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Topics - hapiel
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1
General Discussion / Pixelween 2021
« on: September 28, 2021, 12:03:35 am »
Just like last year, Pixel Joint is hosting Pixelween!

We're doing 4 weeks of consecutive challenges and you can win some sweet prizes like a Masters of Pixel Art book, steam gift cards, Pro Motion, Aseprite & Pixari keys & more!
This year you have to make horror movie posters with weird palettes.

Get challenged, have fun, join us, click here!

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General Discussion / Pixelween 2020
« on: September 28, 2020, 08:14:41 am »
Hi guys, a little promotion post here:

Pixelween is back! I'm sure some of you have been around long enough to remember Pixelween 2005, 2006, 2007... And then there was nothing for a long long time.

But this year, at Pixel Joint we're doing 4 weeks of consecutive challenges, of which you need to join at least 2 to get a Pixelween trophy, and you can win some real prizes (Masters of Pixel Art book, steam gift cards, Pro Motion, Aseprite & Pyxel Edit keys)

So head over to Pixel Joint and join in with Pixelween 2020, we're looking forward to see your entries!

3
General Discussion / Aseprite features (Pro motion animation features)
« on: February 25, 2017, 10:14:02 am »
Hey all,

I've always used a combination of GraphicsGale and Grafx2 for my pixels. I don't like either of them, but they do most of their job quite fine. Drawing in Grafx2 and animating in GG.
Now I'd love to have some software that has it all in one. Which works in a way that I like.
This summer I was on Ubuntu so I bought Aseprite, which looks nice, but I still haven't figured out how to properly manage the palette. Linking frames is a nice feature, but too often I switch things around in the frame/layer window by accident, and when I want to do it on purpose it's hard.

I realized I also had a copy of ProMotion 6.5 which I bought in a bundle. I'm trying it out since today, and it looks like it can do most things I want it to do, except frame management is terrible! I've noticed in the new ProMotion NG displays frames better in the bottom scrollbar, but I can't test all it's features without buying it. For those experienced users:

Can you drag and drop frames in PM? Select multiple and copy & paste?
How do you enjoy animating in PM?

Perhaps I'll have to go back to GG again. I don't understand it's palette well and I dislike the single color single sized drawing tool, but it's the only software with proper frame control & preview.. right? :/

4
General Discussion / Managing game graphics
« on: April 13, 2015, 10:53:11 pm »
Hi guys,

Creating graphics for games is a lot of fun! I've joined and produced many projects over the last years, but I always struggle with: How do I manage my files? My project?

I need:
- Oversight, so that I can visually see what works and what doesnt
- Flexibility, a way to modify all graphics in a later stage, change some colors or add effect or modify some details
- Export sheets, without forgetting to create transparant pngs and not making mistakes in distance between frames or tilesize
- Version control, being able to test and save different options without confusing the developer with old files..

My latest project was a tiny game as a warm up for LudumDare with two friends of mine.
I created a big layered and palette indexed worksheet in Grafx2 and manually copied the important parts to separate files from there. Sometimes doing some animations in GraphicsGale.
This made it easy to test all assets with each other, yet when I wanted to change a sprite it seemed like I had to change it both in my work file and in the export file. For a larger project this might have become problematic and confusing at some point. You can play the game here btw


For another project, DropBoy, I have been working with multiple programmers over the years and now ended up doing it myself, with the result that I have so many different files organised in so many different ways! I need to learn to make sense out of these projects from on the start, in a flexible but manageable way.

How do you guys create complete game graphics? Where do you start, how do you store your work, how do you edit things later on, etc etc?

5
Pixel Art / MegaMan
« on: May 02, 2014, 04:11:42 pm »
Hi guys,

Please let me know what you think of these animations! I'll probably submit them as is to the PJ challenge, but I'd love to learn from your advice and try to make this better.



Idle


Running looks not so good to me, but since I only show it a split second in the reel I thought I'd get away with it.. But why is it that it sucks?


Jump


Fire




Oh and a general question: How do you guys deal with afterthoughts? Every time I open the editor I see a new pixel that I want changed, but then I have to go and alter it on an increasing number of frames as well which slows down my process a lot!

6
General Discussion / Pixel art genres
« on: July 13, 2013, 09:32:08 am »
Hello kids, welcome in the think tank!
Today we talk about the history, development and most specifically the different genres of pixel art!

Can we divide pixel art in different genres?
What makes these genres what they are?
Where do they come from, when did they arrive and who started them?

This topic spawned of a tiny sum up of styles by Cure and me. Since all the people who still remember the golden age hang out here we'd thought we could continue our discussion at Pixelation!

I myself am not an art student (well technically I am, but quite a different art form) , all I know is what I have seen in pixels.  It would therefor be cool if we can stick to simple English, and not get too arty in our language.

The aim? Discover where we are coming from.
What inspires us unconsciously? How come that the non-pixel-artists believe that pixel art = dithering, but that dithering was forbidden a few years ago except if your name is helm. Did capcom start cel-out and what do we think about it now? After the inventions of 256+ color video cards, how did we go back to tight palettes? Etc etc etc...

So, let us discuss: movements/schools/styles in pixel art!

