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General Discussion / Re: Want advice in how to learn pixeling
« on: August 17, 2015, 08:38:32 pm »
Thanks Ambivorous!
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From what I can get out of your (pretty vague) goals you want some kind of comprehensive progression list like this but for pixel art? That's actually sound and it's kinda interesting that you hardly see one set down for pixelling specifically...
I see. Well in that case I'd have to say just go straight to Galaga.
The thing is that you are making the game in tiny bits either way. It's not like someone just sits down and codes Galaga from scratch in one try and then hits compile. First you'd just try put an image on the screen, then you move that image, then you add in player controls, then collision, and then finally AI.
I'm capable of doing traditional art, and have done some in the past. I'm not what you would call an accomplished artist, but I'm not entirely a beginner. I'm not asking for either of these and apparently, again, I did not communicate what I was asking very well.
Actually to me it sounds like you want the former, which is good.
Draw pictures of realistic faces from photos/real life....
You will need to learn values to shade realistically...
Now that we have those down, let's work on colours...
Draw cartoon faces and shade in a cartoonly manner...
Finally, you are now the jedi-wizard master of representing real life things with believable less-real things.
Just yolo straight on in to any pixel art project. Anything you have been drawing you will be able to pixel and if you want to pixel something you don't know how to draw, learn to draw it first...
Further you will need to hone your skills.
Redo cluster studies...
Well that's interesting. I didn't think that's what you were asking because there's no need for that kind of artificial progression. It's really very simple, you have this whole set of traditional skills, and a much smaller set of pixel skills to learn, and an order to learn them in. I think we all agreed on that.
Subject order is largely irrelevant to artistic growth. If you want to do shape studies you could get the same value from a face, a flower, or the landscape Cyangmou posted. The order of subjects doesn't really matter, it's really a personal preference. Are you planning on making a lot of graphics containing people? Practice with people. All I would say on that matter is to not stick to one particular subject, a lot of people tend to get "comfortable" and stagnate.
It is not much more difficult to draw a human face, rather, it is more apparent that a human face is incorrect than a plant. Both are just drawing what you see.
Subject order is irrelevant. Concept order is what matters, and much more important, which is why each answer addressed it.
I will use all your advice, and like I said I'm not disregarding anything but I'm asking a specific question. You know an obvious progression which would probably govern what I do is resolution. I could start with 8x8 images and then move up to 16x16 and 32x32 and 48x48 and so on until I'm at a certain resolution. So these are specific progressions I could start with. Do I start out with house hold objects, or tiny landscapes. Am I being clear at all? I feel like I must be miscommunicating.
wrong. the resolutions don't differ in terms of difficulty. They difference of them lies in how difficult it can get to illustrate things with fewer pixels readable. The bigger stuff it the longer it takes to render with pixels, but that has more to do with mechanical work than with difficulty.
What I really wanted was something like this article - http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/game-programming/how-do-i-make-games-a-path-to-game-development-r892 -- In it Geoff Howland lays down a path to development by having you complete specific games. First he says tetris, then breakout, and then further. This is what I'm trying to figure out with regards to pixel art.
Wow, don't ever do this. Don't ever recommend this to any new programmer - you will put them back so many years if they try do things this way.
But this does bring some nice analogies.
So now that I've explained that, you may ask more specifically. Do you want us to tell you how to learn traditional art before delving into pixel art, or are you already capable of doing traditional art? or do you want us to tell you which kind of perspectives are easiest and what kinds of games to copy to kind of get an idea of how to make generic pixel art (really slowly)?
If you just want the latter I really doubt people here are going to be willing to help, because they take a lot of pride in not only their work, but also their advice.