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Messages - Ashbad
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171
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Adult Scootaloo + Cloudy Scene
« on: June 27, 2012, 02:01:52 pm »
Quote from: Ai on June 27, 2012, 01:44:56 pm
Quote from: Ashbad on June 27, 2012, 12:30:34 pm
Well, no new edits from me yet, I've actually spent the past few days trying to get used to using Grafx2.  At first it seemed a bit overloaded with options, but I'm growing to like the interface.
That's great :) I used to feel that way, but now I find there are only a few of those options I don't use.

Also, did you find the .. extremely specific .. contextual help (F1, as always.) One of the things it does is tell you about keyboard shortcuts relating to the given functions (and lets you change them).

Quote
  Thanks for the suggestion, Ai! :D  In addition, I'm thinking I can probably get a wacom pretty soon -- hopefully within two weeks, since I got a paycheck from my internship yesterday that would cover it many times over (pleasant, unexpected surprise for me!)  I'm thinking of going with either a small or normal sized Wacom Intuos.  Any suggestions on proposed size or product line (like, something by Wacom besides their Intuos sub-brand) of tablets?
Intuos sounds like a good bet. It's what I would get if I were buying a tablet. I have only purchased one Wacom myself, a 'medium'* size Graphire3 (a model which has since been superceded.), so I don't feel qualified to comment in detail. The only other thing I can say is,  I understand that the RF Wireless versions are somewhat vulnerable to performance degradation when there is a high degree of background wireless activity (eg from routers, laptops, or phones.), so it's worth considering what your typical situation is going to be when choosing between RF and conventional USB models.

* probably what you call 'normal'. I'm going by the names assigned on the Wacom site.

Quote
Oh, and while it isn't an edit worthy of a post, I dropped it from 34 colors (I had thought it was 32 before, but Grafx2 disagreed with that count) down to 28 with essentially no difference in aesthetics.  :)
Yeah, the auto histogram is pretty handy :) Have you found 'zap unused colors' in the palette editor? It's good after you've just remapped some colors and have old unused palette indices sitting around.



I like the idea of the RF version, but I think that the USB version would work a lot better with the incredible network noise at my house.  I'm thinking of going by the "Medium" size, small sounds nice, but I generally carry a backpack around to places anyways so transportation wouldn't be an issue that trumps the want for a larger size.  As for zapping unused colors, yep, I have used it and it's quite helpful!  I personally wish there were a few more options to sort the palette by instead of lightnes and hue/lightness (ascending/descending sub-options, sorting by hue alone, saturation, etc. would be helpful), but perhaps I could just extend it with a Lua script (I *am* a computer scientist before an artist, so that should be an easy thing for me) to do that (the fact that you can script in extensions is rather nice, and on its own is a feature I need to play around with.)  I also like the splitscreen zoom you mentioned in an early post -- it's incredibly helpful!  After playing around with GG and this, I think this is definitely a better piece of software in most respects, and definitely when it comes to tons of feaures.

172
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Adult Scootaloo + Cloudy Scene
« on: June 27, 2012, 12:30:34 pm »
Well, no new edits from me yet, I've actually spent the past few days trying to get used to using Grafx2.  At first it seemed a bit overloaded with options, but I'm growing to like the interface.  Thanks for the suggestion, Ai! :D  In addition, I'm thinking I can probably get a wacom pretty soon -- hopefully within two weeks, since I got a paycheck from my internship yesterday that would cover it many times over (pleasant, unexpected surprise for me!)  I'm thinking of going with either a small or normal sized Wacom Intuos.  Any suggestions on proposed size or product line (like, something by Wacom besides their Intuos sub-brand) of tablets?

Oh, and while it isn't an edit worthy of a post, I dropped it from 34 colors (I had thought it was 32 before, but Grafx2 disagreed with that count) down to 28 with essentially no difference in aesthetics.  :)

173
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Adult Scootaloo + Cloudy Scene
« on: June 24, 2012, 09:25:08 pm »
Quote from: Seiseki on June 24, 2012, 08:55:26 pm
You should totally start doing avatar requests on deviant art ;)
You'd make those 5 bucks in less than 10 seconds flat..
I can't even imagine using a mouse to draw, let alone a trackpad, I've been using a tablet for a year or so..

Imagine the things you could do if you were using photoshop and a mouse or tablet.
Did you see that pyxel editor?

I probably should start doing that -- A guy I met and have been starting to get to know better, PixMeister on dA, has done that and has already made about $40 from 8 or so avatars.  I really, *really* do want a tablet, since some of the things that were suggested edits (like the hair detail) would be a lot more possible for me to do with one (I simply had a horrible time making anything in a flowing motion with the trackpad, the clouds were a bit painful by themselves)

As for that image editor you threw at me there, seems like another one I should at least check out ;)

And, back to Ai's question again, I should have some sort of decent edit tomorrow; I do better when I do two mini-projects at once, so I've been held up  by starting on another pixel (though it's barely past the lineart phase) so I can polish this up and have something to do once this is done.

