AuthorTopic: Color Me Pink  (Read 8819 times)

Offline David

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Color Me Pink

on: September 08, 2005, 04:33:22 am

Offline Pju Pju

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Re: Color Me Pink

Reply #1 on: September 08, 2005, 09:15:03 pm
What is it supposed to be? Are we supposed to color it? Is it a wip? Is it finished? What do you want us to do? I'll add crits to this space when I find out.

[EDIT]
Adding crits ^^

Maybe shape the lines to create black shadow figures. I think I see a rat on a table eating cheese in there. Or maybe a fish.
« Last Edit: September 10, 2005, 11:25:33 pm by Pju Pju »

Offline Alex

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Re: Color Me Pink

Reply #2 on: September 09, 2005, 02:18:01 am
im not even going to bother with that comment pju pju.

you know how i feel about this david, we shall stand united.
alexander

Offline ptoing

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Re: Color Me Pink

Reply #3 on: September 09, 2005, 09:32:12 am
I have to say pjupju has a point. I mean i see it's some guy with something growing from him and so forth. Still it would be nice if you said something about it, is it finished, do you plan to take it further. Also, PINK? where? i don't get it, there is no pink in the picture.

what you have atm is an abstract sketchy thing with a nice 5 colour palette, but it can hardly be called pixelart, there is not aa or other techniques that make it look like any more than just a sketch. At least elaborate a bit why you were making it.

As crits i would say, add aa, perhaps try some dither on it, could work fine. Also i think you are not pushing yourself, this looks like something done in 15 minutes without much thinking (no offense)
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline Alex

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Re: Color Me Pink

Reply #4 on: September 09, 2005, 06:19:56 pm
just because it doesnt have aa and dither etc. doesnt mean its not pixel art. I make alot of my junk without aa i guess and im content with it all. i think this piece is perfectly kickass. i personally love it, and i love painting with rough pixels myself. me frank and scott have all been doing it too, its alot different and has a different feel to it of course. its an acquired taste i guess lol.
alexander

Offline Peppermint Pig

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Re: Color Me Pink

Reply #5 on: September 09, 2005, 06:35:42 pm
I think its pretty good, and while you didn't ask for critique of the work, there's no harm in people offering up suggestions to use the methods available to refine its qualities. With that said, nice use of the negative lighting effect. The fireball texture is nice. Parts of the morphous blob are great, such as the hand, and the largest part of the top center strand. The double helix and the sprout seem to go against the free flowing and general thicky nature of the flow. Pretty good relief work for the face and bottom of the pants.

Offline David

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Re: Color Me Pink

Reply #6 on: September 10, 2005, 03:02:28 am
Pju Pju
It's not supposed to be anything. I didn't set out and say, "this shall be..." It's open to interpretation. The idea that you should color it is ridiculous to me. I provided no lineart, and it's already colored. Yes, it is WIP. Comments and critiques are always want I am in need of when I post here.

Alex
I'm glad that you like it, and I'll get to the "we shall stand united" part of your post further down.

ptoing
It's good that you see things. Color Me Pink is the title of the piece. It has meaning for me, but to those other than me it probably doesn't. Now onto the meat of your post.

Yes, sketchy and abstract are two quite correct adjectives to describe this piece. You seem to be using them as a negative though. Not pixelart? Ouch, haha. I created it pixel by pixel and put great (some) effort into providing the illusion of depth and motion. I didn't use AA, and there's not a bit of dithering. Does that make it a terrible piece of shit? I don't believe so, and as Alex pointed out so do a few others. I understand that this doesn't have the polish of many other pieces, but I'm one of those people that often enjoys the pencil sketch more than the finished painting. I also know that this isn't really a popular point of view. Oh well.

Peppermint Pig
I should have posted that I wanted critiques. As for the rest, I think you're right about the double helix and sprout.

Offline Helm

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Re: Color Me Pink

Reply #7 on: September 10, 2005, 01:06:25 pm
if it doesn't use pixel techniques, then in this forum I don't have much to say about it in narrow-critique mode.

However this does have a controlled palette, and that's the only pixel-arty thing about it. So about the palette: your first blue shade is too dark in my opinion. You could up the lightness just a bit and retain the contrast so the effect isn't ruined.

That's all I have to say about this piece in terms of pixel critique.

