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Messages - Dessa
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Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Janitor
« on: March 23, 2016, 08:33:41 pm »


Enlarged it again-I'm finding the small canvas really difficult.


Smaller sizes make for more difficult challenges, and a greater need for cleverness and compromise, but being able to handle small spaces will make you much better. Even when you go back to big canvases, you'll appreciate the ability to add small details to larger things. This is a skill worth some struggle to develop.

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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.

5
That's incredible!  I can see why you wouldn't want to make something like this again (how long did this take?), but I certainly wouldn't mind it if you did.

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Pixel Art / Re: Standing animation
« on: April 29, 2011, 07:03:41 pm »
It looks like he's panting after a heavy exertion.

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Major revision:



Basically I started over from near scratch.  The originals were an amalgam of various reference images, but they weren't built on a solid foundation.  I restarted by sketching on paper the main viewing angles so that I had something I could rotate and reposition easily, then translating those:


I also changed the hair.  Instead of trying to draw straight lines that sometimes merge at oblique angles, now there are fluffy curls that don't need every last pixel in place to look like fluffy curls.  This had the added advantage of fitting into the theme that she assumed early on of sun, clouds, and sky.  As a bonus, "cloudy" hair lets me use the HAIR to help express, as negative emotions can use darker clouds to look "stormy."  And to give credit where it's due, this hair is a lot more along the lines drawn out by my friend.

She also hews more closely to the geometry of the cartoon characters, with some compromises for pixels sakes.

From here, it was easy to conceptualize different expressions.  I was still dead set on yellow as a base color, and on "silver" hair, which don't contrast well, but I added shading to the hair to put darkness against the yellow's light.

Beyond that, the color scheme was tightened to improve contrast, with the primaries used for distinct elements.  Reds, mouth - yellows, face - blues, eyes - greys, hair.

I still need to shade the faces, particularly crying.  Beyond that, I can't see much else to be done here except add to add more expressions.

Edit:  Wow, she looks like a Rabite (from secret of mana).  Unintentional!

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Pixel Art / Re: I'm still obsessed with ponies. C+C
« on: April 18, 2011, 06:07:11 am »
@Gemini - Often the Cutie mark doesn't directly translate into the name. So with this one, I can see it being more that she has a radiant smile, which could tie into her outlook, hence "Silver Lining."

@Dessa - I'm definitely more a fan of the solid one (#2), I think it's more in keeping with the style. The third one is really nice but I get the feeling that if so much color were observed from her body, there would be more evidence of a light source elsewhere. I could be wrong.

WHat do you mean?  Like there's too much green under there?

As for her Cutie Mark, when I made Silver Lining, she was 23 pixels tall and just a head.  She's a smiley pony.  When my friend brian drew her full-sized, a lot of it was up to him to create, including the cutie mark.  It's certainly a boon, being simple enough to at least TRY to get it to make sense tiny, although that didn't quite work here (When I add colors, I'll probably go back and see if I can't make it pop by making it a lighter grey, but I'm not terribly stressed if it's a little hard to read).  The problem with Silver Lining is that she's awfully low-contrast.  It makes a lot of things really tough.  This is a large part of why I put her in the middle of a sunny field with the sun behind and above her.  Everything looks a little washed out with that much light.

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Pixel Art / Re: I'm still obsessed with ponies. C+C
« on: April 18, 2011, 01:03:43 am »
IMO the dithering doesn't look so great.  The sprite isn't benefiting much from it.  Since you added colors anyway, just use the extra colors to add contrast and depth.

I didn't add colors, but it's not like I have a limit or anything.

Yeah, the dithering in the one with the background, pretty bad, yeah.  You will get no argument.  On #3?  I feel like it looks decent, but more colors would look better.

In the mane, the dithering is more akin to texture, and in the tail especially, I'm pretty happy with the effect.

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Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Creature with mask
« on: April 17, 2011, 07:56:41 pm »
You call yourself a noob, but this is better than noob quality.  The red feather bands up a bit.  Maybe disrupt one of those lines a bit ?   Or, if you're not planning to add any more colors, you could make blue or yellow the big feather, since they have an extra shade to play with.  Yellow is nice and 45-degrees so you might be able to get away with red there and not need to alias anything.

This is pretty good though.  How long did it take?

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