I have seen an animation book mentioned on this site several times but I cannot remember what it is called. Can someone please help me out with the title so that I can buy a copy? I recall people saying how good it is but I cannot find the posts that spoke of it now.

Thanks for any help,

Jason.

I thought that it would be a nice idea for newer pixel artists to learn from if some of the more experienced artists from this site could tell us a little about the way that they tackle creating their pixel art pieces.

If you would be kind enough to share a moment of your time and descibe to us some of the methods that you use then that would be great. For example, do you work in a similar way to how you would with another medium such as paints? Do you start with outlines or do you go for volumes? Do you use different methods for lowres art as opposed to higher resolution pieces? All of these things would be handy to learn from.

Personally, I have started to work more on volumes as opposed to outlines as I feel it gives my work a more natural feel, I also start with a rough blurry image sketch and gradually try to bring it into view. When making smaller art for games I still find that outlines are the way to go. I also like the limitations of working with a small palette as it makes things more unified especially for game artwork.

How about you? Please share your techniques so that we can all try a different approach to creating our art. Pictures most welcome too

Jason.

One thing that has always troubled me with pixel art is achieving decent looking anti-aliasing. What I`m hoping for is a proven method that will always get me good results as some people seem to do it well and others not.  Is there a methodical approach that works or do you guys just apply it by eye?

Does anyone have any good tips that they have picked up over the years? For example do you anti-alias only around your original lines or do you replace some of them with anti-aliasing? Do you use only one colour or several to smooth out your lines? At which point does it go from looking good to becoming a blurry mess?

I`ve never really found a good tutorial for this so any help would be much appreciated, by lots of people I expect. I`m not after a quick fix but want a solid foundation to build on after many failed attempts myself.

Like I have said, a proven technique that always works would be good but I`m under no illusions as to it being quick and easy to do, good work of any type requires effort, time and practice.

Thanks for any help,
Jason.

There seems to be a lot of talk about the new Megaman 9 NES styled game doing the rounds at the moment and how people imagine how it should look.

May I suggest a weekly challenge that would allow us to all have a go at pixelling our ideal Megaman 9 mockup using the original NES pallete and limitations. It would also be good for those of us that missed out on the last NES weekly challenge as I know that the system had a lot of fans.

I think that a lot of people here would find it fun.

Thanks for reading,
Jason.