7
Challenges & Activities / [OPP] Cave set
« on: June 09, 2013, 08:04:07 pm »
Hey artists!
Over the last two months I have been busy organizing the Open Pixel Platformer. It's goal is to create a free to use CC-BY licensed high quality pixel art tile and spriteset for platform games, possibly for us to create a big community made game with these assets ourselves in the future.

Over at PJ many artist have started working together on a generic jungle set, so far we have something that looks like this:




If you want to see more of this set, have a look over here

Thanks to Ptoing and Crow who helped me create this post and come up with an idea for a theme.

I would like to ask you, the people from pixelation, to join the collaboration and create a cave tile set for the Open Pixel Platformer.

----

The Cave set

Yay, the creation of a cave set has started! We are looking for all kinds of contributions from all kinds of pixel artists!
If you see something you can improve/edit, do so!
If you want to add animations to existing characters, do so!
As long as you license your work CC-BY it can be used. Sketches, line art and other unfinished art as well as it could be finished by others.

Style
To create a consistent set there are some style rules. These have been created by the community and still evolve over time. Most important:
  • Everything uses this palette from Dawnbringer: DB32
  • All the tiles are 32x32. Of course you can create objects that stretch multiple tiles.
  • Tiles, objects, characters, everything has outlines 1px thick
  • Everything is cartoony. Shading is simplified, dithering avoided
  • Framerate for animations is 8/100 seconds per frame (or 12.5 FPS)
  • Characters have big tall eyes, big heads and short legs. Some examples:


You can read the whole style guide here, it gets updated as more things get contributed! You decide where this project goes!

Also important:
Top surface exists of two tiles: One base tile and one tile on top of this for the top edge, about four pixels heigh. This is to allow objects such as shrubs to be merged properly with the tiles. Characters will walk on top of the base tile. Example:


Please note: All artwork in this thread will be licensed CC-BY! Please state somewhere that you agree with this.

For the jungle sets I made some effort to create starting tiles as a base. Here I want to experiment and see what happens if I don't supply these tiles, rather I'd see what you guys come up with! You can use this as a template:


First priorities are getting a tileable base floor tile and a background color for foreground and background. Once we settle on this the possibilities are endless!

- cave tiles
- doors
- ladders
- bats
- spiders
- mushrooms
- crystals
- hidden laboratories
- monsters, characters, objects

You decide what gets into this set!

So, my question to you all:
Could you help me get some base tiles for this cave set, and allow the rest of the world to build upon it?

Join the fun and create some tiles, monsters, objects for the OPP! I am looking forward to your submissions :D

Hapiel

-
Useful links:
General discussion thread
Style guide and style discussion thread
Jungle set thread
Village set thread

8
General Discussion / Replacing pixel art
« on: January 28, 2013, 12:33:34 pm »
Hey guys,
Here is an idea that I had today.

There is many characteristics of pixel art that I like and that can not be reproduced without working on pixel level.
Also there is a very tiny audience interested in pixel art and especially large work takes an over average effort to make.

I am not an experienced digital artist, but I believe that there is lot more possible when you would use vectors, textures, photo editing, auto aa & gradients etc which are common in digital illustration.

How would we be able to create a modern hybrid?

Characteristics of pixel art that I would like to keep:

Crispy horizontal and diagonal lines
Pixel thin highlights and outlines
Impossibly bright colors

Probably you guys have more ideas of characteristics that are important and unique to pixel art.

What I would like to start an open discussion about is:

What is it that we have learned from pixel art that we can now bring to other mediums?

When I google for hybrids, I mostly find artwork that features big squares, but that is obviously not what I am looking for :(. I might be doing some experiments of my own in the coming time. Please share your ideas!


9
Pixel Art / Household lady
« on: August 10, 2012, 03:52:28 am »
Hi guys

I am having some kind of fighter sprite moves in my mind but before I start animating I'd love to hear your opinions about what I have so far!



Oh and




Okay I have a question for the experienced animators here:
How do you keep all the stuff together that you animate? I mean I now already have a static file, an idle animation and an attack animation. I just changed the face a little in the idle one, now I have to update all the files! Probably by the time I have the 3rd animation done I see some flaws in the static file and want to change the clothes or whatever and then have to edit everything! And how do I keep the colors consistent?
I have once talked to some guy who just created one big loop with all the animations after each other ( http://alexhw.com/art/anim10.gif ) but I can not imagine I can then see if the loop connects well (when walking, idling etc).

I am working in graphicsgale, I prefer Grafx2 but it can not really animate.. So I am also not very familiar with the software that I am using..

Any ideas and solutions and experiences worth sharing?



Daniel

10
Pixel Art / Orc fighter
« on: October 24, 2011, 10:54:51 pm »
So, things I had in mind for this:
I noticed I was limiting myself too much on the color count thingy, often trying too hard to keep the colors low which did not make things nicer, so here I wanted to be very genrerous on the amount of colors!
Also, I wanted to take advantage of this piece being pixel art, and therefore use strong horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines and try out the excessive highlight thing like I see in some pieces (mrmo_tarius on pixeljoint for example)

So far it is going quite well I think, but let me know what you see!



Daniel

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