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Topics - Dessa
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Pixel Art / Pocket Fighter Style figure (WIP, C+C)
« on: December 31, 2012, 08:25:50 pm »
So, a friend started up a big ol' game project (who knows how solid it is, but I need an excuse to do a lot of pixels), and she plans a fighter of sorts with chibi, pocket/gem-fighter-esque sprites.  For now, she just wants to see what sort of stuff I can produce.

I'm working from a reference given by someone in the project with much better traditional media skills than I, here:



This is what I came up with:

Not a bad start, I don't reckon, but I know it could be better.
I suspect that this will be displayed at 2x, FYI

Issues I see: 
-In my image, Jetta's shoulders/hips/feet don't quite seem to line up, but I feel like they match the reference pretty well, where they DO seem to line up.  Perhaps it's in my shading?

-My face doesn't quite match the reference.  Its curves in the jaw especially don't seem to match up.  I suspect that I shouldn't quite expect pixels to curve like that, but I do wonder if I could do this differently.

-The boots look rather muddy.  Would it help to use a contrast color in there to define the lines a bit?  If not, what else could I try?

-The linework is a bit harsh in a few places, I'm just noticing, but that shouldn't be too hard to fix.

Thanks in advance.

Update:

No comments or critique, but w/ev.  The work goes on!  I've messed with this enough.  I'll call it final, I suppose:

->
Added dress detail, and brightened the outline colors a bit, which softened them a bit.  Dropped a colors that didn't add much, particularly with the glasses, which I made blue instead of the greyish that they were.  Then I yellowed the eye whites a touch for contrast.

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Pixel Art / Pony Emoticons (Redux, C+C)
« on: December 27, 2012, 03:35:52 pm »
About a year and a half ago, I set out to make a set of emoticons based on my little pony (here: http://www.wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=11997.msg120975#msg120975).  I haked away at that for a while before I finally gave up and accepted I just wasn't there yet, so I took some time off, studied, and came back with new knowledge and an entirely different approach.  These are the results:



These were captured images from the show, shrunk down for basic reference, then pixeled over entirely.  To make them readable, a lot of changes had to be made to their basic shapes, while keeping in mind the basic character of the reference images.  By the time I finished these, I could complete about one an hour (usually).

Thoughts?

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Pixel Art / [WIP] The Meek and Forgettable Pixie
« on: August 08, 2011, 05:39:12 pm »


It's WIP, but there's not much left to do besides tweaking the little things by now.  If I have time, I'll paint over the dithered bits with gradients instead and see which I like better (I'm a sucker for dithering).  I've anti-aliased the outside edge so I'll need to add some sort of background for it to look good on dark backgrounds.  And again, time permitting, I might add some sort of text, either a title with the ponies names on it, or a couple (hopefully) humorous lines, comic style.

This is for a contest on a My Little Pony forum, and is the largest project I've ever worked on by far.  As far as any advice goes, I have to submit this by midnight tonight, so anything not received very soon wont make the deadline, but I'd still like to hear thoughts.

The biggest question-mark for me here is the lighting on the big pony's tail, and on the small pony's tail and mane (I have sharp shadows casting on them, but the more I think about it, they should probably be more diffuse).  Also, I can't quite make the the left leg (our left) on the small pony not look detached.  Maybe the anatomy is off...

Edit:  Oh, standard disclaimer about the (larger) pony's design not being mine.  She was deigned by Take Two Studios, although this composition is all mine.

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Pixel Art / I'm still obsessed with ponies. C+C
« on: April 17, 2011, 09:44:45 am »
 
Colored Lineart -------> Shaded ---> Shaded /w gradients-----> Background added.


Source image by a friend of mine.  We codesigned her


I'm considering this complete.  The background on the 4th one is a bit of a mess (This is my first time working with gradients, and the BG proved to be more than I can handle at this point  I'll probably go study that Dithering thread in the resources here after this), but I'm still open to hear what people have to say.  I can't seem to ever consider a project complete, and I might go back to make it better.

16 colors (one transparent).  That pink in the mouth is only used once, but it's right at a focal point.  Considering saturating it more just to make it pop.

Now that I'm about to post it, I see numerous little things I'd change.  Meh.

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General Discussion / Then and now
« on: April 07, 2011, 11:55:01 pm »

Of course, all of us have, at some point in our lives, been noobs.  I want to see how far people have come.  Do any of you pixel-senseis have early works that you might have been proud of at the time but look back at like "man, that sucks."  Or alternately, stuff that you're not even proud of at all, but still have lying around for whatever reason.  I know I would find it encouraging to see how far people have come, and I'm sure there are probably some others out there as well that would too.

What's YOUR pixel story?  I think it'd be inspiring to see the kind of progress people can make when they work at something

I started when I was around 12, making sprites for a Hypercard game my friends and I were making at school.  32x32, 2 colors.  It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot by having to deal with such strict limitations.  Shortly after Jr. Hugh though, I stopped.  I restarted about a month ago (20 years later!) after having promised some friends on another board I'd make them a set of smileys.

I wish I could post those old sprites from the 90s, but I honestly don't know if hypercard still exists, much less where that old floppy disk with the game on it went to.  This was the first work I declared "finished" from about 6 weeks ago: , and yeah, I can spot the inexperience (although I'm still fond of a couple of those).  Not trying to pretend like I'm all good now or anything, but I'm better than I was.

But I'm most curious about those of you who have been at this for YEARS.  How much has your stuff changed?

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Pixel Art / Another Pony 100x100
« on: April 04, 2011, 11:22:34 am »
I made this one in part as a surprise gift to a friend, who designed, pencil sketched, and provided the colors for this pony, and in part to work on improving my line work.



Rough-Draft Line sketch

This is what I colored over, and I moved the lines around a bit when I did so.  Looking back, the lines I thought cleanest were roughest, and the lines I thought roughest were cleanest.


Almost-Final:
Final:

Reference sketch:


I'm already seeing a few places I goofed, (I always notice the mistakes more easily when I'm about to show people something I'm proud of), and one or two confusing elements that could use something extra to distinguish them, but I'll see what you guys find before I go at myself...

This one uses 10 colors.


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Pixel Art / [WIP]Novice, working on smileys for another board C+C welcome
« on: March 25, 2011, 10:16:58 pm »
Hi!  I started doing pixel art when I was 12 or so years old back in 1993 or so (always 2 colors), but it's been a long time since I've done any serious work.  I started posting at another board that has just plain awful smileys, and thought "I can do better!"  I'm just rediscovering how fun pixel art can be (and how frustrating!).  I'm a much better artist when I'm given limitations, so pixel art is up my alley.

The board in question is based around the latest My Little Pony series (which I never expected to be actually good), so the smileys are all ponies based around that show's designs (although I designed this character in particular).  Some of these are translations of much larger images, and some are faces I've come up with:

Current


Well previous


I'm happy with a few of these, and a couple need a lot of work, or perhaps complete redos.  In particular, winking (5th on the top), anger and fustration/irritation (bottom row) need some more love.  I've been tweaking and retweaking those endlessly and I'm never quite satisfied.

At this point, I'm just looking for general opinions and advice.
I basically stole the palette from the cartoon itself, using the eyedropper tool, and tweaked for more contrast to make the images more readable.

The sizing is a bit arbitrary, 23px tall, with unlimited width, which was an attempt to maintain enough room to convey expression without stretching a line of text too much vertically.

Are these readable?  I don't have much experience with antialiasing; would these images benefit greatly from it?  

Edit:  A reference image from the show, so you know the basic look I'm going for here:
 

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