AuthorTopic: Updated my tutorial.  (Read 17794 times)

Offline Tsugumo

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Updated my tutorial.

on: August 10, 2005, 01:28:21 pm
http://tsugumo.swoo.net/tutorial/

I'll be working on new chapters when I get some free time.  Good to see the pixel art community is still alive...If we ever happen to meet up, drinks are on me, Pep.

- Tsugumo
« Last Edit: August 10, 2005, 01:37:23 pm by Tsugumo »

Offline Peppermint Pig

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Re: Updated my tutorial.

Reply #1 on: August 10, 2005, 01:42:41 pm
Hah, sure! Thanks Tsu. If you're interested, we have a wiki set up for tutorial/terminology material.  http://pixipedia.pixel-arts.org
« Last Edit: August 10, 2005, 02:15:59 pm by Peppermint Pig »

Offline Godslayer

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Re: Updated my tutorial.

Reply #2 on: August 10, 2005, 01:57:24 pm
Finally, I always loved this Tutorial. Thank you.
How long can the floor creak before it loses its voice?

Offline Helm

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Re: Updated my tutorial.

Reply #3 on: August 10, 2005, 02:38:57 pm
Wonderful! Hi Tsugumo, hope everything's ok.

Offline AdamTierney

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Re: Updated my tutorial.

Reply #4 on: August 10, 2005, 03:22:38 pm
Hey, very nice collection. And congrats on getting hired, Tsug. Did you work on Betty GBA at all?

- Adam

Offline CrematedPumpkin

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Re: Updated my tutorial.

Reply #5 on: August 10, 2005, 04:36:59 pm
wow, those are all really great tutorials. you must have been pixeling for a long time...wow
I.....am......me............

Offline Helm

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Re: Updated my tutorial.

Reply #6 on: August 10, 2005, 04:59:10 pm
Pumpkin, Tsu created the Pixelation forum...


I really disagree with a lot that was written about selout, and in fact back in the day I thought blu was overdoing it and hurting his spriteart a lot with it. I distinctively remember a grayscale sprite from the girl from Blade of the Immortal on which the selout was MURDER. If anyone has it, please repost. It's the 'cardboard cutout' effect, basically. I can see the benefits from controlled use, especially if you want to do fighter sprites that are all over the screen in seconds, but even then, selout should adhere to lightsources more. Tsu, you say 'what if the character walks over a pure white wall'. This doesn't happen. Sprites always have more saturation than backgrounds, and backgrounds always have controlled colour scemes exactly for that. Good graphic design solves this problem before it even manifests. You can have perfectly visible sprites on various backgrounds, just as long as you colour sprites differently from backgrounds.

But anyway, regardless of all that, in my mind, using dark pixels around edges that would otherwise be hit by light directly is just wrong. I go by selselout (I know, silly, heh) where if I want to bring an edge out where it's hit by light, I do selout with a BRIGHTER pixel than the contour I'm outlining, not darker.

Edit: also heh I don't know but I totally love this sprite:

« Last Edit: August 10, 2005, 05:43:32 pm by Helm »

Offline Tsugumo

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Re: Updated my tutorial.

Reply #7 on: August 10, 2005, 05:23:52 pm
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Did you work on Betty GBA at all?

Nope.  I did all the art for the Three Stooges cell phone game though.  It's not amazing, but we crammed a lot in for a cell phone game, heh.

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Tsu, you say 'what if the character walks over a pure white wall'. This doesn't happen.

Black ninja character.  Night-time background.  Gone.  White ninja character.  Looks great in every level except the snow level.  Gone.  A single sprite, or pic, on a single background or two is fine, you can plan around it...but when you have a full project where you've got say, 6 or 7 different background titlesets (forest level (greens), water level (blues), snow level (whites), lava level (reds/yellows), etc.), and you've got more than one character, and you've got another artist working on backgrounds at the same time you're working on characters (so you can't even guess what the lava level will look like, let alone adjust your colors for it, until it's made...same thing with the background artist not being able to adjust his tile colors to your characters you haven't done yet), selout will save your ass.  In an ideal world, you can take a month and adjust the colors of every single sprite/tile to every single tile/sprite, but working on an actual project, it's inefficient.  In a world with firey backgrounds, your fire spell will vanish.  If you can just cut out the fire level entirely, great, but generally you can't.  If you can just cut out the fire spell, great, but generally you can't.

