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Pixel Art / [CC] GoT animation (Spoilers for GoT Season 8 Episode 3)
« on: May 14, 2019, 05:03:28 pm »
I want to grow from my animations, would love thoughts and/or critique on this one!
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right side jamming
@Chironyx not speaking for wolf but the last many pages will point you to the answer
There is a huge overlap in skill between all forms of art, that people call fundamentals. Perspective, lights, composition, anatomy, gesture, colour theory, etc.
Most of these you can effectively train with pencil and paper, which will have a direct impact on the overall quality of pixel art you are making, or any other art medium.
Someone can throw you a stick and some shit, and you'll still be able to make beautiful art with it, if your fundamentals are well practiced.
For this reason, there is a catchy phrase going: "Tools don't matter". But what it really means to say is "The most important art skills carry over".
Because at some point you will have to answer another important question. Why implementing your vision in this form of art, not the other?
Why pencil? why painting? why pixels? why sculpting? Why modeling? What exactly do each of these add to the basic idea of the vision?
It is the point you will dive into the creative technicalities of a specific art form, that justify your art choice.
That means your fundamental art skills are expressed in a unique way with the choice of your art form.
On one hand this means, if you got no art fundamentals, what is there to express in pixel art?
On the other it means, if you have no creative ambition with what makes pixel art technically interesting, you make pixel art weak.
Having said that, I like the suggestions given earlier, that you should use the opportunity of having to travel outside for classic observation studies on the real world with quick pencil sketches.
It's a lot easier to avoid bumps when working on paper than on a smooth tablet screen.
I third drawing, but for a different reason: public places, including public transportation, are an excellent for doing studies. Don't "waste" that time on something you can do elsewhere, use it for something you can only do there. Do some people-watching, draw interesting people and things you see, draw interesting lighting situations, etc. Quick observational drawing will make you improve at drawing those things, help you with future character designs, make you faster and more confident, it has innumerable benefits.
The bumps also don't really matter when you're just doing these sketches rather than finished artwork. It doesn't need to be perfect, and it doesn't matter what it looks like, since the drawing is a process for learning, not for the creation of a product. But, even so, as you draw while riding more, you'll develop a sense of when it's "safe" to draw and when you should observe instead.
I would suggest you to pick up drawing. If you really want to do pixel art on the go you can use squared paper and use that as pixel grid.
Yeah, after some drawing on gridded paper and some practice pixelling, it's not too hard to figure out how a particular drawing will render into pixels. Mainly, you learn to think ahead of time about what scale of features you can use that will remain legible in pixel format.
Working with a relatively coarse medium like charcoal can also give an experience of drawing that is qualitatively more like pixelling.
Used a bit more red on the leaves,is it more natural?Now that's a tree! and nice fix on the colors!Thats a good approach, but i think the tree trunk is a bit too massive (or treetop too small)
sorry for triple post,thought it didn't send them,then found out they were on a 2nd page(already reported myself to moderator)
Tried fixing shadows,but I don't know if its even noticeable
(light source should be 3/4 on the left and a bit from above)
Here I dared to change the shadows more than usual,is it better?
The problem with color is that you're emulating light (which has a color I might add) bouncing off a surface. The more intense the light, the more intense (saturated) the color, which means a lot of light is hitting that surface. On the other hand, wherever light does NOT hit, you have less saturation in the shadows simply because there's less light there. The only reason shadows have a blue color (sometimes) is because of ambient light (the color of the blue sky emits light after all, that's why you see it as blue).
So try to do it backwards than you currently are doing it.
Also keep in mind that color shifting is NOT linear -- in other words, there is no "certain amount" that you shift colors toward or away from a hue or saturation level. Every artist does it differently to some extent. The amount you do that depends on your ideal of how "vibrant" or "realistic" you want your art to appear.
Regarding the head/eyes thing...
I mentioned the eyes being creepy because they are unnaturally jarring (uncanny valley-esque), not because they are stylistically bad. It's kind of like what happens when you see a typically-cute anime character without their big hair. If you've never seen that, then don't do 3D modeling...
But that brings me to what I mentioned earlier -- you should consider adding more hair to the top of their head. I know a lot of people do pixel art at first because they're not confident in their drawing abilities, but stuff like that shows when you get "better" at pixel art -- but until then, it sticks out like a sore thumb to *everyone else* and you're completely blind to it until you realize exactly what's causing it one day when you're "better" -- so my advice is, don't discount anyone's thoughts on your work -- *especially* if you feel they're more experienced than you are. Most people won't say anything, and if a person with more experience tells you something about your work, knowing you're new to this, he's usually doing it for your own good -- not his. It's hard to accept criticism on something you've worked hard on and somehow finally settled on a "better" version you can accept, and then someone comes along and tells you it's wrong -- but that's all part of the game. That's the purpose of this forum entirely. I've went through it myself, and so has pretty much any decent artist anywhere. You will be told your deep-held beliefs about your art are wrong and that you're wrong for thinking them (I'm not telling you that here of course, but it happens) but you've got to toughen up and be able to ask "Well, what can I do to improve on this then?" -- because until you hear their suggestions for improvement, and sincerely attempt to implement them, you won't improve, or you will improve VERY slowly. And if you recall, I said your animations, and even your characters, were charming. They just had construction problems in their head area. Besides, just because this is pixel art, it doesn't mean people aren't going to notice when you're struggling with anatomy. That's why I tried to help you out by pointing this out to you.
To get back on topic -- in the case of your "eye" problem, I mentioned previously that you could increase the size of their hair or their forehead area. Your figures don't necessarily need smaller eyes -- they just need a sense of a skull's volume, which they currently lack relative to the size and placement of their eyes. Also, as mentioned before -- eyes sit just below the center of the head, and the skull is shrunk or elongated vertically to keep these proportions from person to person.
Sorry if I came off as rude, but I really hope I'm being helpful. Not trying to hurt anyone's feelings -- just pointing out very valid concerns if you seriously are here to get better.