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Messages - pkmays
Pages: 1 ... 31 32 [33] 34

321
Pixel Art / Re: Problematic Punky
« on: October 30, 2006, 12:01:08 am »
With just that gray background, the whole thing looks quite drab. I'd assume you'd want to have a nice colorful background, with a bright blue sky and clouds and the like. For what's basically just some tiles floating on a gray background, this looks good. Once I see more I can better judge how the whole “look” is coming together.

This version of the chest is probably my least favorite. I think the dithering and texture hurt the style more that it helps. I'd suggest you try utilizing the double pixel outlines in the objects too.

Double thick outlines probably wouldn't work on the girl. It looks like you're going for a flat shaded look for the girl, which I think would work well in contrast to the background and objects. The outlines around her jaw look out of place. You could probably just get rid of them.

Good job so far.

322
Pixel Art / Re: A turtle
« on: October 29, 2006, 02:04:00 am »
The turtle shell needs more contrast. It's very difficult to see where the segments in the shell  are.

Coral reef sounds good. Start with some subtle dark blues and block in the shapes, then add brighter shades to pull out the shapes.

323
General Discussion / Re: Official Pixelation OT-Creativity Thread
« on: October 29, 2006, 01:05:43 am »
Tire bounce; good idea.

Okay, tire bounce, track to stop sign, fade to black, loop. That way there's no confusion on where the joke should end.

324
Challenges & Activities / Re: The Recorded Pixel Art Project :: FIVE VIDEOS!
« on: October 28, 2006, 10:23:48 pm »
Pro Motion does have a large amount of shortcuts, but most artists will only need to learn the ones that they use the most in their workflow. Commands that aren't used that often are best accessed from the menu.

Here's a little guide to the keys I use and how I remember them:

Essential
Ctrl S - Save

LeftMouse - Paint with primary color
RightMouse - Paint with secondary color

Ctrl Z - Undo
Ctrl Shift Z - Redo

MouseWheel - Zoom in/out

Toolbox
D - Draw
AKA the pencil tool
F - Fill
AKA the paint bucket
V - Vertical line
Actually, this draws a line at any angle, but that's how I remember the shortcut.
B - Brush
This is what other apps refer to as the Rectangular Selection or Marquee tool. A brush is more powerful than a marquee because brushes can be stored in the brush container, thus allowing you to save multiple selections. You can also save a set of created brushes and use them in other projects.
. - Single pixel brush
If your brush looks funny after using the brush tool, press period to get back to the default brush.

Colors
[ and ] - go to the next or previous color in the palette

P - Palette Editor
Q - Gradient Editor
On a QWERTY keyboard, it's on the opposite side of the P key

Ctrl LeftMouse - Sample primary color
Ctrl RightMouse - Sample secondary color

Ctrl DoubleClickLeftMouse - Edit single color

Brushes
Shift - - Decrease brush size
Shift + - Increase brush size

H - Halve the brush Size
Shift H - Double the brush size

F2 - Paint mode
The regular painting mode. Paint modes are on the functions keys. F1 opens up help so F2 is the first mode key.
Shift F2 - Dither mode
The second most used paint mode.

F3 - Brighten mode
F4 - Darken mode

View
Shift S - Stencil Enable/disable
Shift T - Tweak the stencil

G - Grid enable/disabled
Enables grid snapping, tile drawing, or mirroring. RightClick the icon in the toolbox to change the settings.

Learning these keys will probably take a week or two at the most. As with most learned skills, practice makes perfect.

325
General Discussion / Re: Official Pixelation OT-Creativity Thread
« on: October 27, 2006, 03:43:54 am »
Good, but in the last shot, it should track back to the stop sign, not jump to it.

I predict it'll take at least another 2 pages until we all get over this whole stop sign thing.

326
Challenges & Activities / Re: The Recorded Pixel Art Project :: FIVE VIDEOS!
« on: October 27, 2006, 01:12:54 am »
Quote from: Helm
Your palette usage needs to be optimised a lot I think. You add colors in the last 5 minutes. That's a great way to make certain you're not going to use the new colors optimally. Each to his own, and you saw how haphazard I can get as well, but I think you should become a bit more systematic there. Tying a palette together is a good thing on most sprites.

Agreed. My palettes are generally created by-the-seat-of-the-pants, which isn't a huge issue on a simple sprite like this, but on more complicated pieces it's important to get everything unified. Will work on it.

