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1
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Ryuko Matoi - Looking for feedback
« on: April 01, 2015, 07:25:15 am »
Hey Mero!

Welcome to Pixelation =)

It's definitely a good idea to start with pretty flat colours when practising animation. Something that also helps is to get a pretty open and naturally easy to move stance, especially when it's someone holding a weapon. It doesn't take a lot of frames to make something this tiny move, this edit I made is 4 frames.



The trick is, well it's not really a trick but sort of the idea with an idle is to calculate how much you can move the character to create a loop back to your first frame. I try to simply begin by moving the upper body either up or down one pixel, leave the legs alone for now. This will happen:

What I try to work with after that is to move single pixels, like her knee bending, you simply have to move it a few pixels at the time, take away from the right side and move those pixels to the "inside" slowly building a cluster where she will bend it.

The light blue pixels is where the previous frame were

As you probably can see I've moved some colours on the inside as well.

after that you want the sprite to land in the position where it's as far down as it will ever be. A trick when animating hair is to always keep it one frame behind, it will make it look light and give it a nice flow. So in your 2nd frame you want the hair to almost be in the exact same position as it were in the first, or even up a pixel to indicate she's pressing down, and you won't move the hair much until the character prepares to go "up" again. The 3rd frame is all about reseting the character smoothly back to it's original frame. I don't know what tool you are using, but there are software out there that lets you use Onion skin (you see a transparent image of the previous frame) which helps a great  deal when trying to create a smooth loop, Graphics Gale is one of those.

I hope this can help you get a better understanding of animation. I could go on forever but the real lesson here is just to practise, practise and practise and eventually you'll feel that you're getting more and more control over the "limbs"!

2
Portfolios / Johan Aronsson - Freelance pixel artist & Game developer
« on: March 29, 2015, 07:01:13 pm »
[Currently Not available]

Hey!

My name is Johan Aronsson and I work as a freelance pixel artist. Born and raised in Sweden, I've had a dream of doing games and game art since a very young age. I started practicing pixel art as a technique 12 years ago. The dream eventually came true when I started working with clients during the summer of 2013. In 2014 I finished and released my first game Dr.Green(http://t.co/tyQzsOH8pz). I'm currently working with several clients on upcoming games for Smartphones & PC/Mac/Linux. For more information about my projects, art and how to contact me can be found on my site: https://johan-aronson.squarespace.com/

Currently working on

Laser Fury (Studio Thunderhorse  https://twitter.com/ThunderhorseHQ)
Samurai Assassin (Jon Lepage https://twitter.com/JonLepageDev)
Spooks N' Spikes (Studio Thunderhorse https://twitter.com/ThunderhorseHQ)
Samurai Blitz (Studio Thunderhorse  https://twitter.com/ThunderhorseHQ) - Released on iOS
Raccoon Rascals (Studio Thunderhorse  https://twitter.com/ThunderhorseHQ)


3
Pixel Art / Re: [C + C] Beginner's tiny boatman
« on: March 29, 2015, 03:56:33 pm »
Hey Jordyadan!

I drew a quick edit for you:
Edit:

Since it's pretty tiny I suggest you reduce amount of colours you use drastically. It's very hard to read waves or motion in the water in this size the way you have done it. If this was a water tile and you wanted that amount of detail in your water I'd probably make the entire tile one wave instead of many small ones. Like you see I've made the water pattern a bit different, something that might fit a tranquil scene a bit more. I also tried to make the contrast between shadow/light a bit more clear by taking away a lot of colours and making the brighter colour brighter and the darkest colour darker, this is very helpful when you're drawing smaller sprites, try to avoid one lines as much as possible and work with thicker, so called "clusters" to display detail in a clear way. I also adjusted the perspective a bit by showing more of the inside of the boat, and less of the character's face.

I hope it'll help you!

4
Pixel Art Feature Chest / Re: Project Entropy
« on: June 19, 2014, 09:21:25 am »
So good to see this project waking up again! Just wanted to pop in and say that.

Also, I feel like the thumbs are a bit too straight. If I hold out my hand in a similar fashion I can't see my fingernail. Also the forefingers are a bit unaturally twisted. They would be a lot more like the other fingers!

Other than that, sweet job, love the idea with the hands

5
Pixel Art / Re: Very new. Looking for some C+C
« on: May 09, 2014, 07:57:13 pm »
Just wanted to drop by one last time and say that your edit is wonderful wolfenoctis

I agree on what you said. Although I know, myself being a very emotional person. It took me a long time to get used to being just objective with my art when I wanted to. Being a good teacher is not just about knowing how to teach and knowing all the facts, it is remembering how you were taught yourself and it is to *know* that all people are not tought the same way.

I bumped in here because I saw a bad tendency. You need both sides of the coin afterall and I don't want this forum(personally) to scare away more people.

again, great edit!


6
Pixel Art / Re: Very new. Looking for some C+C
« on: May 09, 2014, 02:44:38 pm »
@Cyangmou

I'm not going to quote that entire piece of text. What I was talking about when mentioning "love" is that most people can't distant themselves to their feelings on command (Which you have proven multiple times on this forum that you can and it's always fun to read when you don't understand it yourself) and most people will only be scared away or discouraged instead.

