I'm working on repixelating certain parts of japan for a Kamishibai that i'm working on. Kamishibai is known for being a picture story that was usually told by monks that would travel town to town with treats and goodies like an ice cream man, but during feudal japan.

Today someone has recreated the concept into a program that you can input your own illustrated or "pixelated" stories. You can include music and sound effects and make each story interactive with choices.

you can find the program at www.OtakuWorld.com made by accursed toys.

I say all this to say that i'm making a learn japanese interactive story and i've selected certain places in japan to be where scenes take place.

If you go into street view on google maps and click the link you'll be able to Nihongo Dekimasu Map.
I'll continue to post what i'm making on this project and if anyone thinks what i'm doing is a worth while goal (to teach japanese) i would love for them to join me.

Is there any direction you can give me, to be more helpful?

You do most uninteresting that is on the streets of Japan.
This set of sprites is no different from the objects that can be seen on any street in any city anywhere.
In your place I would start to do not with the street from the road, and I would do roadside buildings: cafes, snack bars, kiosks, advertising signs, etc..
Then you can make the characters inhabit these buildings: grandmother flower traders, boys barker, interesting passers, all sorts of yard animals, etc..
And then I would want to fill the remaining void in small details: the lost wooden geta shoes, a fallen ice cream, bicycle, pavement, sidewalks, poles, rickshaws etc.

That looks great! Sorry I do think your being helpful. I've always had a challenge with color. Even in my illustrations. I hope I can grasp how you blended everything so nicely.

Did you take any of the colors from my image to make this example?

One more thing do you have an animation of what you did first? So I can see the process?

Again it looks great and thanks for you help.

I have a policy - starting to make the biggest and hardest parts, then everything other

I like bricks, smoothing seems too strong, but if the building is in the background, it is possible to leave it as it is

Are u aiming for a perspective piece or a isometric one?

this is meant to be a iso redo of places in japan. i'm making a learn japanese game for this program Kamishibai. it can be found at otakuworld.com

when i'm done with the game i hope that it can be a demo for others to use the program for interactive story telling.

Edited by PlayerZ - 10 February 2013 at 11:13am

Here is a side by side

I pretty much eyeballed it all with the color chooser in MS Paint. For the transitional colors like what was used in step 4, I once again used the color chooser and guessed on a color in between the two harsh colors. Lots of good stuff over in the Noobtorials thread.


In regards to the overall progress, the way you have been cutting the images from the map image and sticking it under your lines looks REALLY messy. Keep the lines and pixel the whole piece, no need to start over from scratch.

New update

My, those are the steepest and scariest staircases I have ever seen XD

It looks like on your reference they are more like fire escape stairs then just two sets so they alternate on the inside and outside, look up a ref because its hard to explain. It looks like in your case there are about 4 staircases rather then the two you have.