Quote from: Helm
Also, you drew a lot of outlines you replaced anyway. Every pixel you place that you later replace is a place to look if you want to get faster... place. Place. Anyway, make sure you have the shapes and tones right, and then when you outline/aa, you only have to do it once.

Again I agree. I waste a lot effort redrawing lines and shapes. I've got a tendency to try and get something absolutely perfect and tweak it to death, which slows me down a lot. I'm trying to get into the habbit of adding AA to everything as the absolute last step.

If you're taking any requests, I'd like to see you make a 16 color 64x64 sprite with the palette visible, so I can see how and when you get your colors organized.

BTW this Camtasia codec OWNES. Better compression and image quality than Quicktime H.264 in my tests. Plugins for Mac Quicktime also means it'll work on Macs and PCs. I think I'm gonna buy the full version and support these guys.

327
Challenges & Activities / Re: The Recorded Pixel Art Project :: FOUR VIDEOS!
« on: October 26, 2006, 11:44:13 pm »
Ship created in Pro Motion using the symmetry tool.



Download

I was aiming for 30 minutes, but ended going over my goal by 12 whole minutes. I know this isn't a speed-spriting thread, but watching the video helped me to see some areas where I could optimize my workflow.

This took way longer than I wanted it too. I didn't have a concrete concept of the rear wing design, which slowed me down in the beginning, and came to haunt me later. I also did some awkward fuddling with the new Palette Editor plug-in. I'm still uncomfortable with some of the controls, but overall I find it a great addition.

Speaking of the Palette Editor plug-in, if you don’t have it, get it! My biggest gripe used to be that there wasn’t an easy way to sort the palette by hand. The palette dialog just lets you swap and copy color values based on the index value, which will screw up the image if you try to organize your palette (and as you can see in the video, I tend to just plop a color down randomly in the palette and ramp it). The new plug-in lets you move the palette entries around in a non-destructive fashion, and it reassigns the correct index value to the pixels on the canvas. There are lots of other cool features too, so check it out.

Unlike to other two videos that where recorded in Pro Motion, I prefer to use the on screen palette to edit colors rather than the double click method which pops up the Edit single Color dialog. I use a tablet while I work and it feels faster moving my pen over to the sliders rather than double clicking, moving sliders, then pressing Enter or the OK button. I'm really not sure if either way actual is any faster than the other. *shrugs*

The preview window is an absolute must. As Helm mentioned it keeps you from having to zoom in and out all the time, which makes the workflow that much faster.

One big boo-boo I made was setting only one background color and sticking with it throughout the piece. It’s good to try out different hues, saturations, and values as you work to see how the outlines are looking. If I had changed the background to something light and desiderated before I considered the piece finished, I would have noticed how jagged the nose and parts of the wings were and would have made the appropriate changes.

I enjoyed making this and hope it was useful. Definitely will be making more soon. I’ll probably make a few more videos that use some of the useful Pro Motion tools, like creating tiles and using brushes.

And I'm absolutely craving to see some more videos from you guys. Don't make me name names.

328
General Discussion / Re: Official Pixelation OT-Creativity Thread
« on: October 26, 2006, 07:26:57 pm »
If it where a monkey driving the car, it would at least be remotely funny. Monkeys are a cheap way to make anything funny.

329
General Discussion / Re: Sony closed down Lik-Sang
« on: October 24, 2006, 09:49:56 pm »
It's no big deal. The people will always find a way to get around stuff like this. Somebody is going to replace Lik-Sang, or they'll open up yet again. (They got closed down a couple of years ago by the Chinese.)

If the people can't find a way around it, they won't take it. It's about to happen in the US with DRM, internet tolling, BlueRay self destruct, HD encryption, etc. All these technological limitations are going to go down in flames once the average Joe finds out just how hard corporations and the government are trying to screw them.

NOW thread this should be in off-topic.

330
Challenges & Activities / Re: The Recorded Pixel Art Project :: FOUR VIDEOS!
« on: October 24, 2006, 04:59:24 pm »
I like your pink Winamp skin. *giggles*

I'd be interested to know how Tero was able to shrink the AVI further. I get a good size-to-smoothness ratio in my tests by putting the quality slider in the middle, but if there's some other way to crush the file I'd like to know.

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