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Sprites always have more saturation than backgrounds

Generally true, but remember the platform you're viewing on.  It's not always going to be a nice pretty super-bright/intense PC screen where you make your sprites.  The GBA screen dulls all of your colors (a screen that's "pure white" will look greyish-blue to the eye).  There almost ISN'T "saturation" on that damn thing, heh.  The DS is much better, but it still messes with the intensity and colors get tinted to blue.  Subtleties that show up on a PC screen don't translate over.  Selout works around that.

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You can have perfectly visible sprites on various backgrounds, just as long as you colour sprites differently from backgrounds.

Again, great in an ideal world...but if a publisher says "Here's our White Ninja.  We want him to run around 12 snow levels.", you have to come up with some way to solve that and please the publisher.  :)

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in my mind, using dark pixels around edges that would otherwise be hit by light directly is just wrong.

I think there are other possible techniques a person can use, but I find that selout is extremely versatile, whereas other techniques tend to be more based around "well if we just make our game in this unique style, we can use this method".

Anything I say is purely my opinion though.  :)

- Tsugumo

Offline Helm

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Re: Updated my tutorial.

Reply #8 on: August 10, 2005, 05:52:22 pm
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Black ninja character.  Night-time background.

Explain to me how a black ninja on a black background is saved by selout. Selout, as to your tutorial uses darker shades than the contours of the body of colour it's selouting to make it stand out. Black on black with.... black selout? I suggested selselout and it helps in this case also, with bright outlines from above where the lightsource is. It might look kinda mmody and neat also, to only see your character's highlights when he's in a dark spot. But gameplay wise, maybe not the best idea.

The best idea in this case would be for the 'black' ninja to not be fully black, but his darkest shade about 30 lightness, VERY saturated type of purple or deep blue... but selout wouldn't help such a colour either.

White ninja on snow levels yeah though, selout. Probably a full black outline in this case anyway, but I understand what you're saying.

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Anything I say is purely my opinion though.

Indeed, and an opinion way more qualified than mine, on that matter. Just discussing, hope you didn't see this as some sort of 'attitude' from me. Your tutorials have been awesome help to me as much as I sometimes disagree.

Offline Tsugumo

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Re: Updated my tutorial.

Reply #9 on: August 10, 2005, 06:13:38 pm
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Explain to me how a black ninja on a black background is saved by selout.

He's not, really, heh, but that was more a response to saying a character wouldn't run into the white on white type situation.  Black on black, white on white, blue on blue, it happens all the time.  Not in single pieces where you can control most or all of the elements, but in larger projects it's pretty much guaranteed your jean-jacket wearing character is going to end up in front of a blue sky, and the sprite that works against that background has to also work against every other background.

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Black on black with.... black selout?

Yeah, this was a bad example for me to use.  A black ninja in a nightime scene is basically not do-able, except via "artsy" solutions (like you say, with just seeing outlines or something stylish).

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White ninja on snow levels yeah though, selout. Probably a full black outline in this case anyway, but I understand what you're saying.

The thing about selout is that it's supposed to save you from having to use a black outline.  If you have a white ninja, you can selout him with light blue/grey and his white parts will stand out, without having to resort to really gross black lines.  So I guess selout helps more against light than dark.  Problem with most games is that you're going to end up running into both.

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Just discussing, hope you didn't see this as some sort of 'attitude' from me.

Hell no.  Questioning and discussing methods and reasons is how we discover new techniques and refine or explain old ones.  :)  I admit my ideas and views are all going to be biased in a certain direction now that I'm in the industry...I'm picturing things from a "could I use this in an actual full-out project?" perspective now.  By no means do I LIKE the look of selout'ed sprites (I'd prefer a game designed around not needing it...like Out of This World or Flashback did), but I find it's a useful solution to a common problem (ie - a person will probably run into more "white ninja in a snow level" situations than they'll run into projects where they can dictate the graphic style to an extent where a solid outline method isn't needed).

Debate is ALWAYS welcome.  It shows people are thinking objectively.  :)

- Tsugumo