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Top Pixel Art - September 2011 (#10)
Sept, 2011 - Top10 Error
Just stopped by to tell you, you are a pixel genius sir and hello!
Oh I missed the posting of this too.. just brilliant! 10th my --s :/
How does that even happen is this too over peoples' heads?
Wow!! ¡Muy original, sí señor! - Very original! "Picassiano"
I was moving across the country when this was posted, very sad i missed it, very happy i'm seeing it now! Fantastic work.
10th? pfft. Looking at this particular month top 10, this could easily be 1st.
Although not a fun of this kind of Picasso paintings, i would love to play this game! 
regarding the comments below:
i think reflected or not, i find the fact this game goes the opposite way to picasso's intention with guernica and making the player the perpetrator of this violence rather amusing, in the way that i see this as more of a parody than a pastiche.
As much as I dislike kissing someones ass here we go:
Totally love it! You are a true artist. As indipendent as you are.. you are a leader. This whole concept is so abstract and yet it feels so familiair.
You are on to something and I hope you can step beyond it looking back and say: "damn.. that was impressive.. what did I smoke?!"
I understand what you mean. I'm sorry if I seemed to be contentious :)
solrac: The main problem I have with most non-fictional war scenarios in games is that they are mostly very, very unreflected and distorted.
And Jal stated that he did not even think about these implications, which show that it is unreflected. It still is very nicely done and whatnot, it's just the subject matter that I find a jarring.
Also it has not so much to do with Guernica being a great piece of art and this somehow downgrading it (a simple mockup can not downgrade a piece of art), but more the whole background of what happened in Guernica and why the painting came to be and what it stands for.
Anyway, I think this has been discussed enough for now. There are better places to talk about these things and I am not a huge fan of such discussions over the net in the first place.
Oh my god. I love all the classic art-inspired mockups, but this may be the funniest yet. I'm still giggling.
I was immediately reminded of Mondo Medicals by Cactus. The single lines of dialogue, intentfully-angular graphics, and, of course, batshit lunacy are even more appropriate here.
Is Picasso himself the protagonist? If so, any misogyny is probably "in-character." Or maybe he's actually Duke Nukem portraying Picasso.
My favorite detail: "This should help." Yeah, better take that chicken. You'll surely need it.
For me it's a strange controversy. What some people like Ptoing don't appreciate is the fact that Jalonso took an "antiwar" picture and made a war mockup based on it. But if Jalonso had done a mockup about, let's say, WWI, I think no one would have cared. I believe some people are offended because someone used a respected work of art in a "wrong" way, not because they really care about the implications of using real conflicts in videogames. Their real concern is that a venerated work of art was downgraded by making a mockup out of it. It's not the war.
Sorry for my english. It's not my first language.
I don't know what's the problem with shooting at women, war victims or animals with 100s of games around that you can slaughter unarmed innocent people. Yeah I dislike those BS like CoD, MoH, w/e too but this is just a banter. And killing an ugly woman just because she's ugly is just as bad as killing a fascist because he's fascist or killing a muslim because he's muslim or killing a black person because he's black. It's all killing a person for what he/she is and all of these were adressed in games that sold millions of copies, not to mention they actually happened.
Re: pixeljoint being an art forum: I'm glad to hear it. I'm still relatively new, but my impression so far has been that people focus more on technique than the message being communicated. At times, it seems almost taboo. Maybe I have that wrong.
The screenshots make a compelling argument for the existence of this game.
Of course the pixel itself would be singled out, it's awesome :) And I don't think anyone here thought you were being deliberately controversial. I didn't even see it until ptoing did but now it is very clear.
Also, the typewriter font doesn't bother me one bit, esp. on x2
Wow! I certainly didn't see the implications mentioned when working on this at all. I must say I can certainly see and understand and frankly this never crossed my mind at all. While the title is Guernica and the Guernica painting is ref'd, these screens are designed as Picasso's Cubist period in general, not Guernica itself.
Nothing is intended to be sexist and 'pretty lady' is used an an expression only. Again, I didn't think this as offensive or I certainly wouldn't have used it.
In the time period this takes place (1930s), typewriters were the common means of communications and is why I used the typewriter font which any smaller did not read well and was a design compromise.
The screens overall were designed to be busy to convey game screens 'in action' and to further imply the chaos. Picasso used text in several paintings in the same manner and seemed to make sense when making this.
Pixeljoint is very much an art forum so I don't get comments about that at all :/
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Even if there are valid questions on concept, story and controversial aspects I am pleased that the pixel work itself is singled out.
@ptoing: I won't presume to guess Jalonso's ideas behind this. Either he was being controversial on purpose, in which case I would personally interpret that as a post-modernistic criticism of western morals (eye of the beholder and all that), or the controversy was not intended at all, in which case I think it's worth discussing why there is controversy.
@neo: You're right, this isn't an art forum. I do think it's a pity to just let this opportunity fly by, however. It's a rare thing when pixel art leads to discussions such as these. Wouldn't it be a pity if all there was to say was "Good work, but the text is distracting and you have some jaggies"?
Haha, I was sure I knew some of those colors! Great usage, Jal!
Lovely piece!
