallery/14222425/Rail-Maze-2-game-graphics