General ( art and art theory ) critique follows. Take everything with a grain of salt as I've taken 2 semesters of Art History only, so I'm not 100% validated historically here:

The piece lacks center and flow. What you are trying to do is VERY VERY DIFFICULT I think. When abstraction of detail and theme is applied, other parts of art tend to stand out, namely construction, flow, colour impression and volumes.

construction and flow: there doesn't seem to be a lot of thought having gone into the shapes, what shape follows what, where the shapes lead and what the construction suggests. I see a lot of curves going into each other and a flurry of movement that is misleading. This is crowded, not complex. Complexity calls for minute brilliant design. You're not doing that, you're just 'adding stuff' to the piece. Helix? Why? pegwo energy beam? Why?  Modern artists who have tried to strip the construction of a painting down to essentials usually put a LOT of thought into every curve, every line, every relation. in a way it's like fractals. Even 'action painters' like polloc may leave the 'shape' of the spray of colour up to chance, but everything else is so tightly controlled. I suggest you check out Modrian's middle period ( even if he was a colossal liar) for the lifeless yet almost maddening controlled precision of simple geometrics, and Max Earnst for converging curves that make you feel unreal. If you made this 'freeform' I'm afraid I have to tell you that freeform composition isn't for things so bare ( in my opinion, as well as that of many others. Not trying to spread the 'truth' here, Just give you info, you'll know what to do with it.) You have to have balls THIS HUGE to improvise a bare piece with few aspects, colours, themes and it come out with any sort of flow. You have to have a strong understanding of contrapost, of line against curve, of inclining angles, of the center of gravity, so much that they just manifest themselves subconsciously. Because subconscious is what this is, and I'm afraid to say not very interesting. If you don't want to filter the stuff that comes to you when you paint, that's fine. But you have to train yourself so the stuf that comes to mind is brilliant :P People have been trying all their lives. This is fast, 'different' for the sake of being different and executed with a level of skillful intent, that doesn't excuse the sparseness of technique. It's true that many more 'realistic' painters don't have great composition too. And they know it. In fact they leave the composition up to nature sometimes, copying it, copying randomness and excusing the lack of forethought. That's why they put other strengths in their work though, on the rendering, on the vibrancy of colours, of the meticulousness in the detail etc. This doesn't have rendering going for it, and it doesn't have structure either.



colours and volume: the colours are interesting. Besides the strong blue that was mentioned, generally for such a small palette you're doing a few things with it, ok. I guess I know what you're thinking. That saturated purple being the darkest shade, it's really fresh, not done usually. I must be on to something special! The abstract design, everybody else is making game art sprites, I must be doing something really different! People make 'red ramps' or 'blue ramps' and my ramp is a mixture of three tints, I must be doing something new! Whether or not you ARE doing something different is really beyond the scope of my critique, because I don't give a rat's ass about 'originality'. I'm more interested in things that MOVE me, or inspire me, or make me think, than I am in looking at 'new omg' things. But if you want a personal opinion, it shows that you're certainly doing something that YOU haven't done before, for good and for bad. It's fresh, but it's immature. It's vital, but it's rushed. It's quirky, but it's flawed. It's very human, too human to be profound.

The volumetrics are in my opinion weak. There's no interesting shapes, there's lots of bloated things and disparate bits of cluttered detail. If I took the 'art' out of there and just left bigger and smaller circles to signify primary, secondary, triary points of interest, there'd be 3-4 cluttered big circles, surrounded by 2 or 3 small ones. All in a corner. Not good composition. Study romantic period artists. Familiarize yourself with the concept of 'the golden mean', of the hidden geometry of paintings you love, of general to specific, of how the eye catches detail, of how to convey movement. There's no balance  here. And on such sparse pieces, all these things matter so much. You may be thinking I'm being unfair, but you invite this sort of critical outlook on the essentials of your art here because there's not much to say about the more mudane aspects of the execution. If you don't think I'm being unfair then you must really be interested in honest critique. This is very bare art, and sadly in my eyes bare and empty. It might excite you to make it and that's awesome and none of my business. Just telling you what I get from it, as a viewer, and as a viewer that is asked to comment.

