Public Commander Keen Forum

Since it's been a long time since I have been particularly active on PCKF (though I do lurk regularly and spend a lot of time on Discord and still chip away at my mods gradually), I figure I might post about some things I've been doing instead. In particular I've been working on a lot of visual art (digital and traditional). Every now and then I create some stuff based on Keen just for fun, so I'll put those here when that does happen. More general work will go into an associated Miscellaneous post.

Late last year I acquired a Samsung Slate tablet PC for drawing digital art using Krita. These are some of the first few things I sketched after figuring out the basics.

I don't normally draw people as it usually comes out a huge mess if I attempt it on paper. Being able to erase as much as I want and layer different parts in software makes it much easier to attempt something new. I already had a graphics tablet, but this always felt too detached from the image for this sort of thing.

Basic Billy Blaze


Keen on a Generic Blob Planet



Recently I haven't done a lot of Krita drawing, instead designing a lot more vector graphics using Gravit Designer (having migrated from Inkscape around the same time I acquired the tablet).

I whipped this up using the building and people style I've been developing (I'll post more of these in the miscellaneous thread).




These ones aren't directly related to Keen, but could easily be used as concept art for a mod or fangame, so I'll include them here:

Generic space platforms


Generic mystical futurism concept (OrbKeenishness)


Floating planetoid with Keen-influenced buildings

neat! the "generic space platforms" picture looks like it could be a Keen worldmap with the buildings being levels you know?

I must say Spleen, your art style does seem to be quite the Keenish sort. Nice fit!

I have absolutely no qualifications as an art critic, but I do think these are extremely good. And how can one person produce images in such varying styles? That really impresses me!
I would love to have a huge print of "Generic space platforms" hanging on my living room wall - there is just so much going on in that, and it really gets the imagination going...
A good oldfashioned screensaver program based on your vector image would be neat! The characters moving around, spaceships hovering by... Like Johnny Castaway.
Really hope you post more, they are beautiful.

The trouble is concentrating on one idea long enough to get it into a usable form. Animating the vector designs has crossed my mind and is vaguely planned for the future as well as possible ways of making them interactive, but I'm more cautious these days about starting new projects due to the amount that go unfinished. I usually return to them periodically, but some just keep lurking and haunting me and adding to the vaguely uneasy sense that I should be doing something else. But at least visual art has a lot less inertia than game design when returning to an old idea and they can be quickly adapted into something immediately practical.

I do plan to expand on that generic platforms concept at some point. It's very rough but there's a lot of potential. What I'm working on at the moment will definitely contribute to fleshing it out further. Still contemplating how best to go about large scale prints for this kind of thing. Lots of logistic and technical questions once it goes beyond A3. But certainly A3 or less is practical, and greyscale especially so.

Commander Spleen wrote:The trouble is concentrating on one idea long enough to get it into a usable form.

That is the crux of life in general isn't it!

Splendid art though and as always I hope to see mod projects bringing these ideas to full fruition.