no-limit painting, game scene.[WIP][Beginner]

[Foultooth]

Hey all, iam new to this forum and iam liking it alot!, ive stared a project, this will eventually be a safezone"sanctuary" in a game.
c+c are welcome.

hope iam not breaking any rules but this is made without any filters or quick tools only layers and the pencil.

[Seiseki]

You have saved it as a JPG which causes a ton of artifacts and blur.
Always save pixel art as PNG or GIF.
Also, why aren't you saving it in photoshop instead of taking a screenshot and saving that?

[Foultooth]

Nah its bmp tinypic made the artifacts, the original document is 1920x320 and will be sort of a diorama.I wanted to present it as it will be showed when finnished.I changed to imageshack and png, way better.

[PypeBros]

Nah its bmp tinypic made the artifacts, the original document is 1920x320 and will be sort of a diorama.I wanted to present it as it will be showed when finnished.I changed to imageshack and png, way better.

But still way oversized. I mean, it's a pixel-art forum, here. You're unlikely to get comments on the code-generated gradient in the background. And to judge/comment on/edit your pixel art, having it uploaded 1:1 is best on any regard.


The board comes with a conveninent zoom-by-clicking feature that does the rest.

That being said, right now, you're using a curious mixture of techniques, with pretty-but-artificial gradients on the metallic areas, while other elements (door and brickwall) use photorealistic texture. Beyond the fact that we can't really help improving that (no pixel-pushing technique work on photorealistic texture manipulation, afaik), you're reducing how "believable" your world is by having items that looks "less realistic" than others. A reduced colour count and less ambitious resolution usually helps avoiding that. (Years of artistic studies also does, to some extent )

[Foultooth]

I didnt know that you can zoom, thank you.i started with the engines and everything evolved from that, this is very much a learning by doing for me.Up to this point i have redone and gone over everything several times so that made the difference in technique and look i now starting to like the outcome and trying to clean it up and level it out before making the rest, i toned down the texture on the bricks and door, i still cant decide if i should use black outlines on everything, or use shaded outlines like the one on the electric box ontop of the house, or not use outlines at all.

btw i dont understand "with pretty-but-artificial gradients on the metallic areas", i think its hard to paint on flat areas without trying to imitate "textures" at all, any tips on making it come alive without getting the result with the "photorealistic textures" ?.

[cirpons]

I didnt know that you can zoom, thank you.i started with the engines and everything evolved from that, this is very much a learning by doing for me.Up to this point i have redone and gone over everything several times so that made the difference in technique and look i now starting to like the outcome and trying to clean it up and level it out before making the rest, i toned down the texture on the bricks and door, i still cant decide if i should use black outlines on everything, or use shaded outlines like the one on the electric box ontop of the house, or not use outlines at all.

btw i dont understand "with pretty-but-artificial gradients on the metallic areas", i think its hard to paint on flat areas without trying to imitate "textures" at all, any tips on making it come alive without getting the result with the "photorealistic textures" ?.

See pixel art is all about restricting yourself.

Yes, it is harder to make some textures without using a gradient, but it might also be more feasible result.
Like your image uses over 255 colours to achieve what it is, but maybe you dont need that much?
Heres your image reduced to 25 colours, do you see any difference?



They are really similiar.

Anyway i suggest you read a few tutorials:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299
http://opengameart.org/content/les-forges-pixel-art-course

[PypeBros]

Typically, shading style can allow you to reduce colors a lot.


Here's the take of Henk Nieborg on a 1001-nights city. Notice the low colour count on the walls, that is efficiently replaced by sensible shapes and still convey interesting volumes. (argh. Those heavy-feet at IGN have introduced JPG artifacts all over the place).

[Seiseki]

I made an attempt at shading. Just some crazy scribbling, not very thought out.. But it's quite quick to work in this style, which I think is important if you want to make a game out of it.
And you'll have an easier time keeping track of your colors and making changes.



If you provide the full line-art, ie. only the black outlines. I'm sure that others can demonstrate much better shading

Also, I really like the way Owlboy does metal.
Gradients is a cheap and flat way of making something look like metal, you should study this kind of shading instead.

[Foultooth]

Is there like a set of rules for pixel art ?, is it supposed to have a very low color count ? probably got this all wrong then, thought it was all about the resolution and pixel by pixel painting.

anyway, made some changes to the engines and more cleaning, will move on to the ground/grass and onwards.If the shading is really bad ill change it, so be honest if its all wrong.

the idea is to animate the propeller and smoke from the chimney. everything in this picture is on individual layers and are very easy to change around.


edit: yes agreed. that shading is very nice, need to change my .

[Seiseki]

Pixel art is not necessarily about placing each pixel by hand.
It's having control over every pixel, or clusters of pixels and placing them on purpose.
When you use a soft brush it automatically creates anti-aliased lines, it creates new colors.

For example, if I point at a single color or pixel in your image and ask why did you use that color there? Would you be able to answer?

If you're actually placing all the pixels by hand, like the shading on the robot, you're spending a ton of time on something that will look smudgy and unclear.
But the main factor here is that you're spending lots of time, time that can be spent on other things if you learn to shade with the minimal amount of colors.
It also looks much more crisp and it's easy to change and tweak colors and entire palettes.


It's ok to use any kind of shading method you like, but if you use soft brushes it won't be pixel art and this is a forum mainly about pixel art.


edit:  I think you should spend more time on the actual shapes, this is easier to do if you use simple shading and block out areas using 2-3 colors just to get a feel for the depth.
Image examples from this tutorial, just make sure the line art is good and then start some simple shading. Dirt, scratches, details and such can be added later.



Learning to work with depth is important, otherwise everything will look flat.
The screenshot from Owlboy is a great example on depth.