You can learn by looking and copying just as well as learning the theory behind a proffession. It's called being an apprentice usually and is being applied to many proffessions other than the artist one.

If you want people to learn, you have to be educational with your criticism and that is not done with an essay, explaining how you think Pixelalex is more or less shit and unable to learn.

So no, sorry, I think your approach on things probably harms a great deal more people than it helps them.

We clearly have different perspectives when it comes to pixel art and art in general. Yours is obviously, vigorously technical and theoretical.

NOTE:
Saying that people are douchebags because they can't distant themselves from their feelings is complete nonsense and an ability almost solely possessed by psychopaths.

7
Pixel Art / Re: Very new. Looking for some C+C
« on: May 09, 2014, 01:05:56 pm »
Quote
Thanks again for your help!  Admittedly, I was getting a little discouraged so it's nice to have some positivity!

Yeah, In my own humble and honest opinion I think this forum could use a bit more love. Not saying that Cyangmou, PPD or anyone else had bad intentions. I just know that even if you say "think" instead of "feel" people do have feelings and art is feeling just as much as technique, in many cases more.

So, if you still want to go for a Gameboy look and feel I made another version:


Maybe, now I feel that it looks more like a peach. Anyhow, it can hopefully give you some ideas of how to play around, even with a limited palette

8
Pixel Art / Re: Very new. Looking for some C+C
« on: May 09, 2014, 11:06:06 am »
Quote
If your cat looks like an alien, there are no magical shading tricks we can give you to make it look like a cat
So when you see his sprite you rather think this?:

than this?:


On to more important things

Hey Pixelalex and welcome!

Pixelation can be tricky as a forum at first. A lot of people here might come off as harsh and overly critical, that's a fact and I've experienced it myself many times. Try to overlook the tone people have towards you when you are new. If pixelation is anything it's a lot about the "hard school", many here are very technical and that's good, since it's why we are here writing. Just coop with it for a while, try to pick out what you think is suitable for your style/goal and ignore things that stray too far away from it. I don't want to bring up the discussion about what pixel art is, but it is an artform afterall and art is free, so even if there are basics that are good to know, don't be discuraged by the ones trying to pull you towards a very pixel purist way.(If you don't want to go that way of course)

At the same time, people do what they think is best, so be gentle towards them who put time into trying to helping you.(Not saying that you aren't, just a tip)

Now on to your cat & apple.

There are plenty of art out there that doesn't look what it is supposed to be. It's always better to go to yourself when you are doing something and ask yourself two questions, "What do I want this to look like?", "What do I want other people to perceive it as?".

I ask myself this a lot when I do art for games. Things doesn't have to make complete sense, but you do have to mix these two up a little to get a pleasing result to everyone, including yourself.
If on the otherhand you do want both of these questions to have the answer: "It's a cat" you do need to put a real cat in front of you, if you havn't practised drawing cats for a long time.

Regarding your apple, if you ask me the question "What fruit is this?". My first thought would probably be a paprika or something like it. If you ask yourself, you would say an apple 'cos that's what you want it to be.

You have a good reference picture of an apple but you've thought too much in "pixels". A good start if you are not used to pixel art is to block out the colours. Like you would do with a set of crayons. If you want, shrink the picture to the size you want your sprite to be and study how the pixels behave in clusters on such a small scale to get the result you want.

I did this version of your apple in 2 minutes, looking at your reference picture.


Here is sort of what I did:



1. Picking colours suitable for an apple, studying quickly what the largest spots of colours are, making something similar.
2. Creating a rough shape to start working with, think sculpture.
3. Refine shape and define lightsource.
4. Add the other larger parts of colour
5. Add extra colours for AA etc.
6. Add the rest of the details, more colours etc.
-polish*
-polish
-polish

(*Polish being looking over the sprite on a pixular level, adding, changing things around to get closer to the goal result)

Hope this helps you on your way!

Good luck

9
Pixel Art / Re: More my Usual Style
« on: May 03, 2014, 12:23:58 am »
Naruto do have less exaggerated characters normally but they do have things that tells them apart to make them interesting as persons, I couldn't find any decent amount of silhouettes for it except this one:
http://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/9/8088/Shippuden.jpg
I think I could point out quite a few chars of Naruto only based on their silhouettes as well as in One piece.

The point we are trying to make is not that you should make all your characters extremely different. But like you said, adding a sword to someones back/side and other things will tell your characters apart a lot more than what they are now.

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Pixel Art / Re: More my Usual Style
« on: May 02, 2014, 08:16:06 pm »
They don't stand out as individual sprites, they look bland and there's barely anything that can tell them apart as individuals. Improving the silhouettes by; Giving each sprite that something that makes them the "person" they are. Some might have really spikey hair, one a large cape, one some big weapon etc. Things that you can recognize even if it was only a silhouette.

I don't know if any of you watch One piece or have heard of it, but this is a great example:



I have no trouble telling these characters apart even though they are only black. Depends of course if you know them from the start, but they all give their own impression.

I wouldn't say silhouettes are extremely important, but more a way of seeing things and perhaps improve your sprites. A strong silhouette doesn't necessarily mean a great sprite, but it's a lot
better ground to start building on.

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