AuthorTopic: Oddly shaped ship shading help.  (Read 5850 times)

Offline Noba

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 33
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Oddly shaped ship shading help.

on: June 06, 2017, 09:42:49 pm
Hi.

So as said in one of my posts, which was... God. I think about 3 months ago now? I said I was fairly new to pixel art. Anyways, that's not the subject for this post.

I recently got back into making pixel art after giving up for a while, it was too frustrating, and then exams happened, but I've started it again and I think I'm doing okay.

So my problem here lies in the fact I don't know how to shade this spaceship. The main body of the ship is pretty much shaped how you would see one of those stereotypical clip art rockets, but I can't figure out how to shade that. Can anyone show me, tell me, or give me advice?


Not sure if that would have worked, probably.
(Thank you Silenia!)
PS:

Any critiques on the other shading, E.G., wings and engines, would be nice too. Thanks.

PPS:

Sorry if I snap at you or come off as moody, it's sort of late here, haha.
« Last Edit: June 07, 2017, 01:16:55 pm by Noba »

Offline Silenia

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 26
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Oddly shaped ship shading help.

Reply #1 on: June 07, 2017, 01:38:37 am
Image isn't showing (you need to use the url that has 'http://i.imgur.com' in it, not the 'http://imgur.com/a/' one. If you can't find that one among the sharing options, or can't find the sharing options at all, and you're at the /a/ one, right-clicking the image and selecting 'copy image location' works too).



Not a bad start. :)

One thing I notice is that the section of the wings between the 'body' and the engines doesn't quite match the angle or width of the external-most wingsections.

You're also using more colours than necessary: the image has 64 of them while you would be able to reach the same effect you currently have with maybe 9-12 of them. (3-4 blues, cyans and greys each should be quite sufficient for this until/unless you get to further shading. Even so, I'd increase the contrast between them some, and it's probably also possible to have one of the light cyans/light greys be the same shade and use it for both.)

As for further shading, there's a few things to keep in mind. Light (including direction, brightness and colour), shape (which determines where light does or does not hit and thus where there are shadows--combined with direction of light, at least) and material (does it absorb most light? Does it strongly reflect? Does light pass through it?) Before going too deep into further shading, though, it'd be a good idea to reduce the colours you already have, else you likely end up with an unmanageable number of them.

Offline MysteryMeat

  • 0100
  • ***
  • Posts: 1997
  • Karma: +1/-0
  • "The new alternative to q-tipping your cat!"
    • mysterymeat
    • spoiledmysterymeat
    • View Profile
    • My rad art blog!

Re: Oddly shaped ship shading help.

Reply #2 on: June 07, 2017, 09:50:07 am
I echo the above but a bit more hardline. Redo those blues from scratch, it looks like you used a gradient tool and as a result the blue parts look incongruous with the rest of the picture! Everything looks like that soft silicone plastic they make chew toys out of because of how soft the lighting is from the gradient. I don't think that fits the sleek fiberglass look I'm assuming you're going for!
PSA: use imgur
http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19838.0 also go suggest on my quest, cmon
MAJOR BORK TALLY: |

Offline Noba

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 33
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Oddly shaped ship shading help.

Reply #3 on: June 07, 2017, 01:14:54 pm
I don't think that fits the sleek fiberglass look I'm assuming you're going for!
Yes, kinda like that!
Do you mind giving me an example? The engines/thrusters have really given me some trouble with their shading, I can't seem to get them to look round enough.

One thing I notice is that the section of the wings between the 'body' and the engines doesn't quite match the angle or width of the external-most wingsections.

Thank you! I'll try to sort this out, it shouldn't be too hard i hope.

You're also using more colours than necessary: the image has 64 of them while you would be able to reach the same effect you currently have with maybe 9-12 of them. (3-4 blues, cyans and greys each should be quite sufficient for this until/unless you get to further shading. Even so, I'd increase the contrast between them some, and it's probably also possible to have one of the light cyans/light greys be the same shade and use it for both.)

As for further shading, there's a few things to keep in mind. Light (including direction, brightness and colour), shape (which determines where light does or does not hit and thus where there are shadows--combined with direction of light, at least) and material (does it absorb most light? Does it strongly reflect? Does light pass through it?) Before going too deep into further shading, though, it'd be a good idea to reduce the colours you already have, else you likely end up with an unmanageable number of them.

Again, is there any way you can give me an example? I'm not sure how to change the colours. This ship was mainly to help with shading, and while i think I've done an okay job, an example would be nice.


Thanks to the both of you either way!

Offline Noba

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 33
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Oddly shaped ship shading help.

Reply #4 on: June 07, 2017, 02:54:10 pm
Update!

I've organised the colours, I had to add in some more greys and blacks, but I think this is better!
Or, at least... Slightly. I think the colours on the blue needs to be altered slightly, it doesn't have that sleek metal look yet...
I'm trying to go for very reflective metal, or something along those lines.