@sooba Sure, but
1. the referenced painting doesn't sarcastically dub the mademoiselles "pretty", nor kills them right after. In picasso's painting it is a stylistic choice, and the mademoiselles are non-ironically beautiful
2. no other enemy is commented upon for the way they look, just the woman. The only other enemy that is being referred to, is refenced by his personality/ideology ( "fascist" ), not his looks. Well, also very much his looks, since he's a pig, which is lol. But if you like turning a blind eye to this sort of thing, by all means. I don't think it detracts from the technical aspects of the piece.
3. feminist objections aside, I'm really much more troubled by the fact that this piece with 40 favorites is a gory fps based on the most well-known anti-war painting of all history. I didn't see it at first, but I can't unsee it now.
That having been said, this is not an art forum, and I don't want to burden jal's piece, which is awesome technically and compositionally.
i just came from picasso museum malaga, checked pj at the hotelroom.. and yey!
thanks for the bonus delight!
I find pretty much all games about non-fictional wars pretty so so, because they are rarely represented in a true light. This generation grows up learning about Vietnam from games like CoD:Black Ops, which is questionable to say the least. At the end all wars that happened are atrocious in one way or another, regardless of who started them or for what reason. I enjoy a good FPS, and I played CoD 4 and quite liked it for some of it's story telling was very well done. Though I have to say I like fictional stuff a lot more, such as the HL series, Quake or Doom.
On art being controversial, yes that can be good, but there is no worthy cause for controversy I see here and it is easy to be controversial just to be controversial. Like making a wargame where at some point you pilot the guy who drops the bomb on Hiroshima or whatnot, whee, controversy, but what is being said? Not much.
Each to their own though.
The screens are cluttered with all this text, icons and whatnot, making the screens very confusing to look at. Deciding whether it's an adventure shooter or an arcade shooter would help a lot, and for example, instead of having some huge text telling you that your shield is low you could have a full screen glow or something that would relay the same message or a flashing/glowing shield icon or something.
The player's health/shield/whatever bars are a bit too close to the edge in my taste, could move a pixel or two away from the edges. Also, having some kind of icon denote what these bars are supposed to be telling the player would be great too, less manual/tutorial reading or UI deduction for the player = good.
The inventory has way too small text for the items, you really have to strain your eyes to see what they say, yet the rest of the game has this huge font.
Also I think the enemies should pop out more, might be just me, but now they kind of blend with the background (well, except the hugeass monsters/enemies) and with all the stuff on the screen it becomes quite difficult to tell where the enemy is. Wouldn't be that big of an issue though if there wasn't so much clutter on the screen in the first place.
Otherwise this is a pretty great piece of work. And by the way, which platform is this mockup designed for?
@neofotistou
You're reading the "pretty lady" bit out of context. Since that enemy is based off of "Les demoiselles d'Avignon", you can assume that there would be multiple enemies like her because there are several women in the referenced painting. The dissapointment is in fighting another enemy- not because she is ugly.
These panels are awesome. I really appriciate the time and study put into this piece! Like others have suggested, I wish there were less text and numbers on the screen so I could focus on the artwork more.
EDIT: Regarding the contraversy around Guernica: It doesn't have to be offensive; I understood the game's environment to be a relevant historical accuracy. It is ironic, but in no way does it advocate war anymore than other battle FPS just because of the subject matter.
One important characteristic of art is its ability to create controversy and challenge people's views. It's unfortunate when people let their political and national heritage colour their views on the atrocities in war. If someone creates a game about the war in Vietnam, that's not a problem, even though the atrocities committed by America in that war are considerable. I don't see why this piece should be any more of a problem. If the argument is that war is horrible and that it's morally wrong to create FPS games that take away from the horror of war, then this argument should be universal, and not restricted to a few choice atrocities.
Apart from that whole debate, I have to say that this is brilliant work. The technique alone is fantastic, but the concept, execution and subject matter takes this pixel art to a different stratum.
dont listen to them jelonso they're mad jealous ur people ar mad
What would good art be without a little controversy? Very nice job. Colors are spectacular as usual.
Didn't see this coming, I should lurk the forums more...
Artwise, I'd fave + max points + make love to most of these screens individually.
The concept I must say rings serious alarm bells for me. Ptoing sums it up right. It's one thing to make/play war games and find it fun, however using one defining 20th century atrocity as a basis sounds borderline. Also in screen 12, is the player actually supposed to shoot the Guernica victims?
Ah well, probably just an old psychorigid geezer's (me) ramblings.
congratulations this piece is amazing, you have a great creativity.
IDK, I would play the shit out of it, the graphics are too awesome. I'm a little troubled by what ptoing just said. He's right, I hadn't thought about it that way. Also: commenting that a lady is a disappointment because she's not pretty enough, just before blasting her with a gun? That's not very subtle. Very well-done though, and congrats for finally finishing it!
This is so full of well thought creativity. Scenes 3, 4 and 12 really show pictures of picasso's description of a battle scene. I don't know who else might have found such an idea and render it this good.
So what is this? A concept for an FPS based on a painting which is very much against the horrors of war?
It is well done technically, but the subject matter, I dunno.
wau , haz hecho muy bien este arte