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Messages - Kowee
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Pixel Art / Re: I might turn this into my official spriting thread.
« on: June 18, 2020, 04:48:12 pm »
Hi !
Sadly I couldn't find these Treasure-like characters you're talking about so I am not sure what style you're aiming for. I am assuming it's something similar to anime seeing how you made the eye.

I like the contrast slim at the top/wide at the bottom you made. It gives a very interesting shape to the character. The pose is nice and dynamic. I also like the color you choosed for the hair  :)

The main problem on your piece is readability. To be honest, at first I wasn't sure what I was supposed to see. When drawing you need to keep in mind what you want to highlight. It is even more true in pixel art where often you have a very small canvas and no room for details.
Focus on the big shapes by placing cluster of pixels instead of orphans (single pixels). Since you're working on Aseprite get the Preview window (shortcut F7) to always have a zoomed out view of your canvas on the side. This way you make sure everything is readable from the distance. It also helps get a fresh eye on things.

Most of the time for a character you will highlight their face (or at least their eyes) because it gives a lot of information on their personality. You want to make sure the overall shape reads well and if they have an accessory which is important, like in your case with the gun, it needs to stand out.

Here is a quick overpainting I made on your character to show you my process and how I tried to correct it.


1. The eye was about the face size so I made it a bit smaller. I lowered the ear which should be at the eye level. I made the overall body shape and try to get good proportions (it's important even for stylized characters). For the hair I made clusters to define big shapes.

2. For your colors you want to avoid using pure black or white, and only saturated colors. When doing shadow you want to darken the color but also change its hue and saturation or it may look muddy. Color is a wide and complex subject but to make it short I made this cyan-green from the hair goes toward the blue in the shadow to get more "cold" shadows. I did the same thing with the skin color. I also tinted the black to a very dark cyan to avoid using a pure black.

3. I tried to find a color for the green outfit which could go well with the hair. Sometimes it can be hard to find the right color right away and Aseprite has a nice tool which can help you. Select the magic wand (w) and make sure contiguous is unchecked on the top toolbar. Now with this wand when you select a pixel of a certain color you're going to select all the pixels of this same color. Now do ctrl+U or go into Edit>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation and you will have sliders to change the hue/saturation/brightness to help you tweak the color to something better.
If colors are too overwhelming at first it's ok. You can always look for color palettes or for instance just google character with green/cyan hair to see what colors goes well with it. Pinterest is a nice website to find inspirations and references.

4. Only using those cyan colors made this drawing feels a bit monochromatic. Monochromatic isn't wrong but it can be hard to handle and well honestly a bit boring. So I decided to bring some yellow in the outfit. I also got rid of the stripes on the pants which are distracting and taking the focus away from the face.

5. Since you're going for something anime-like I added "black" outlines which are actually the same very dark cyan I used for the pants. It's a cheap way to add contrast and make your character pop on a background. By cheap I mean it's part of the art style and it should not be used to cover a problem of constrast.

It's quite a long post I did there but hopefully it helps ! Keep up the good work  :)

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Pixel Art / Re: Giant rat animation
« on: June 02, 2020, 06:04:01 am »
Nice work !

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Pixel Art / Re: Giant rat animation
« on: May 24, 2020, 10:11:11 am »
Amazing job ! I love your design and the shape you gave to the rat is very interesting. The animation is clean and smooth, it's very hard to find something to say to be honest  :)


To be very picky I would say maybe your animation could use a frame like this where the legs are crossing :


Then it comes probably to personal taste but maybe you could have a smoother movement for the legs ? For instance I find it a little bit choppy when the back leg goes fully extended. You could try also give more impact by squeezing the body of the rat a bit more when it reaches the ground.
I did a quick redraw over your animation to show you better what I mean here. I hope it helps !


Looking over internet to find reference of rat running I found this video which can probably be useful to you if you didn't watch it yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEQYjEWBfWg

Anyway as I said, I am being very picky here. Your animation is already working pretty well. I hope you share with us the final version once it's done. Keep up the good work !



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Pixel Art / Re: Ancient rock
« on: May 22, 2020, 10:32:06 am »
Great work ! I liked the first version but seeing your edits I think you are on the right way.

Don't be too hard on yourself. I wouldn't call it a rip-off even if you are heavily inspired by someone else art. Gathering multiple references would, of course, be better and give you more ideas but aiming for an art style is nothing wrong. You are going to make it your own in the process anyway.
I am probably saying the obvious here but references are very important and help you overcome those moments where you get stuck. It doesn't have to be pixel art only, sometimes a photo or a painting can help you understand the shape and the texture better. Taking few minutes looking for those references can sometimes save you a lot of time afterward during the drawing process.

I don't know if there is much to analyze on my edit but my way of thinking was trying to see the big shapes at first. I think all artists are guilty of this, myself included, to zoom in early and get to work a small area for way too long when you should focus on the whole artwork instead. For your background I will recommend you to focus on the big picture at first. If it's an illustration, the composition, the values, the storytelling come first before worrying about details. If it's for a game, does your character stands out, the colors match, etc.
To sum up I think your rock is good and if it's part of a bigger drawing don't stress out too much on details.

Keep on the good work, I hope to see this background !

PS : Thank for the advice about attaching picture, I am fresh new on the forum and I didn't understand how those img brackets work  :-[

5
Pixel Art / Re: Ancient rock
« on: May 21, 2020, 06:59:02 pm »
Hi !

Well done for the rock, I like how you add personality to it without getting away from the henge shape. The fact you are looking to do more than just a rock is great and a key to an interesting environment. I really like your colors also, I would be curious to see the whole background piece once it's done  :)

I don't know if I am able to give you helpful feedback but I will try:
-The top right corner should not be that dark, it's on the top and therefore it should get more light. On the other hand the little edge in the shadow is the same color as the top. It's getting less light and should be darken a little.

-I don't know if you are still looking to do that crack in the middle but if so you should go for a bigger cluster of pixels. I think some of your cracks are too subtle and don't help with the readability of the shape.


Then it probably comes to personal taste for those but:
-Since it's a rock marked by the passing time I would see this part next to the big crack a bit off at the top face to push even more on the degradation aspect.

-The bright dots on the top look odd to me. Stone is rather a mat material and since you used the same color on the edges for the contrast, it's as bright as a specular light. If you want to keep those they should be darker.

-I am not a huge fan of the brown bottom part, especially the fact they share the same color as the core of your cracks where there is no light. I think a more interesting way would be to have the ground (the grass, the mud, the sand whatever it is) going over the stone. Again to reinforce this idea of the rock being there for a very long time.

I did a quick overpainting to show you how I would see it. You may think it's a bit flat in the shadow but I feel like there should be less details in the dark areas and except if this rock is the main element of your piece it should not be too much detailed.

I can't find a way to attach the picture to the post so here is a link instead... Sorry !

https://imgur.com/Gul7tqC

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Hello !

I sent you a DM with my details on discord.

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Hello everyone !

My name is Kowee and I've been doing pixel art for few years now  :)
Here is a link to most of work if you're curious : https://www.artstation.com/kowee/albums/1957927

I heard about this forum from a friend and decided to join. I think getting constructive feedbacks is one of the key element to learn and I would be more than happy if I can help anyone as well.

I hope to see you around on the forum !

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