Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: micintexp on August 28, 2010, 02:26:04 am
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Hey,Guys.
Last time I made thread about tree etc. but it didn't go that well due that I was lacking sketch knowledge , but now I think I have improve a little bit more into my drawing skills
and decide to return back to make icons.
Right now I'm an amateur I started to do pixel once again after 7 months so I'm pretty much the same nab as I were 7 months ago.
But here are some previews of trees that I made today .
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Tryout.png)
The first one at the top is my latest one.
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You have improved for sure, nice job. Keep it up! Someday, you may attain 1/512th of my skill. Just keep at it! Post your sketch practice here.
Top middle is best. The middle mirrored trees are scary. The trunk makes no sense. Why does taper thicker as it goes up?
Bottom tree is just a painterly mess. I know you can do better than that and don't need crit on tech for that one. Of it's overall shape though, I will say it is very typically cartoonishly simplified. The perfect oval canopy won't occur in nature. I don't know your intent, though. Photo-realism or cubism? See what I mean? What are you going for? I can't helpfully direct you if you don't clue me in first.
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Honestly speaking the third wasn't really meant to be anything.And the mirrored one I were just trying something out there m but I think my first is better I guess.
Here are some of the trees I sketched as you requested.
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Sketches/4.png)(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Sketches/PalmTree.png)(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Tree.png)
Other thing I started to draw trees like 2 days ago , since I were mostly practicing on drawing objects etc.
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(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Icons/PalmTrunk.png)
Palm trunk tryout.
I were studying this dude trunk http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/17121.htm.
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(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Sketches/PalmTree-1.png)
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Palm-1.gif)
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Icons/Trunkie-1.png)
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Wait up! I think you're moving backwards with your two newest additions.
I love what you did with the leaves on the one with lots of contrast, and I think you should fall back to that one. Are you using any kind of reference for these, or just winging it? If you're just winging it, STOP. It feels like a sin to use a reference I know, but it's not. You're not blindly copying the image, you're studying it so that you know how a tree works. A lot of what makes you able to draw is knowledge of how stuff works, and right now it doesn't seem like you understand what makes a tree a tree in an artist's eye.
You don't need to take a class in botany, but you'll need to figure out how light will affect the tree, what shapes are present, what its proportions are, what colors it has, and artisty stuff. Basically, if you want to get better, you'll need to observe meticulously.
As for what you have right now, your textures all seem the same dither noise. I'm not saying dither noise doesn't ever work, I'm just saying it all feels the same right now. I think that some smoothness in a couple places would help a whole lot with variety and visual interest.
Your leaves seem a little bit too small for your trunk. It's generally good to have the leaves take up just as much or more of the canvas than the trunk...at least for a lot of trees. Also, your coconuts would be in shadow, and they would be much darker.
But yeah, I really like what you did with the leaves on that top one. Keep shading them more like that!
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Wait up! I think you're moving backwards with your two newest additions.
I love what you did with the leaves on the one with lots of contrast, and I think you should fall back to that one. Are you using any kind of reference for these, or just winging it? If you're just winging it, STOP. It feels like a sin to use a reference I know, but it's not. You're not blindly copying the image, you're studying it so that you know how a tree works. A lot of what makes you able to draw is knowledge of how stuff works, and right now it doesn't seem like you understand what makes a tree a tree in an artist's eye.
You don't need to take a class in botany, but you'll need to figure out how light will affect the tree, what shapes are present, what its proportions are, what colors it has, and artisty stuff. Basically, if you want to get better, you'll need to observe meticulously.
As for what you have right now, your textures all seem the same dither noise. I'm not saying dither noise doesn't ever work, I'm just saying it all feels the same right now. I think that some smoothness in a couple places would help a whole lot with variety and visual interest.
Your leaves seem a little bit too small for your trunk. It's generally good to have the leaves take up just as much or more of the canvas than the trunk...at least for a lot of trees. Also, your coconuts would be in shadow, and they would be much darker.
But yeah, I really like what you did with the leaves on that top one. Keep shading them more like that!
Thank you for your words , I really appreciated it.
I do use refference , right now I'm trying to study these palm trees.
http://www.untiredwithloving.org/palm_tree_2.jpg
And the last palm I were merely trying something new with the leaves by watching this dude palm tree http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/17121.htm I was like why not lets try something near the line like that instead of wasting countless of hours.