EDIT:

And, I just saw your edit, jams -- and I must honestly say that I have to agree with most of it -- For some reason I have a hard time getting myself to discard the bluish colors (they just look so pretty even though they're incorrect), but I'll play around until I satisfy my craving for contrasted, pretty colors and a realistic sunset scene :) 

174
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Adult Scootaloo + Cloudy Scene
« on: June 24, 2012, 03:06:28 pm »
Not sure if I agree with the color choice there -- I do like the idea of red used in the clouds for the middle shade, but the hair is now *way* offcolor to what it should be :P

And, as I've said before here as well, I *did* make this in MS Paint.  I've done more than "looked around for 5 minutes" for another art program.  I've tried out multiple different programs, but I'm still the fastest with MS Paint.  GraphicsGale is indeed a nice program, but I'm not using it for full-on pixel art until I get more used to it.  I've also tried out Usenti, which was basically MS Paint with a few palette tools on top; I used it rarely, usually only when I want to get a quick color count on something.  I've also played around with the GiMP, but I have only used it when doing something like converting a mess of a scan of a drawing I made into something I can base lineart from (but even then, I've only used it like that once.)  As for the USB mouse, you're assuming I have to $5-10 and a ride to some place like Best Buy to get a mouse/pad to use under it.

I haven't lied about the MS Paint deal, it's all I use.  I've wasted far more time trying out tons of different image editing software than anything.  I don't see how this is outside the capabilities of what MS Paint can achieve.

175
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Adult Scootaloo + Cloudy Scene
« on: June 22, 2012, 09:03:16 pm »
Quote from: Ai on June 22, 2012, 12:52:34 pm
9 days later..
What's happening? ???

Sorry I haven't been able to get back to you guys on this; the large amount of stressful situations I've been dealing with the past week or so have distracted me from just about all pixeling; in the time I did have to work on this, the stress had been tiring me out and demotivating me from doing more on this.

However, tomorrow should be my first day reprieved from the said situations, so I plan to use them polishing this up with the great suggestions you've given, and then start on my next piece as well :)

176
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Adult Scootaloo + Cloudy Scene
« on: June 13, 2012, 04:15:48 pm »
Woo, awesome info, Ai!  Didn't know much about doing manual Anti-aliasing before you gave this info (I basically eyeballed it, and just did the AA-ramps in an unorganized fashion, without thinking about the implications of curves, etc.)  Later today or tomorrow, I'm going to go back over this, after having seen your AA edit above, and try to polish it up ^_^

177
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Adult Scootaloo + Cloudy Scene
« on: June 12, 2012, 12:40:35 am »
Does it still have room to improve?  Yes.  Am I proud of it so far?  Yes.  Is it going on dA how it is right now?  Yes.  Do I still intend to keep on updating it and editing it?  You betcha.



dA link -> http://theashbad.deviantart.com/art/Pixel-Art-Scootaloo-the-Orange-Haze-307822808

You guys helped me make this really great.  I learned a lot through making this.  I really don't know what to say except, *hugs*?

I'm going to take a bit of a break from this for a day or two, but then I'm going to go back and play with a few things like the AA, Tail Highlights, and the Shadow beneath scootaloo a bit more.

178
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Adult Scootaloo + Cloudy Scene
« on: June 11, 2012, 08:42:09 pm »
It's just as blurry as the cloud I had before, you're just noticing it more because they're more complex in shape, and have more "surface area" against the sky ;)  The outsides are blurry because they're  two color runs of AA, but internally there's only one color, single pixel runs.  I think it gives the perspective of them being "defocused", similar to what Ai was saying earlier about the other clouds.

To make them more realistic I would have used those internal AA colors to add extra texture, but I think that they're realistic enough to fit in place with Scootaloo, who's also only semi-realistic.

179
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Adult Scootaloo + Cloudy Scene
« on: June 11, 2012, 08:04:10 pm »
Whew.. that was yet another great (wall) of feedback!  You can't fathom how much I appreciate the level of detail you put into giving those suggestions.  Especially that animated "fix" gif -- I can't thank you enough for how much I learned just from looking at it! :D

Here's what I've now gotten to.



I still have some things from your suggestions to fix with the AA (mostly in the cloud), I want to smooth out the water a bit more, and then I want to fix up her shadow.  And then I'm gonna call it ready to post on dA and PJ!  However, I'm just doing that because I'm to the point where after doing those things, it's good enough to put up in a place like that.  I'll probably keep on editing it at a slower pace afterwards.

EDIT: I'm a bit lazy about avatars... so I just made the face of scootaloo in this mine for now.  Though I think it might be over the site's size restrictions -- I'll clip a small part of her face and make it smaller a bit later today.

180
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Adult Scootaloo + Cloudy Scene
« on: June 11, 2012, 01:01:38 am »
Thanks for the edit -- I knew my clouds were really lacking, but I wasn't going off of any examples so I wasn't quite sure how to pixel them.  I studied your edit and tried in turn to up the quality of the clouds:



Of course, I need to go back and pretty them up, do anti-aliasing, and then on top of that work on the water.  Not sure if I completely like the vertical lines there, actually, but I love the idea of the clouds reflecting onto the water :D

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