The first of hopefully many art/game jams!
The very first Underscore Jam will start on November 18th, the official one month-a-versary of the forum! These jams will be bimonthly occasions to find moments of creativity and won’t be limited to games. I’d like everyone to feel like they can participate, so the focus will be on free and accessible and easy to use software, tools, and assets.
Seeing as we’re a fresh community and this is the very first jam, the rules are not set in stone, but they are a good guideline to keep everything fun and groovy. The prime rule above all is do not overwork yourself. The secondary prime rule is no generative AI allowed. The Underscore is a no gen AI zone, and you will only be robbing yourself of life force by using it. The goal of these jams is to come together, have fun, maybe learn something new, and express ourselves. To that end they will not be ranked and there will be no voting or prizes. Participation is the greatest reward!
Here’s how it’s structured:
- The jam will have a prompt, i.e. the general idea of what you should make and in what medium, and constraints, the limitations you’ll have to abide by.
- The jam will have a start date and end date. The idea is to submit your entry before the end date, but there will be a grace period of, idk, let’s say three days?
- When the jam starts this post will be updated to reveal the prompt and the constraints.
- Use this thread to discuss the jam and submit your entries. Put the word SUBMISSION in bold and all caps in your post so I know to look for it.
- Upon completion of the jam I’ll start a new thread with a nice big post to showcase all submissions.
- Feel free to collaborate if you want!
Triple Triptych
Prompt: Make a 3x3 triple triptych that tells a story readable in all directions.
Constraints: Total resolution is 192x192, with each panel being 64x64. Use an 8 color palette. Images should be upscaled to 768x768 for the final product (use nearest neighbor to maintain crunchy pixels.)
Explanation: This, without the extra constraints, was my first assignment in art school many, many, many, many years ago, and it confounded me. I didn’t even know what a triptych was, let alone how to fuse three of them together into one thing. But within these limitations I found a new appreciation for what is, in the end, an exercise in minimal non-linear storytelling. A 9 panel narrative with no beginning or end and a dozen or so potential stories within. “Story” of course can mean whatever you want it to. It can be merely evocative imagery, or it can be a little comic book. It could even be a poem. Just as long as every three panel path, left, right, up, down, and diagonal, says something, anything. If you really wanna go hog wild, have it make sense in spiral patterns too.
Use whatever skills are at your disposal, or learn a new one! Pixel art, pencil drawing, 3D modeling, photo manipulation, collage, text, or anything else. Don’t worry too much about the constraints. Just pick a palette you like from somewhere like lospec.com or your color website of choice. You can start creating with this palette in mind or use an app like SLK_img2pixel or Pixel Art Village or Pixel It or your image manipulator of choice to convert whatever you make down to those 8 colors and the required resolution.
Just for clarification, the copyright of your creation will be yours and yours alone, and using generative AI in any capacity will be mocked relentlessly. So go, have fun, don’t overthink it, and feel free to ask questions!
english is a very complicated language.