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Messages - Pix3M
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191
2D & 3D / Making perler bead art?
« on: July 06, 2013, 04:00:03 pm »
Should considerations be the same or should I treat perler beads a bit differently?

192
Pixel Art / Re: Warring Cities
« on: June 29, 2013, 03:53:13 am »
Something about the composition of the smog guy feels a little off...

I feel the complexity being so focused on one side seems to make him look incredibly unbalanced, I think?

193
Pixel Art / Re: First pixel art attempt, help!
« on: June 24, 2013, 03:55:19 am »
500x500 is not a good size for a beginner to work with. Start 64x64 or smaller; the smaller the easier.

194
Resolution is easily one of the first things a pixel artist needs to think about before they even start. It influences the art style, and as already mentioned it influences your working speed.

Ahriman's prophecy isn't as great as you think it is. Their door is taken straight from default RTP assets that comes with RM2k. The tree looks a lot like the tree used in FFVI: http://www.spriters-resource.com/snes/ff6/sheet/6653/. Lots of stuff were taken from that First Seed Material site.

As a result from taking from multiple sources, their art style is inconsistent. RM2k RTP and FSM assets are a lot more cartoon than the more realistic looking FFVI trees. Dunno how obvious that mistake is to others but inconsistent styles would make things look more fake than it needs to.

As for the pixel art itself, a couple of stuff I might be able to bring up. The rendering uses a lot of single pixel dots which generally looks much less polished than pixel art that is done focusing on pixel clusters (blobs of colors created from same colors touching each other).  That is what makes some of the best pixel art look really polished. A low-res game I think has a solid art style with solid rendering is LoZ: The Minish Cap, if you wanna see a better example of low resolution pixel art that looks polished.

To add to what PixelPileDriver said, you're gonna want to know what the game screen looks like. It doesn't matter what a game asset looks like by itself. It's how everything meshes together into a game screen that matters. For the heck of it I just scribbles down something very basic, but you may want to start with blobs of colors just to make sure the color scheming for the environment is solid.



This is 512x384. Seiken Densestu 3 is a game that uses a similar resolution but 25% the size you're working with - 16x32 characters (more or less), 16x16 px tiles, 16x14 tiles on the screen. SD3 doesn't have any glaring problems compositionally, so I'm just gonna use them as a shortcut to say that 512x384 may be a game resolution to consider. Trees will likely be a nuisance blocking the view for being the size it is but it's probably better than smaller bonsai trees that are obviously copy-pasted.



1400x800 though, is too big, even if you didn't mean to ponder over that as a screen size it's still a convenient number for what I need.. This setup is probably good for a strategy game which individual units are merely your pawns, but it's innappropriate for a typical RPG when the game play puts emphasis on the hero. Also look at how the trees are now proportionally smaller, so you need more trees to make this scene look like a forest, and it's suddenly more obvious that this tree was blatantly copy-pasted. The more tiles on screen, the uglier the tiles look. You're also gonna get lost getting distracted by a gazillion different kinds of distractions when your hero is puny and seemingly insignificant.

Whatever sizes you work with, if they don't look good in your intended game resolution, they probably won't look good either if you try sticking them into a mockup as mere scribbles like what I did.

Also, a fun fact: you won't need anything faster than 60fps because that is about the rate human eyes work.

195
Pixel Art / Re: Sunset tips?
« on: June 15, 2013, 10:52:04 pm »
Huh... I dunno if that's the best reference to use. The sun is off to the side out of the photo. Your sketch places the sun right behind our subject so it's not the reference we probably want.

Other references that put the actual sun into focus gives us a much hotter color temperature for the sky:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunset_2007-1.jpg

I think a lot of other references should give you something similar - something darker and with a hotter color temperature.

196
Pixel Art / Re: Sunset tips?
« on: June 15, 2013, 10:41:28 pm »
Use a reference picture of a sunset to get the colors right.

197
Pixel Art / Re: Sidescroll screen attempt (WIP)
« on: June 14, 2013, 02:12:47 am »
So if you're going to emulate a style in particular, you can't go wrong with this guy.
Just don't cry (like I do!!:'() if you can't get your ideas and tiles to look that good  :lol:

Henk Nieborg? There's a lot to learn to be able to pixel at his level, though I'm not there myself.

Understanding shading lighting and forms is easily a big part of Henk's style, and easily one of Kiwinuptuo's weaker points. Just look at Nieborg's rocks, you can just feel the third dimension despite being 2D art.

Biggest thing to really look out for to be able to do Henk's style is to look at how he mostly does not bother with pixel-dot detailing. He draws relatively simple blobs of color and he creates some really good rocks. You generally do not want to detail with single pixel dots since it will make your work look messy and they will not do you much favors for readability.

198
Commercial Critique / Re: Commercial Critique - Pokemon Red/Blue
« on: June 07, 2013, 05:08:56 pm »
Eh... what happened... I was gonna lightly go over each sprite and make a few comments about them..

Anyways... my point from earlier, you can guess that Ken Sugimori wasn't particularly strong as an artist. It does kind of make me wonder how different the pokemon designs themselves can be if Ken was skilled as he is today. Anyone feel the same?

I'm noticing that many of the claws are basically spikes on a stub. Makes sense in smaller sizes like Ivysaur's feet when the resolution is so limiting but it starts looking lazy when they get as big as Hitmonlee or Snorlax.

199
Pixel Art / Re: Machine Girl Album Cover [WIP][C+C]
« on: May 27, 2013, 04:16:44 am »
Those clouds look really awesome. I love the poofy-ness they have!
What are you going for with the girl? It's a bit difficult to read, it looks like she has a black mask with leaves out the top. I would make her an edit, but I don't what you are trying to do. Is she dancing? What is she doing there? I'm assuming she is the machine girl. A little more info would be helpful.

I made a slight color edit and removed some jaggies as an example

The logo is good, but it is littered with jagged edges. If you don't know what jaggies are, this thread might help you out.
http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139322#139322
It's kind of a weird concept, I don't know how to put it in words so maybe the tutorial will help. I smoothed out just the bottom right hole in the gear, so there is an example you could look at. 

As for the color changes, I would give the white a slight blue tint since the sky is so blue and white is a very reflective color.


Don't forget to apply AA to completely remove the jags.  ;)

200
Pixel Art / Re: Machine Girl Album Cover [WIP][C+C]
« on: May 27, 2013, 02:17:54 am »
You could go with a composition that puts her in the foreground?

Also, not sure if you're theoretically aware of this but I know an approach that could help avoid bad composition. You just sketch down multiple ideas by blocking in your base colors i.e. using your fill color and not line. Then, you pick the strongest composition to refine into something finished.

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