Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: snake85027 on March 26, 2013, 01:10:20 am
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My name is David B and I am a video game artist. I create 3d game art but love pixel art and I am trying to get better at it. Here is something I did today. Mine is on the Right and the one on the left is from an old snes game called Mr Nuts.
Any advice would be awesome.(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l74/spawn85027/practice-1_zps64439561.jpg)
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The color count of that image is over 16 thousand :ouch: Knowing how to save your work properly is probably the very first thing to know when you're doing pixel art. You do not want to save your work as a jpg; it does odd stuff to your pixels and creates pixel noise as well. Save it as a PNG.
Other than that, it is generally a bad habit to detail with little pixel dots. Consider the tree that you're referencing... It mostly focuses on areas of color, not so much with trying to texture with pixel dots.
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So what do you recommend..should I be using a bigger brush when I paint?
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So what do you recommend..should I be using a bigger brush when I paint?
At such a scale it would be wise to block out the shape and general lightning with a larger brush and only then clean it up with a 1 px brush.
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Dave, hello & welcome! :)
So what do you recommend..should I be using a bigger brush when I paint?
Yeah, definitely. Always big to small, vague to specific; work stuff out sequentially at it's simplest.
This is a huge piece for starters, and actually for pixel art generally; lots of non-pixel specific block-out and tons of boring clean-up and hassle to make progress. I'd suggest that getting lots of smaller, quicker stuff done to build familiarity and confidence would be really helpful.
Subject wise straight reproduction can be pretty limiting too. Taking whatever technique and stylistic information you're looking for and applying that your own sketch is a good way to force yourself to properly engage with reference and hopefully come away from the exercise with the means to apply things to future work. At the moment most feedback is just gonna be about looking more closely at the original etc.
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Here is a small game Im working on using Game-editor engine.
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l74/spawn85027/SquirrelNuts01_zps50f21b14.jpg)
Just a simple game, you can try it here..still in progress.
www.dwbailey.com/images/squirrelnutsProduction.exe
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Don't even think about scaling pixel art. There is barely anything more unappealing than stretched pixel art.
Simple redraw it in the bigger resolution and make sure that all resolutions fit together.
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Not sure why the screen shot is like that. Im using photoshop and have Image interpolation it set to Nearest Nieghbor seems to work well with scaling up images. Not sure why my screenshot looks blurry.
I paint the image at a small scale to give it that edgey pixelated look. When I try to paint on a larger canvas the style is gone because the edges look to smooth. Whats your thoughts?
Here is the game.
www.dwbailey.com/images/squirrelnutsProduction.exe
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Not sure why the screen shot is like that. Im using photoshop and have Image interpolation it set to Nearest Nieghbor seems to work well with scaling up images. Not sure why my screenshot looks blurry.
Your screenshot is blurry because it's a jpeg. I'm not sure if it was the host automatically converting your screenshot into jpg but either way, it's a bad file format for pixel art. To make it more easier for others, I've looked at your game for a bit and pulled a couple of screenshots in PNG format.
(http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/4255/squirrelnuts.png)
I paint the image at a small scale to give it that edgey pixelated look. When I try to paint on a larger canvas the style is gone because the edges look to smooth. Whats your thoughts?
Here is the game.
www.dwbailey.com/images/squirrelnutsProduction.exe
It would help if the art style was consistent. The text is not blocky but is rather 'smooth' instead. Our main hero isn't made of giagantic rectangles while the background is definitely made of big blocky rectangles. There are a number of elements that are rotated. Rotated, skewed pixels like what you find a lot on the second screenshot looks weird because everything else is made of squares, not rotated squares. The acorn net is a weird combination of blocky and blurry. It was animated with the help of a transformation tool that creates a lot of antialiasing that creates a level of blur that looks out of place in our game world.