But again I'm also trying to figure out something in my own style without needing to copy someone :).
Last try for today.
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Trunkies.png)(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/D1-3.png)
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Oh good! It didn't seem like it to me because your trees looked so drastically different, sorry about that. :-[
Hah, I used that same reference picture to churn up an example, but reconsidered posting it since it wouldn't have really helped with the stuff I wrote. Good old google!
Alright, so right now I'll come out and tell you not to worry about style yet. Just try to reconstruct what you see for now. Lemme suggest something that you may or may not be used to doing; draw a tree's silhouette using only negative space. I'd say that you will want to try an oak tree or something that has a more dense leaf structure than a palm tree. Just try to pick out the shapes the sky makes around the tree and through its leaves. In fact, for all of the trees you draw, don't try to draw a tree; draw only the shapes and lines you see that make up the tree.
I'm liking your new tree. Although I still feel like the leaves don't have quite enough contrast. By contrast I do not mean the value of the shades you've chosen; they're plenty contrasting enough in that respect. Look at that palm tree reference you posted, and notice how the shades are distributed.
This is what I see:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v350/Daroge/Palmtree1.gif)
The leaves are actually much more isolated in terms of value because some of the leaves are in shadow with only the ambient light from the sky to keep them colorful, while others are getting hit full on by the sun. Leaves will never ever all have the same about of sunlight hitting them, not even close to that actually. Try to distribute your shades accordingly, and refrain from using all of your shades for each leaf or leaf cluster. This is always best to work out in the very early stages of your art since the more work you put into something the more attached you get to it, and it's really hard to get it all right your first try. I did a lot of reworking just for that little example.
Another thing to remember is that you don't wanna make a straight color ramp of green and a straight ramp of brown for the leaves and trunk respectively. In your reference picture there's a lot of blue and yellow in its leaves, and it will make your art pop out and tell everyone, "I'm a tree!" if you can find the actual colors that make it up. Generally, things slowly hint towards yellow as they get lighter and tint towards blue as they get darker because of the sun and sky. Or, if you're doing a piece with different lighting, then just remember that warmer = lighter colors and darker = cooler colors. Just remember that for a guideline though. Just play around with hue shifting as we call it and find something that you like to use.
Here are the colors I see in the trunk and leaves:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v350/Daroge/Palmtree3.gif)
Also notice how I began working in the details. What I did was try to emulate the actual leaf structure by first making those light lines through the middles where I saw them on the reference picture. Then I drew a couple more lines out from the middle lines and within the silhouettes I created earlier, and finally drew some of the leaves sticking out of the big blob of color, and made little indentations where the leaves weren't. It was super easy to get the leaves worked in that way than just muscling through it all all at once. That's the reason I said to observe meticulously, and really study how a tree or anything works. Just remember that details aren't very welcome in a piece until you've got the basic idea down really nicely because theres always major structure issues that need to be fixed after the first couple tries, and it's really easy to fix them without any details.
So yeah, don't draw a tree, don't draw tree colors, observe the shapes, and let the image itself tell us it's a tree. ;D
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Idk , but I'm kinda having a hard time to draw what the image is xD.
Any other methods I should try before going to do that one?
But anyway I'm gonna try something different then come back to the palm.
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/T6.png)
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/B1.png)(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/B2.png)
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Icons/T4.png)
Still need to do the shading on the leaves etc.
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Edit:
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/T7.png)
Added few color to the old palm tree.
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Edit:
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/TT3-1.png)
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(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/T2-2.png)
Any ideas what to put above the tree...
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Leaves? :P
You're starting on so many new trees, but they all look the same. I think we could help more if you posted your reference image, and stopped posting a brand new tree every day. Just stick to one, and work at it for a lot longer than what you have been with these. One nice thing about pixel art is that you can correct your mistakes more easily than in any other medium that I know of, and you don't need to start something completely new just to try to correct some small errors.
Right now your leaves are still just balls of color. Your palm leaves are definitely improving, and that's great, but you really need to just search out what a tree really looks like. Does it only have 4 branches? does it really have four huge inflatable balls impaled onto those branches? You don't need to draw each leaf, but you do need to learn how to imply those leaves with smaller, more controlled blobs of color that emulate the actual compound shape of the leaves.
