Presentation, practicing pixel art, exercises and others

[Ziodyne]

Hello in there. First off, nice site dedicated to the pixel art I was haunting these boards for a long while before registering. I'm really amazed and fascinated by the constructive critique and I thought this could be the perfect site to learn and improve my way downward pixel art, because it is hard without someone to lead the apprentice through the correct path

So, despite been admiring pixel art from afar and from close range, I think I am ready to learn what it needs to glue up all the pixels and represent these odd worlds that crawls around my mind. I want to try any style and technique, but I might need the help from the veterans like those that stalk this site!    I know that no one can go far on this without hard word and long time consuming hours in front of the computer, but the good side is that I have plenty of time ahead to spend taming the pixels 

Since I don't know from where really to start to make pixel art, I have chosen one of my favorite genres from the old, which is the shot'em up
I randomly doodled the the shape of the ship, not sure of how it would turn in the end (following a tutorial that says that sometimes you can doodle directly with 1px brush to build up a shape, then cleaning the curves and such).
It started looking like this:

And after some colours (not sure which ones, so I followed my husband's choice), it ended like this:


Somehow I can spot some things that I don't like too much, like the engine in this case. Because I was using a big zoom, I think I lacked of space to add details to the gatling and the cannons  Overall I'm happy with this practice, but I'm sure you can spot more errors than me (I think I see some of those "jaggies" that the tutorial I checked talked about, but I'm not really good making curved lines ).
The shadding, I tried to dither a little, not following any specific order, just added on the places that I saw they looked good. Perhaps the ship is too tiny for a practice? 

Nothing else by the moment because it is too late in here and I need my sleep. Hope you can help me to learn the way of the pixel, even if it takes me a year to accomplish that (all what I have is time). Night

PS: Does anybody know if there is some fixed range in between 2 shades of the same colour? I just used the eye drop a little randomly while choosing the darker shades and brighter hues on my colour swatch, so, I'm asking is there is some proper rule or orden in between the shades, or if we just must use which colour looks enough darker/bright and nice for the viewer in a gradient of pixels.

PS2: I had this small debate with my husband, about people that instead of using 1x1 brush for art, they use 2x2 brushes to make the pixels bigger and use the 1x1 ones for smaller details. Which applications you think this technique might have? Is it a proper way to make pixel art or does it beats the purpose of making art with the traditional 1x1 brushes?

[Lizzrd]

There are no real rules in pixelart, just guidelines on what you should and should not do.
For the sprite itself, you should have the rocket nozzle's lightsource be the same as the hull of the ship.

[7321551]

Hi there.

I think I see some of those "jaggies"[...]

You can fix that at the lineart stage a bit.

 For instance, try to have the lines transition smoothly from 1px per row to 2px per row. If that makes sense.

& an additional source of jaggies is the AA on the outer-edges, which would look nice on a black space background but looks spotty on the forum colors (generally when you have AA on the outer-edges, avoid transparent BG (or use alpha))

When I first saw the finished image I briefly thought the fin was the wing on the opposite side (viewed from slight above angle), which was crazy. I think I saw it that way because the shading on the wings is similar to the fin, so they look like they could be oriented in the same direction. Quick edit might help...

[...]is there is some proper rule or orden in between the shades, or if we just must use which colour looks enough darker/bright and nice for the viewer in a gradient of pixels.

Well, you can get an idea of how many intermediate shades are necessary by looking at old games with less color depth.

These are the amount of shades of gray available to 24bit, 15bit (SNES), & 9bit (Mega Drive), just to illustrate. & the Mega Drive had some beautiful games like this.
But ultimately, you just eyeball it.

[...]using 1x1 brush for art, they use 2x2 brushes to make the pixels bigger and use the 1x1 ones for smaller details.

Well, there are at least two different approaches to the the beginning "construction" stage. A) Draw an outline or wire-frame model (line-art, typically 1px), or B) Draw large blobs of shade & sculpt them into the appropriate shape (>1px). I favor approach A because it's the way I'm best at visualizing 3d objects, & it feels neater; others like B. Experiment.