I also noticed the enormous resolution of 1024x768. A tiny resolution like 256x224, one used by the SNES is already more than enough pixels for an artist to be able to draw something. Only thing is if your programming knowledge goes far enough to be able to get the game to scale the screen by a factor of a whole number. Pixel art is much easier to make at smaller resolutions as well. Working too big is probably the most common mistake a pixel artist would make. I see possibilities of a blocky, rectangular style working out but it doesn't seem to be a style that's easy to do especially not for artists starting out. I would either follow Cy's advice to redraw your stuff in your intended resolution, or just go with a smaller resolution so you will still get your blocky aesthetic but benefit from a more consistent resolution.
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I have the screen size for the ipad, 768 by 1024. Now when your talking about 256x224, were you referring to the background or just overall screen size? the background is 3000 by 750..
If I paint at the normal image size is there a way to get my pencil brush to snap to the larger grid per block? I would take my large image say the tree and go from its normal size to a 100 by whatever and then paint it because I was able to paint per pixel block..anyway to keep it at the normal scale and have photoshop adjust to it? hopefully that makes since. when i paint at a larger scale it lets me paint all over the blocks and never just fills the blocks in fully so it loses the effect of being blocky.
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nevermind on thepainting part, i painted at regular scale and it is filling up the blocks just fine and not painting parts of them...wierd...ill repaint the squirrel now.
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I have the screen size for the ipad, 768 by 1024. Now when your talking about 256x224, were you referring to the background or just overall screen size? the background is 3000 by 750..
I was referring to the game resolution. Not the size of the background, not the size of your monitor or screen. If I were to play a game like Cave Story, despite having a 1024x768 monitor playing it in full screen, the game resolution is actually 320x240, putting aside technicalities involved with fonts.
If I paint at the normal image size is there a way to get my pencil brush to snap to the larger grid per block? I would take my large image say the tree and go from its normal size to a 100 by whatever and then paint it because I was able to paint per pixel block..anyway to keep it at the normal scale and have photoshop adjust to it? hopefully that makes since. when i paint at a larger scale it lets me paint all over the blocks and never just fills the blocks in fully so it loses the effect of being blocky.
An easy way to have your brushwork to snap to a grid is to work at a very small size and use the pencil tool. If for some reason you need it bigger, scale the dimensions by a factor of a whole number. A 16x16 sprite should scale cleanly into 32x32 or 48x48. Do not think of scaling it into resolutions like 24x24, and do not try editing your work after scaling it up. If you need to make adjustments, undo your scaling; if you made your 16x16 sprite into a 48x48, making every pixel nine times bigger then scale it back to 16x16, making every pixel exactly nine times smaller.
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reworked my squirrel
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l74/spawn85027/SquirrelNuts01_zps81840a45.png)
my character is 64 by 64
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You should know that the sprites and background still isn't very consistent in style. This is what the squirrel hero would look like if he was done in the same style as the backgrounds.
Everything made of blocky rectangles! :crazy:
(http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/8466/image2wa.png)
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Thanks for the paint over. What do you think of these.
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l74/spawn85027/characterChoices_zps1b77cb68.png)
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Looks a lot more solid but don't forget to polish up your pixels. There are a lot of jagged edges especially on the ear and... whatever that tan-colored object is.
Also don't overlook that it's good to have readable sprites - meaning that you can tell what you're looking at. I'm having a bit of difficulty knowing what the tan objects are in the bag. Well, if you can't make it clear what those bagged objects are you can instead have a drawing of our hero in a much bigger view... like a splash screen before the game starts.
Plus I'm kinda intrigued by the eyes pointing at two different directions. :huh:
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what do you think about these?
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l74/spawn85027/SquirrelNuts011_zpsc8250681.png)
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When they were talking about stretched pixels, I believe they meant that you didn't keep the relative dimensions the same. Squares turn rectangular and some of them may get squished in unsightly ways.
This is a style I can't find much justification for, as it's unappealing and amateurish. My advice would be either to re-scale your background (so that it doesn't hae things stretching or squishing) or to go and manually fix the art to be less blocky and more in line with your character art. :o
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I am going with a simple blocky look to build a good foundation with pixel art, If I cant manage something simple like this then why go to something less blocky?
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Well, mainly because you are breaking your own "good foundation" by stretching and squashing it.
(http://i.imgur.com/gFH7c7y.png)
Which one do you think looks better? :u