Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Ambivorous on April 11, 2010, 08:10:35 am
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Hi all!
One of my friends does game programming, but is not all that impressive in the art department. I happen to be able to draw, but up until now I've never done sprites for games, and as it turns out it's quite a bit harder than I had expected.
Not wanting to let the team down, I went on the internet and found a few tutorials and such on how to draw pixel art. I decided that an isometric view would be best suited to my drawing style, and have been trying to get my mind into it.
So far I've only done one character (the rest being cubes, pyramids, spheres and other basic shapes for practising purposes), and I was hoping to get some input on it.
I started with a drawn image (by the way, if anyone has any tips on how to draw isometrically that would be appreciated), scanned it in, and then went over it pixel by pixel to make my little character here:
(http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/8337/alexp.png)
Meet Alex. I've drawn this character many a time before, and I think that fact made it easier, but never as an isometric sprite. There are a few things I would like to know:
Currently, Alex is just big enough to have enough detail. Should I try making the sprite bigger, or does pixel art become exponentially harder the larger the image?
How would I make the grass look more like grass? Referring to the middle bit; the edges are the only part that imply that it's grass.
Are the colours I've chosen suitable?
Does the sprite look like it is isometric?
And yeah, anything else you can find wrong.
Greatly appreciated!
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Quite good for a first.
I've no experience in the game department, but size looks OK. Pixel art does get longer for bigger pieces, and harder for very small ones.
It's mostly isometric except the eyes; but does it really have to be? Isometric sprites are definitely harder than simpler perspectives, esp if you animate.
Your grass avoids a common mistake: noise. But I agree you'll have to find a way to give it a little texture. I'd suggest to search for the numerous grass / tiling threads on the forums, here and at PJ.
Colors need some work. Greens are very flashy, the rest looks dull. You also need more unification (reusing colors throughout the piece). A good practice would be to make a 6 or 8-color version, I promise what you'll learn doing this will be valuable!
The hat is noisy and out of persp (the rim needs foreshortening).
Shading: could use more highlights; needs cast shadows (hat's on Alex, Alex's on grass).