A quick disclaimer:  I want you to know up front I'm NOT asking for how to do something specifically or for specific tutorials.  I can look up various tutorials myself if I want to know how to do something in particular.  I know the best way to improve is to practice and that art fundamentals are probably a requirement.  This being said.

I want to know how I should progress and what I should work on.  Obviously I have my game, but the game is a very narrow slice of learning as it has specific needs.  How do I start, I lack the ability to come up with things on my own, I can usually copy stuff pretty good.  So how should I go about learning pixeling.

Do I start with some basic shapes and then 3d shapes, and so on.  Do I start with copying a photo reference or actual game art.  I see there's a lot of line art in the line art thread, maybe I should start with that.  I don't really know where to begin.

Is there a progression I should follow, or what would you recommend as a progression?  Maybe I start with simple shapes and objects, then go on to filling in line art, and then, take a photo and shrink it down and copy it, and then just copying a photo by eye, and finally just something original.

Maybe I should just do 'pixel-overs' of photos or paintings, and then try looking up game art and copying it, maybe I should do them all.  How would YOU start if you had to start from scratch, what would you work with in progression when learning?

Maybe a step in one progression would be to do every pixel art tutorial out there first and then try some stuff on your own?

Just give me some advice.  I do *NOT* need to learn how to anti-alias properly, or avoid banding and pillow shading, or whatever... I mean I might need to learn all of that, but that's not what I'm asking for in this message.

I would appreciate it if you wouldn't give me an answer like "just start practicing", but what am I to start practicing?

Thanks for your time, I hope this is clear enough.

Okay well it's not my absolute first, but maybe the first time I really focused my attention.  You can C+C although I'm not posting it here for that reason, more just to see what you guys think of it.  I'm also posting it here because of that neat feature where you can click on it and it will enlarge in size, since my browser won't do it itself.

Basically I'm making a game you can check out here : http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=48414.msg1163113#msg1163113

Came from an idea I had when I doodled a sketch of this little brain with eyeballs and legs and not much else.

So I'm finally getting to the point of building the game art at least to a point, as there's still a lot of things to do in code.  But I figured I would start with a 2-color sprite and then add in colors later.  Trying to decide whether to color now and then animate (quicker than the following), or do all my animations in 2-color and then color them in afterward, which would take more time but might be more flexible.  Anyways I would like to know what you think.  Thank you.



Edit 8/03/2015:

I didn't want to violate the rules by posting another similar post and have it mistaken for a double-post.  I decided to start coloring it in now and while it's not immediately clear what it is I'm really unsure of how to proceed.  He's got eyeballs and eye stalks attached to a brain which are attached to legs, and he wears yellow shoes.  I don't have the faintest idea of how to actually make it look good.  There are 6 colors in the sprite but that's mostly due to the outline (line art).  Someone suggested the size is too small to get a decent sprite out of it.  Any way, any suggestions on how to improve it?  Thanks for your time.



Edit 2:
I changed the colors a bit and elongated the eyes.  It doesn't necessarily look like a brain but I figured brains are really just gray any way why not make it that way.  Color change was prompted by a comment that made me think twice about what I was spriting.



X2:


Edit 3 8/04/2015:

Tried a new design here:



X2:


Edit 4 8/08/2015:

Updated colors and eyeballs



X2:


Edit 5 8/08/2015:

I tried to redo him based on your suggestions Joe, I'm not sure I got it 100% but at least it's going in the right direction.



Edit 6 8/08/2015:

Created a new palette but doesn't work so well with this.  If anyone could do a paint-over of this, with it's palette, I would appreciate it.



Edit 7 8/10/2015:

Did another iteration, still not as good, but decided to put a bright outline around the dark outline so it would read on a black/dark background.



--

I wanted to give you an idea of what the bright verses non-bright outlines look like on a dark background


Edit 8:
An even newer palette and I redid him again, and this is pretty good except the legs seem a little long and takes away abit from the cuteness factor.

Hello, my name is Keith.  I posted recently in the pixel art forum about a character I was making for my agi-style adventure game.  Helm did a paint-over and said at one point "2. More contrast with the colors you have, I added black shadow below the neck for example. Right now your version is too high-value. It would work against certain dark backgrounds, but if you put it on top of a light one (think Space Quest in an 'Ice World' scenario) he'd be lost. You have to take these things into account for an AGI-type situation." --

So that got me to thinking whether or not I wanted to work on model sheets for the character(s) before I had backgrounds to put them in.  If the sprites don't read well on certain types (too light or too dark) I will have to redo them.  So I wanted to ask your advice as to whether I should think about all of that stuff first.  Also perhaps equally important is your character sizes within the backgrounds.  So what about for that... do I work out some sprite sizes before I do a background or after?  How would you approach this.  -- Sprite sizes vs backgrounds vs sprite colors etc...

Any suggestions would be appreciated.