Smilie Update!

[Deleted]

We have new smilies folks! Most are stolen borrowed images from the net:



But wait, we have a glorious new original smilie as well, courtesy of January0!



Enjoy~

[beanstalk]

Excellent update.

[Deleted]

Another smilie expansion! There's enough of them now to satisfy all the needs (hopefully...):

Previously missing smilies from the Kubus set:


More horror-themed ones:



And other stuff:


Now if only I could make the smilie menu use scrollbar! I guess it's not possible... Anyway, if you have a nice suggestion/image for a smilie, just ask in this thread!

[Jinxtengu]

Good call on the new smilies Macabre.
I particularly like this one for just how cheezy it is.

[softest]

[JumpyCat]

I tried to kopy the "Kubus" style as much as possible:
───────────────────────────────────────────
   [Happy]



[├┤a p p y and Bloody]



I didn't know who Kubus was until about an hour ago.

Since I never got a chance to meet him, this is my "semi-tribute" to his art.

In my opinion,
his style complements Jinx's style perfectly.
(I'm assuming Jinx is the one who made all the assets for Revenge of the Sunfish 1?)

[Deleted]

You've done well, it's pretty close! I especially like the bloody version... Yes I agree, the two styles definitely complement each other - Jinx's art is very detailed (especially the animations), and Kubusian approach is about crazy ideas and shapes drawn as simply as possible. It's more angular and deliberately crude.

Once I also tried to replicate the technique Kubus used for his smilies and found it's quite possible to create the smilies in this style pretty easily. On the now-dead Kubusmannen forums, he mentioned that for drawing them he used a Japanese program called Pixia - it has wonderfully nonconventional interface and one interesting quirk that Kubus apparently made use of. The "filled polygon" tool in Pixia is very enjoyable to use and quite suitable for drawing the mouth filled with crude spikey teeth like here ! All other elements were created using the circle tool, lines and free drawing brushes. Kubus refused to use MS Paint or any other programs for this, saying that they all "didn't have the right feel". For me, the most important part about the Kubus style smilies is that they must be drawn in Pixia and the mouth and the teeth must be created using the filled polygon tool! This is the most traditional approach, though I like your technique as well, it definitely preserves the feel.

I used to create a whole bunch of smilies in this style, using color variations, gradients, different expressions (I remember one of those was a "sad goth" emoticon). It's a lot of fun to create them! Sadly my collection was lost after disk failure... I really need to draw new ones!

If you want to learn more about Kubus, try these links (if you haven't visited them yet, of course):

kingofgoodstuff.blogspot.com/
www.revengeofthesunfish.com/Kubus.html
www.autofish.net/video_games/creation/game_maker/others/sparlatacus/

I can also add your works to this forum's smilies, if you want!

[Deleted]

At one point Kubus created a whole game about his smilies. Unfortunately, that game is now thought to be lost. Once I created a screensaver with some of my Kubus-inspired smilies, based on the idea of what that lost game might have looked like. So yeah, some of my own smilies aren't really lost as I first said in the above post - here's the quick and dirty collage of them:



...And here's the one I created right now in Pixia!

Maybe I should make a tutorial for this kinda stuff! Hmm...

[JumpyCat]

'Kubus refused to use MS Paint or any other programs for this,
 saying that they all "didn't have the right feel".'

Hah!
That is very interesting,
considering how much Jinx loves MS paint.

I guess  it's  true  what  artists  say:
    there is no "BEST" tool.
    Just select the one that you are most comfortable with.


"I can also add your works to this forum's smilies, if you want!
"
Yes, that would be nice.
You should also add yours (the one you just made in Pixia)!

About the teeth:
to make the teeth, I copy-pasted the teeth from one of his other smilies!
If I ever get the time, I'll play with Pixia, and learn how to make teeth the proper way!


And,
Thank you for the links!
So far, I've watched 1 of Kubus' vids ("Complete Garbage"),
         and downloaded about 10 of his games.

I put one of his songs on repeat, and fell asleep to it,
  because it felt very comfortable.
 (Kubus is scratching something for like 2 minutes straight)

[Deleted]

Well yeah, I also don't believe in universal perfection, everyone has their own vision of perfect things - and it's great that in most cases these individual ideals are totally achievable! Kubus met the drawing program of his dreams... I'm not sure what's my favourite. I do use GrafX2 a lot, so maybe that's the answer.

Okay, I'll add your smilies in a few minutes. As for mine, aside from the punks one which I will include (thanks for appreciating it~), I need to figure out how to extract them properly from that TGF project file! It's harder than I thought, though if all fails I'll just cut them out from the screenshots

Pixia is definitely fun to work with - it's clunky and glitchy at times, but it has a lot of nice things like weird drawing modes (a brush that has a sorta 3D feel, I've seen similar one in PhotoFiltre), very customizable gradients where you can even use textures practically on the fly (be sure to use the square mode though, because the line mode has a completely alien logic and I'm afraid there might be no actual way to figure out how it works) and lots of cool filters - if you get the additional plugins listed on the site. The graphics from some of my games were drawn in Pixia, and I'm proud of it!

There's more info on Kubus, though it's sort of scattered over the internet, and one major source (his old forums) is now irreversibly lost. As for the media, aside from youtube, you can still find the links to many of his original albums and films in DVD quality. There's a big archive hosted on mediafire, and Glorious Trainwrecks keeps some of his music too, in ZIP archives.

Yes, some of his tracks are amazingly soothing. I like that too. Though even the loud ones are kinda hypnotic in their annoyance

[Deleted]

Oh, and when it comes to drawing the teeth, it's as easy as just making small triangles in a row with the polygon tool. You can do them one by one, but I think what Kubus liked about Pixia is that it allows you to draw them in zigzags first, and then cover the row with the horizontal line. Something like that, I'm sure if you experiment, you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly. I think it works better in Pixia 6, but since my computer no longer supports it (for some weird reason they decided it shouldn't run on Windows 7 anymore), I use Pixia 4, the "classic" version, and I tend just to do teeth one by one. Do I get the "special Pixia feel" from it? I guess so!

[JumpyCat]

Thank you for all the advice,
and thanks for adding the smilies!



I like how you made one of the teeth especially brighter than the rest,
  and gave the head a slight 'mohawk'.

[Deleted]

No problem! Hehehehe....!

That tooth was actually intended to be golden, but I probably didn't make it yellow enough..! But hell, maybe that's some weird bright mold growing on it!

I like adding hairstyles to Kubusian smilies, but often to do that you have to make them significantly smaller to make room for the hair. It's a bit of a challenge - I'm glad that the mohawk turned out right... sorta

[JumpyCat]

It seems he had a fondness (inclination) for 'smirks'. (L-shapes or J-shapes)
It looks endearing!


So, here's my attempt at a  "J-shape"!

[Deleted]

He certainly had that, along with a weird, wide U-shaped smile that you can notice on some enemies in Johnny 4, for example. They have a strange expression of cunning indifference or something like that.