Here's a quick demonstration:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v350/Daroge/EWWAJPEG/beautiful_tree_1ked.gif)
Those are the blobs of leaves I see in that tree. It's just a matter of picking out where the light hits the leaves and where it doesn't. Obviously you'd normally go into much more detail with a serious piece, where you'd find the blobs of many more different shades to where you could see some of the leaves, you'd pick out where the background peeks through the leaves, you'd pick out the parts of the exposed branches, you'd pick out the texture of the trunk; you'd go as far as you and your schedule could stand. Your ability and tolerance will get higher and you'll be able to get further into details more easily over time.
On a side note, notice the ratio of leaf-to-trunk. The trunk looks tiny compared to the leaves because they hide most of the trunk and branches from view.
While I don't suggest tracing the image of any tree for a serious piece of artwork, you can be justified in trying to get a sense of what shape the blobs really are with some tracing around. After you get a feel for how these shapes really look, you can try eyeballing it for your real piece. It will always be off, and don't worry about that, just try to get it as close as you can. Don't try to manipulate it or guess for something, try to find it in the image and imitate whats there, even if it feels like it would be wrong.
Just really try to see what actually makes the tree look like a tree.
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Right now I'm going to focus on making a tree similar to this.
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/T1-1.png)
I used this picture to know the structure of an tree.
http://visual.merriam-webster.com/images/plants-gardening/plants/tree/structure-tree.jpg
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A good friend of mine on another forum wrote up this tree walkthrough, with some in depth information of each step of how she makes her trees. Pay attention to how she does the foilage, while still leaving hints of the trunk visible. Also note how the trunk isn't a perfectly smooth body rising out of the ground, its rather rugged, the way alot of real tree trunks appear.
http://www.hbgames.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=57160
This is another one I like to refer to lately, before I ever start foilage. Surely, you don't need to go into as much detail as this guy does, but just reading it alone helped me improve from the trees I've done prior to reading, to next tree I did after skimming through it. Difference between the foilage here, and the foilage in the previous example, is the leaves are well defined. I wouldn't suggest going through the trouble of hand pixeling every leaf cluster like this guy does, unless you really want to, but rather just pay attention to the basic idea of how he did them.
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=10520.0
One of the major killers of all your trees is the saturation is way too high (or too low, in rare cases), and you tend to make some oddball color choices for the trunks (red, purple, seriously?). Other than that, in some instances, it appears that you've done some excellent shading, but again... the color choice and saturation kills the pieces I'm referring to. Perhaps high saturation is a style you're actually aiming for, but don't crank it too much because it is rather unpleasant on the eyes.
I did notice that you are using some color theory that might actually be executed correctly (in some sense), but again... over saturated. When it comes to using purple for shadows, yellow for highlights, etc, its been taken way too literally. A hint of a purple hue where there would be, say brown, would be more effective than going literally violet, and even then the brightness is too high to be a shading color. One thing to do is grayscale your image, to see if your shadows are indeed darker than your highlights... it might look funkier than you imagined, but it'll help you figure out what areas need the most color adjustment.
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Lol the funny thing is I'm studying both of those foliage :lol:
But thanks for your advice , basically I have found them yesterday when I were doing more research for foliage etc.
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So far (http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/F3.png)
I'm still struggling with leaves in some way , http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=8291.0 <- studying that.
but still can someone bring up an example or something :s.
Edit:
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/FFf.png)
Can someone show an example on how they would shade this tree (_ _)'
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(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/FFs.png)
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Test-1.png)
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Your canopy is still way too small. Make it at least double the size it is right now!
You're progressing very well all in all though. I really like how your leaves are coming along, and your colors are getting very yummy :)
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Thanks for the advice.
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Test3.png)
Big enough or still small :).
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A link from my forum, sorry it's in french (and not pixel art) but only with picture you should understand the problem is your light and shadow
you should choice a light direction (generally the sun is placed at the left/up side)
We saw too much root and don't seams to be on the floor
http://www.rpgmakerxp-factory.net/forum/index.php/topic,8884.msg78751.html#msg78751
my tree with the method i posted , it's not perfect but you can see volume and where the sun should be placed ^^
(http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a75/krisss666/arbres.png)
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The reason I were leaving the branches a bit dark is due that my foliage will cover it up either way , and besides that the darkness I were going to do something different with it when I put my foliage one it which you can see on the other trees that I have posted.