Sorry if I sound harsh. It's that you post this with no explanation, as if it's profound, and Alex follows you up with a largely 'you don't get it, we're doing something different here!' after pju pju misses the 'point' so I had to say that I do 'get it' as far as theory of art goes. I don't 'feel it', but I get it. I've seen lots of art like this made by eager young artists at art school. This could have just as well have been made in vectors, ecolines, oils, cutouts, has nothing to do with pixel art itself besides in that you chose to do it in a small scale on a computer whose screen is made by small square picture elements. Not much to say about pixels, but on a broader point of view, that's fine. Just because some people go the opposite way and try to get really realistic and naturalistic in their rendering of art, it doesn't mean that others can't explore the founding concepts of an art piece. But just saying, most of the people that have done that in art were very accomplished naturalistic painters first. Look at what Modrian was doing when he started and where he ended. If you want to do some sort of paradigm shift ( even if it's a small personal one, as oximoronic as that sounds ) that's fine, but I don't think you're yet equipped. Other people train their whole lives and still get caught up in representing reality and getting better at that before they can go over/ that. If you want to challenge yourself, it's fine. But you're challenging yourself to a game that you seem to not grasp the rules of fully yet, and will go undequipped to defeat - if you don't have the right attitude.

You say you are in need of comments and critiques. Those are mine.
« Last Edit: September 10, 2005, 01:13:15 pm by Helm »

Offline David

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Re: Color Me Pink

Reply #8 on: September 10, 2005, 04:31:32 pm

I'll see about that blue.

Helm
You have a lot of things that I want to discuss, but I'll have to respond in-depth when I get back from work. As a general reply to your post though, I'm not trying to redefine pixel art nor do I see this as a grand illustration fit for the halls of a great museum. I'm just practicing different ideas and (eventually) methods.

Offline David

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Re: Color Me Pink

Reply #9 on: September 11, 2005, 02:05:36 am
I've come to realize that I'm piss poor at explaining things. This is just a big practice piece along the lines of http://www.latentmedium.com/images/pixel/WNIP.gif I'm just sketching things out and in this case sketching things from a random shape. It's not something done with a lot of forethought, I'm adding as I go. This explains why several things break the flow and such. So in conclusion - I'm a jackass.

Offline Helm

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Re: Color Me Pink

Reply #10 on: September 11, 2005, 06:17:55 am
seeing that collage, thing that comes to mind for me is, finish your pieces more. I don't know if you're very set on the 'I like the sketch more than the finished piece' mentality, but as a viewer nearly every one of those looks unfinished (besides tree head, I <3 girl and a few others). If you want to get better you have to invest a lot of effort into finishing your pieces. Precise pixel placement of every pixel. If you show them to people half-done - and I've found that to be true in nearly any sort of art - they go into 'wip mode critique' where everything is 'hopeful' and 'new' and 'different' and 'relative'. This happens because you're admiting that there's space for change even in your head, and that everything could go and that in lacking of finalized thoughts on the matter you're very open and willing to hear stuff that most of the time is very bland and besides the point. Finish things, be brave enough to say 'this is EXACTLY where every pixel is supposed to be as far as I'm concerned. Hit me hard with your critique.' and give people something to go on.

I don't get why you say you're a jackass. If it's about not being kind to pju who 'didn't get it' then yeah, that's not the epitome of niceness, but it's no big deal if it's not part of some repeated elitistic mindset. I don't think you have that mindset.

Offline Peppermint Pig

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Re: Color Me Pink

Reply #11 on: September 11, 2005, 05:48:10 pm
Some people will give way more information than is required in a critique. While I don't want to say you're wasting your breath with this Helm, I would note that giving critique appropriate to the situation is ideal. I don't think going 'essay' on David is bad, though, since the spirit by which you post suggests that we could all be challenging ourselves much more than we often are. Even so, I think it's pixel art and I think its good to get a casual sketch out once in a while. Sometimes a polished piece is too comitted to an ideal when we may need to let our minds wander into new ideas.

Offline Zach

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Re: Color Me Pink

Reply #12 on: September 12, 2005, 01:02:02 am
i don't really know david that much but i think he doesn't really care if he gets better, i think he just does it for fun or to  pass time and maybe isn't as serious as other ppl as far as getting a job in the game business?

anyways, whenever i see this stuff, it makes me wishes i could have the random thoughs, orginality, and creativity like the most of you
i don't really have any crits since that's already done >.>
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