Pixelation
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: .TakaM on May 15, 2006, 05:18:05 am
-
does anyone else here ever think about pixel art when painting and stuff?
like try to come up with a pallette first and paint the same way you would do it in mspaint or whatever?
in art Im planning on doing a bigass popart style board of ken vs akuma and Ive been painting some smaller versions first and I keep thinking about anti aliasing, selout etc while Im painting, not to mention Ive tried to ctrl+z many times >_>
just wondering if this happens with anyone else?
-
I used to constantly reach for ctrl+z when doodling in class. My friend started to get annoyed that I'd tap my desk a lot. I stopped pixelling often and have gotten more into drawing, so I haven't done the undo thing in a while. Although I still get annoyed when I draw a line and it's barely off and I have to erase and constantly retry and I wish it was pixel art because it's so much more precise than my shaky hands.
-
the closest i come to that is that i think of painting while im pixelling, probably since im a better painter than pixeller and its deeper in my mind
-
oh definately the UNDO neurons fire on any other medium. I don't paint almost at all so I don't think of pixel-art color theory, but I guess I probably would if I did.
-
Ah yeah, i do the undo thing all the time >.<
But i think pixelling has improved my general artistic skills because it's been such an easy medium to work with, so i think i've learnt more in the space of time. I do think more about what colours go with what, and i think i'm a bit more precise. I'm still pretty lame at painting though... :P
-
pixel art is a great practise medium because of many reasons. Small scale means you can do fully realized compositions in little time, full-opaque colors is good, that you can place a full white pixel over a full black pixel without and hassle is a boon that any real medium artist can appreciate.
-
as nice a medium as pixelling is though it tends to breed bad practices like failing to plan out the entire composition and color patterns beforehand, which leads to a huge amount of unnecessary corrections made if you work the way you do in pixelling, instead of either A.: getting it right the first time or B.: allowing the picture to alter itself in a natural manner over time (instead of trying to go straight from black to white). this of course doesnt fit in to people who pixel as though they were working with a real medium, who plan ahead and allow for gradual, natural corrections (helm, st0ven, tremulant to name a few).
that may just be me coming from a real background though instead of learning and working on computers.
in general, all traditional knowledge aplies both to real and computer skill. color theory, blending, composition, etc all hold through regardless of media, so it doesnt matter what method you think of these in as long as they come to mind.
-
I agree. And the biggest problem pixel art creates as a practise medium is that it's not very friendly to sketch in. That's why I usually (though not always) do pencil studies to get the composition ok before turning to pixels. A lot of people that work in pixels suffer from composition weaknesses. The habit of drawing thumbnails, selecting the most energetic one, blowing it up and using it as a base of the composition should be picked up by more pixel artists.
Another issue: it's common knowledge that painters are instructed to work 'from general to specific', first in broad strokes and then gradually tightening up and getting down to detail level all over the place. Due to how 'finalized' you can get something to look in pixel art in relatively little time, a lot of people -me included- when they've got the volumes and colors worked out, attack a specific place in the picture until it's done-done, and then move to the next bit... it works, but it's not as easy to see how it's all holding up as you could if you did it the painter-friendly way. It's just that general to specific I've found, when applied to pixel art leads to a uniformly messy piece. Pixel-art tightness seems to occur more naturally when you work a face, a hand FULL-ON until you're DONE so you can look at it as you work other places and see if the detail level matches. If you go from broad to specific, you get to a point where the whole piece is 80% detailed and you subconsciously go "this is good enough" but it's that extra sheen of polish that's missing.
Personally, I battled a lot with how to draw my initial steps in pixel art, and I found I really can't handle and get annoyed by the 'blotted color' painter way to start. I've devised a hybrid clean method of good lineart that gets turned into something that looks like a flat-shaded polygon mesh, and from there it's a matter of smoothing transitions, dithering and detail work. I really can't handle BLOTCH BLOTCH "this is my wip, guys!" I need to know what's going on in the pic and where the elements all are from pretty early on. Probably bad practise if I tried to take it say, to watercolor (which I know how to work, but am very hesitant to).
-
one time i spilled ink on one of my pages, took up the whole damn panel i was working on, i yelled "UNDO".
i am planning on doing a piece made up of small tiles, which would be pixels and make a pixel piece, dont know what it will be though.
id like to add to this big convo of intelligent posts, but my head hurts from reading helms post(jk)
-
I have to agree with alot of what helm and adrias said, especially about composition. I still have quite a bit of trouble in that area, wether its anatomy, of general structure (of larger pieces), since the larger you work the more your knowledge (or lack there of) of composition/anatomy/design is made apparent. Recently I've been spending alot of time sketching out whatever pixel pieces I'm working on, makes things so much easier when you have a clear image in your mind about what your working on.
On a side note I've fortunately never run into that 'undo reaction' whenever I'm doing non digital work ^^U...I just make large deep cutting strokes through the paper instead kekekeke.
-
Wow, i thought I was the only one who did the undo while working in a traditional medium. I dont question my sanity as much anymore.
Alot of which is said on the thread is true, i should delve into traditional mediums more, i rarely do because my hands shake.
-
i rarely use the undo key on the computer actually, i tend to work it around because thats what im used to, unless i do something catastrophic.
as far as spilling ink goes, its good practice to try and work with it with more ink and white paint. at the very worst, youll look like you are trying to rip off frank miller :P
one of the beatuies of pixelart is that you can figure a basic composition in a small area and then enlarge and use the basic regions for your sketch (which a tablet hels with but a mouse can accomplish). i personally begin with a pencil sketch for larger works (examples in this forum: pirate girl, bronze), but the smaller or more heavily stylized ones (examples in this forum: forest princess, tactics character) i usually work straight on the computer. monsters are a mix and backgrounds are always pure pixel
-
i cant really ever use white paint, cuz i color my pages traditionally with watercolor.
-
i cant really ever use white paint, cuz i color my pages traditionally with watercolor.
I used to be really fluent in water colour but now after so long doing all my art on computer its been hard to get back into it.. barely anything in pixelart applies to water colour
-
Personally, I battled a lot with how to draw my initial steps in pixel art, and I found I really can't handle and get annoyed by the 'blotted color' painter way to start. I've devised a hybrid clean method of good lineart that gets turned into something that looks like a flat-shaded polygon mesh, and from there it's a matter of smoothing transitions, dithering and detail work. I really can't handle BLOTCH BLOTCH "this is my wip, guys!" I need to know what's going on in the pic and where the elements all are from pretty early on. Probably bad practise if I tried to take it say, to watercolor (which I know how to work, but am very hesitant to).
hmm that's interesting because i don't do large pieces regularly but i am currently working on one for a title screen and my process is just like that. I usually start out with a drawing scanned in, trace in pixels and touch up to get my line art. Then get that "flat-shaded polygon mesh" which is the perfect phrase to describe it too. Right now im smoothing transitions and detailing, although i don't dither much, never really have. Never really got into to painting or watercolors, due to my unsteady hands but i have to say it would be fun to try again, since the last time i did it was in 3rd grade =P
-
maybe some shaky hands is just the effect needed for new paintings worldwide!
jk