You just have give me a great idea, now I'm seeing that my last tree is having some flaws at the branches.
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Mass change:
[WIP]Not done with trunk)
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Game%20Icons/Rehab.png)
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You keep using an inverted muted copy of each tree's canopy for it's shadow. This does not work. It's painfully obvious with this last one here. Think about it. If your lighting is top-down, the shadow should be the shape of the canopy if viewed from directly above. If this is top-down, the trunk conflicts, being lit from the left. Though, shadows are the least of your concern.
Your roots look too improvised. Using ref for this? They lack that natural random quality.
Why not simplify the trunk's detailing? Too noisy. Go for discernible details, some bark detailing here and there. Discernible texture. Something we can visually understand and grab onto.
Canopy looking good so far. You used a large blobby circular brush, don't forget to obscure that fact in your final stages - get rid of the perfect circles along the edge of the canopy. Get rid of the branch chunks showing through, or revise them to make better sense.
You have been searching for all the tree threads here, right? There are numerous lessons waiting for you to learn them. Go find them. They're superior to anything I have to say.
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Like Mathias said, you should take picture and copy the global form (like my exemple).
You have too much roots at base of the tree : it's not a spider :p
About color : make more contrast and root less similar
(http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a75/krisss666/tree-contrast.png)
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I were using this tree as reference.
http://www.inkart.com/images/Line_Art_Addition/Oak_Tree_And_Roots.jpg
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this picture isn't suitable for a game's tree : it's more like for title
You don't need to have root tom much visible !
look at this tuto http://www.oddgames.com/daniel/graphics/tree-tut.jpg
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http://karenswhimsy.com/public-domain-images/tree-clipart/tree-clipart-4.jpg
Will use that as reference.
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Working from life when possible is always a much, much better way of learning than from ref images.
This may be truer for trees than any other subject.
From all your attempts so far, it's obvious you don't really understand what makes a tree a tree, and additionally you mix fantasy elements such as the big visible twisted roots.
It goes with trees as with characters: you've got to study the anatomy of the actual thing even if your aim is to twist it badly afterwards.
I strongly suggest to go out and sketch lots of trees, basic and uninteresting as they might look. You will quickly notice that every species of tree has its own typical branch and foliage structure, and you should be able to reproduce those patterns without too much difficulty (branches being easier than leaves though).
The problem with the tutos and examples shown is that these artists have a pre-existing understanding/experience of trees, so their starting steps are actually not starting steps! This is most obvious in st0ven's post (best of them), which doesn't even start with the trunk and branches but obviously has a very solid trunk and branches underlying structure. I'm not that convinced with Perihelion's or the PS tuto, though they are good shading tutos their tree structures are not that great.
Grab that sketchbook already!
(http://files.myfrogbag.com/qe1mq0/arbres%20DB%20tbd50%20manu.jpg)
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Actually I do sketch trees here and there but not a bunch as peoples suggested, compare to my older thread and this thread I have improve a lot more.
Back there I were struggling a lot more due that I didn't even sketch any kind of trees but now I did and understand it a bit better but I still need to sketch more.
Peoples did tell me to sketch either way which is what I did, but still need to do a lot more.
Edit:
I will sketch this tree then.
http://karenswhimsy.com/public-domain-images/tree-clipart/tree-clipart-4.jpg
Will use that as reference.
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(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Picture1.jpg)(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Picture5.png)
^ did that at school today.
The quality isn't that great due that my scanner scan everything so brightly that it lost most of the shading and stuff on it .
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This tree appears to be spread out flatly against a 2D plane. It has no depth. I don't mean lighting/shading. I mean not a single branch overlaps any other branch. If this is the front, if viewed from the strict profile you would see only a flattened column of condensed branches. This is very concerning. Is this truly an attempt at a realistic natural tree?
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Mathias is right, and this is why it's important to draw from life and not the unaided mind. Your mind's tree may have severe flaws, but the one in your backyard certainly doesn't.