Offline Tycho Magnetic Anomaly

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 64
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Oddly shaped ship shading help.

Reply #5 on: June 07, 2017, 03:57:46 pm
Hi, I had a fiddle with this before your last post there... anyway to be honest I was not sure if the perspective of this little ship was top-down or  top-down+behind .. from looking at your engines, in particular the circular vents I assumed this was top-down+behind.

Ok so love your ship, very cute, it reminds me of the very very first things I did with pixel art too which was little ships much like yours for a shooter game concept.

Anyway I think you did pretty well with things, but I could not help but make a few changes, in particular to the perspective and shading. I have provided you a strip of images so you can see the iterations and perhaps get some hints with how to improve your shading and highlighting.

If your idea was to have a top-down look, then I think you need to start by changing your vents to ovals (squashed horizontally) and work up from there. I didn't have time to make you a top-down version.




This is a bit of a drastic change (at the end) from your original but I hope you get some general tips from it. Keep up the great work.

Offline Noba

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 33
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Oddly shaped ship shading help.

Reply #6 on: June 07, 2017, 04:22:46 pm
Hi, I had a fiddle with this before your last post there... anyway to be honest I was not sure if the perspective of this little ship was top-down or  top-down+behind .. from looking at your engines, in particular the circular vents I assumed this was top-down+behind.

Yes you're right! It was meant to be top-down+behind.

Ok so love your ship, very cute, it reminds me of the very very first things I did with pixel art too which was little ships much like yours for a shooter game concept.

Anyway I think you did pretty well with things, but I could not help but make a few changes, in particular to the perspective and shading. I have provided you a strip of images so you can see the iterations and perhaps get some hints with how to improve your shading and highlighting.

If your idea was to have a top-down look, then I think you need to start by changing your vents to ovals (squashed horizontally) and work up from there. I didn't have time to make you a top-down version.



Thank you!
I do like the way the ship looks now, I sort of based it off of this:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/41/4b/f7/414bf78283804a8c9901da0e7b912a70.png
(It's a very big picture, so I'm just posting the link.)
But the way you've remade it looks interesting. I really like those engine pods!
I'll take what you've said into consideration, especially the shading. That should help a lot. Thanks!
« Last Edit: June 07, 2017, 04:26:27 pm by Noba »

Offline Curly

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 210
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Oddly shaped ship shading help.

Reply #7 on: June 07, 2017, 05:15:34 pm
Yeah, the perspective looks a bit weird.

The shapes are good, but your color ramps need more contrast.
Read this if you haven't: http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299

Offline Silenia

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 26
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Oddly shaped ship shading help.

Reply #8 on: June 07, 2017, 07:50:54 pm
Made a quick (didn't have much time, sadly, and didn't want you to have to wait a few days) edit of your old art (so basically, a response to your response to me rather than your more recent posts) and didn't have much time to look at your in-progress rework yet, though from a quick glance, yeah, your blues don't have quite enough contrast yet.

(My edit is, due to being a quick one, nowhere near perfect and could use some tweaking. In particular the greys could use further tweaking. While the blues and aquas are now at perfectly manageable levels (4 and 3 of them respectively), there's still six greys used and even with the further detailing/shading I've done, that could probably be reduced to five perfectly well. The darkest blue and second-darkest grey are also a bit closer in appearance than I'd prefer. There's also still some banding on the wing edges and the wings in general could use a bit more work--I was in a bit of a hurry near the end)

Tried to stay as close to the shape you had as possible.



The main problem you have with making 'round' (or rather, cylindrical) things seem round is that you're dealing with a slightly misaligned perspective. It looks like you want to portray it as 'mostly above* and slightly behind/level*', but you ended up portraying some parts as almost straight above (part of the body and such), while other parts are shown from a near-level/behind* perspective (the engine openings especially). (*what would be above/behind/level if it was a jet or plane on the runway, at least. Space or airspace and directions can be a bit iffy, yeah?)

Offline Noba

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 33
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Oddly shaped ship shading help.

Reply #9 on: June 07, 2017, 09:54:11 pm
Made a quick (didn't have much time, sadly, and didn't want you to have to wait a few days) edit of your old art (so basically, a response to your response to me rather than your more recent posts) and didn't have much time to look at your in-progress rework yet, though from a quick glance, yeah, your blues don't have quite enough contrast yet.

Ah thank you for taking the time to make an edit!
I haven't been able to cut down my colours too far yet...
There are:
7 blues
6 greys
4 dark-greys/blacks
and 4 cyan or light blue colours.

I haven't been able to quite work out a way i like which involves cutting down colours yet, but I did make a decent effort to organise and delete colours which don't really fit well together, and/or aren't needed! The greys look much better together now, but I haven't done the blacks or blues yet. (Working on it!)

Here is what i have so far:

(Thank you Tycho Magnetic Anomaly for the engine inspiration!)
Although I am getting somewhere!
« Last Edit: June 07, 2017, 09:56:17 pm by Noba »