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Messages - Daimoth
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1
... This board knows its shit more than any other I've found, as well as people who have industry connections and knowledge of other fields. Apologies in advance if this ruffles feathers.

Since flirting with pixel art (some people liked my stuff, I think) I think my calling as an artist might be GUI work.

So... is there a community like this for GUI stuff? To be clear, I'm not talking about a community specific to pixel art GUI. I'm talking about a community that might appreciate beautiful, intricate graphic interfaces, regardless of color count. Not just translucent squares with rounded corners, which seems to be the trend atm in AAA games.

Does such a thing exist?

2
Pixel Art / Re: WIP Tileset
« on: May 27, 2015, 04:07:24 pm »
This is more along the lines of tile art serving game design, but you want to carefully control the irregularity in your rock tiles. If anything stands out too uniquely, players will waste time looking for a secret there.

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Pixel Art / Re: Daim Iterates (ongoing!)
« on: May 26, 2015, 01:47:43 pm »
Aiming for top front right lighting. In the most recent iteration I darkened the arm more to imply he was holding his elbows back a bit, but now it looks like only his chest is receiving light, almost like he's pulling his elbows back behind himself. I'll reshade his right arm, pull his right elbow out a bit, and maybe add more colors. Too much highlight on the left side of his face as well. Additional fiddling required.

Decroded:
Great edit. What I'm getting from it is I can afford to better distribute light and shadow. Your knee placement is superior. Better contrast, too. *sigh* Still a newbie.  I will likely compare my new iterations to yours, if for no other reason than my iteration look like buttered butts against light backgrounds.

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General Discussion / Re: [WIP] Ocean (n.p.a)
« on: May 24, 2015, 06:34:45 pm »
The stones visible below the surf is a gorgeous touch.

5
Seems like he feels pixel art is excruciating to produce relative to other mediums. Media? Whatever.

Pixel art is a workhorse art form; intrinsically functional. That's the reason I don't generally like mockups that aren't tile-based. Are you really going to hand-draw entire stages? No, tiling is the first thing you'll resort to. In other words, I don't think it's valid to use a splash screen as an example of why pixel art isn't worth the trouble; that's not what most pixel art is. That's a gallery piece. In truth, PA has a ton of built-in ways to safely cut corners. To use Demon's Crest as an example again:



The entire game is thin shells of detail surrounded by the 16-bit equivalent of spot black. It mitigates the burden on the artist and establishes a dramatic, almost silhouetted aesthetic, effectively spinning a limitation into something attractive. This is the sort of built-in efficiency available to us, we need only discover and take advantage of it. I think the herculean effort required to produce a game is a bigger problem than anything concerning rendering and animation. I'd rather go in with too little and address the bare spots later than shoot for the moon and end up in an inescapable productivity rabbit hole because the aesthetic I established is too rich to produce efficiently.

As pixel art became unfettered by hardware limitations, the ceiling on detail and animation frames lifted. The Neo Geo era happened, and the art form entered a state of permanent zenith. But too many artists  now shoot for the moon, expecting their animations to rival that of Studio Ghibli or something from Gobelins academy. Achieving "more with less" is imperative. Even if you can work at that level, it's useless if you produce it so slowly you'll never finish anything. I think this dynamic explains Paul Robertson's success; his work is attractive enough while also being utterly utilitarian. Doesn't hurt that he absolutely revels in nostalgia.

Thaaaat said, more power to the guy. Guacamelee sold me on vector-based graphics, maybe they could try that next.

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Pixel Art / Re: Daim Iterates (ongoing!)
« on: May 23, 2015, 04:32:37 am »
Alright, am I moving forward or backward here?





Old


New

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Pixel Art / Re: Daim Iterates (ongoing!)
« on: May 21, 2015, 12:10:49 pm »
So I've got conflicting light sources, mainly in the close arm and his left (our left) thigh.

You're dead on about the close arm, Iv'e been going back and forth with that, tryiing to make it both fun to look at and technically correct. Still not finished with it, apparently. The shadow on the left (our left) thigh is being cast by his overhanging arm, not the manpanties. Though I suppose that would be clearer if I had rendered his that arm correctly in the first place.

I'll get right on it, boss.

8
Pixel Art / Re: [CC][WIP] First Pixel Art Character
« on: May 20, 2015, 02:34:24 pm »
I was prepared to mildly scold you for uploading a jpeg, but that's a png. Did you bounce a jpeg bounced to a png or something?

9
Pixel Art / Re: [C + C] My Trees
« on: May 20, 2015, 02:31:31 pm »
I'd use your hard outlines more diplomatically. You've got all this separation everywhere, which could be appropriate depending on how they look when "slotted in", but maybe not.

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Pixel Art / Re: Daim Iterates (ongoing!)
« on: May 20, 2015, 02:41:32 am »
I shouldn't be making an exception for myself; it's frowned upon to upload at anything other than 100%, but I rendered it with 200% zoom in mind, and that matters with a sprite that small. It's a hell of a challenge, designing small sprites that read correctly regardless of zoom. In fact, I don't know how. I'm just estimating how big it will be for the end user and rendering it to look "right" when viewed at roughly that size. I suppose a start would be excising all the single-pixel details. But when the sprite's 50-something pixels high... easier said than done.

*deepbreath*

Much appreciated.

Edit: world's dinkiest "mockup"


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