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Right now I'm just trying to get the feel how the branches are and the trunk , basically I have watch different trees and see what I could visualize in my mind to put on the paper due that I find it pretty easy.Afterward that I think I have enough knowledge how to draw an branche,trunk etc. I begin practicing drawing an real nature tree.
What I actually did first was watch other peoples tree, learn the tree structures , learn the branches then try to visualize an tree.
I'm going to attempt to draw this tree.
http://www.freefoto.com/images/15/19/15_19_49---Tree-Branches_web.jpg?&k=Tree+Branches
Basically right now I'm only learning the structure of trees and branches.
Besides that I have no tree in my backyard neither in my neighborhood so I mostly draw from the trees on the internet etc.
And guys please try not to quote the same thing that someone else have already said, telling me once is enough no need to keep replying with the same message of an other person over and over.
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It seems like you're taking a very roundabout way of learning tree structure. If you look at a real tree, the structure is right in front of you, no need to commit it to memory. Other people have learned to draw good trees from observing actual trees, why throw in this extra step? If you want to draw a tree, look at a tree, and not a picture of a tree, or a picture of a picture of a tree. There is no prerequisite for learning to draw a real tree, nothing standing in the way of the tree and your sketchpad. The trees Manupix posted look great, and it's because they were (almost certainly) drawn from reality.
I'm not saying that learning from pictures isn't useful, but you won't be learning how to translate three-dimensional objects into 2d.
If you continue to show the same issues, you're going to get the same advice. I find it very hard to believe there aren't any trees near where you live, unless you're making posts from the mountains of Tibet or the Sahara desert.
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Keep in mind that I'm not from US , i'm from curacao .Were I live there's no kind of trees to actually draw etc that's why.Lets say in my neighborhood.
Besides I didn't say from memory I said I study the trees online and firstly try to practice and get the feeling on how to draw the branches and other stuffs then begin with the real thing.Each person do it differently.We do have trees here at the island,but not the barium that I'm living though.
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And guys please try not to quote the same thing that someone else have already said, telling me once is enough no need to keep replying with the same message of an other person over and over.
Dude, get real. You probably just lost half your audience with that smug remark. I strongly recommend not telling people how to give crit. You should be happy and grateful anyone gives you any. Anyone should be. People spend their valuable time trying to help one another here.
This is no longer a pixel project. You're just sketching now. How is sitting down with a picture of a tree and copying it different from sitting down and copying any other image? Sketching out trees isn't a specific skill. I don't understand why people go on a quest to learn how to pixel one little object isolated from everything else. It happens so often with trees. But why? I don't get it.
Usually resulting from the prodding of the crowd, these questers even stop pixelling and start sketching because they realize the need to improve their fundamental art skills, that pixelling doesn't, contrary to popular opinion, mask a basic skill deficit. And still, they're focused on that initial object they feel a need to master.
So, is it just a vehicle for improving overall drawing skills? - Representing the real world on the canvas? Or is only "trees" the root concern. What do I do with a mastery over trees? Draw only trees all day? Pixel trees all day? Isn't the real issue here life-drawing skills, being able to wield light and shadow properly, etc. It has nothing to do with trees, or buildings, or koala bears, or yams, or baseball bats wrapped in beef jerky, or electronic devices from the future, or bread ovens, or giraffe tongues.
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A key to any form of self-expression, artistic or otherwise, is the faculty for observation. This is because at its root nearly all expression is a form of communication, and if the subject of the communication is not mutually intelligible then it fails. The fastest route to mutual intelligibility is proper reference of common experience, i.e. the world around us. The failure to observe and communicate shared experience creates a lot of bad, bad art.
Not to beat this horse much longer, but the reason you need to go back to the world and draw actual trees that you actually experience in person is while you may have an intuitive and/or symbolic understanding of what a tree is, but you seem to have no real understanding of a tree as a process or a holistic system of objects and processes, or, in other words, why trees do what it is that trees do? Why do trees have roots? bark? leaves? why do they grow up rather than sideways (except when they grow sideways, and then, why do they do that?) The answers to these questions, far from being academic, will help inform and improve your art, I promise.
By way of illustration and entertainment I present an excerpt from Mark Twain's essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences":
If Cooper had been an observer his inventive faculty would have worked better; not more interestingly, but more rationally, more plausibly. Cooper's proudest creations in the way of "situations" suffer noticeably from the absence of the observer's protecting gift. Cooper's eye was splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly. Of course a man who cannot see the commonest little every-day matters accurately is working at a disadvantage when he is constructing a "situation." In the "Deerslayer" tale Cooper has a stream which is fifty feet wide where it flows out of a lake; it presently narrows to twenty as it meanders along for no given reason, and yet when a stream acts like that it ought to be required to explain itself. Fourteen pages later the width of the brook's outlet from the lake has suddenly shrunk thirty feet, and become "the narrowest part of the stream." This shrinkage is not accounted for. The stream has bends in it, a sure indication that it has alluvial banks and cuts them; yet these bends are only thirty and fifty feet long. If Cooper had been a nice and punctilious observer he would have noticed that the bends were often nine hundred feet long than short of it.
The whole essay which is worth the read and easily available online is, in fact, a rebuttal to willful amateurism, something that I know that I, for one, need to be careful of.
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Wow Swap, that's a nice addition to the conversation here.
Could you explain your meaning behind "willful amateurism", please.
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Oh Oh i don't even imagine we will fall into philosophy (but i don't dislike that ;D )
I'm agree with Mathias : when you show your "skill" all criticism are usefull; you don't need to listen everybody, but if numbers of critisism target the same point, you should try to understand why.. I know well it's hard to do
About your original project, maybe you should stop sketching and make pixelling 3 or 4 differents trees (or maybe you decide to leave your project for now ? )
A way to improve is to totally redraw yours trees, without copy any part
Good luck
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I guess I will just take a break once again , and try to learn more from nature etc.
And mathias sorry if my sentence offended you back there .
Be back in another few months.
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Nah, not offended at all. You might take a break from pixel art, yes. But don't give up on your drawing studies. You'll get it eventually.
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It seems I still couldn't take a break on the pixeling hehehe.
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Game%20Icons/Previewcopy.gif)
What you guys think.
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Closer, warmer, better - now think about how the branches you have drawn will hold up the leaves you have drawn.
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So in other words right now the leaves aren't putted right?
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Sorry for the short response: To be brief, no - they are not in the right place. They are close, and an improvement on before, so don't give up.
That said, I think I help you get the result you want. If you can sit tight and keep trying, I will put together a post which I think will give you just the information you need to create a Sufficiently Good tree than you can be proud of. (A bold assertion, I know, but one I am certain I can deliver on.)
In the meantime keep trying - look at the tree you have and then think about and then write down the things you think prevent it from matching the quality of other pixel trees you see and want to emulate. Save that step, and then make changes based on your notes. Do this as many times as you can stand, and post your results together.
In the mean time I will get to work.
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Gonna start from scracth.
[WIP]v0.1
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Roughwipcopy.gif)
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the problem with the previous tree was that you added all these branches, but then completely ignored this skeletal structure and added a big bush over it, rather than distinct clumps that relate to the underlying limbs. try blocking out these leafy clumps using just a few shades, then worry about detail after these have been firmly established and your foliage has sufficient depth.
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Since the starting of this thread I've seen little improvement. Maybe instead of starting from scratch every time you receive a critic, you should apply the critic to the current tree? Then once you perfected a tree you can move on and to another one?
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Well right now the last tree I will be dedicating much more improvements based on the c&c I have received so far, besides that I was feeling that my previous tree wasn't really giving me the feeling of an tree.Right now I feel this tree is giving me more expression of an tree and so on.
But I get what you mean about sticking on an single tree and try to improve on it which I will be doing on that tree v0.1
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v0.2
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Roughwip0-1.png)
I get the feeling that this isn't right :S.
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Start back from this one.
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Game%20Icons/Previewcopy.gif)
This one was your best one. Try again with the leaves.
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I think I should just stick to the newer one due that it's bigger and much easier for someone to notice the problem on it or I should really head back to the previous tree which you guys think I should try improving on newer one the previous as buddy90 is stating?
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Go with the new one - I'd say it's about as good as the previous one. I wish I get time for an edit some day, I'd really like to help you understand about how to make good forms that look 3d in .. pixel art and other art too! ' u '
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[WIP]V0.2
(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg93/micintexp/Roughwip-2.png)
[This is roughly the so far trunk that I have, I'm still not done with the shading].