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Messages - questseeker
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41
Pixel Art Feature Chest / Re: My tiles bring all the boys to the yard
« on: April 28, 2014, 09:24:39 am »
The bush offers a beautiful rendition of large, deeply lobed, and solid green leaves: instead of attempting to draw rather different ivy leaves you could give up and adopt some large climber which actually has that sort of leaves, for example Ampelopsis (simple leaf shapes and fancy ones) or other Vitaceae.

42
Pixel Art / Re: 16 bit Band Logo
« on: March 21, 2014, 08:58:46 am »
Your image editor has a text tool: use it. Drawing text from scratch isn't mandatory.
You'll need to try many different fonts, sizes and settings before obtaining a good starting point for the actual pixel art effort (cleaning up outlines and coloring the letters), and this experimentation cannot be done by hand. Moreover, basing the logo on existing fonts is going help you with simplified vector art variants (suitable for printing).

Also, depending on your needs, a larger (possibly much larger) artwork size could be better.
For example, if your em size is 50 pixels (more than in your current sample) and letters are printed 20 cm tall (e.g. in a traditional logo on the bass drum), each pixel is blown up to 4 by 4 mm: quite huge. A banner would be even worse.

Your F has a nice, tasteful treatment: if you work on good looking letters that fit together, with enough room to do something more complex than a vertical gradient, I expect the result to be good.

43
General Discussion / Re: I am retiring as a moderator of Pixelation - Also, Changes!
« on: February 02, 2014, 07:09:48 pm »
My opinion about "broadening" topics is that pixel art is a broad enough theme, but peripheral aspects beyond the C&C and challenges threads that are the main content of the forum are a bit neglected, making the forum as a whole less nice and useful than it could be.
  • Software and technical aspects, particularly at a time when several high profile pixel-oriented drawing programs are under development but don't seem to find a lot of love and interest.
  • "Almost" pixel art, maybe including the mentioned 3D voxel art. Being inclusive and not scaring away non-purists can be an important feature.
  • Tutorials and recommendations for beginners, addressing the common gap between "I want/need to draw this and that" and "I cannot make it look good" in a preemptive, organized and high quality way rather than repeatedly and haphazardly in C&C threads.
  • Discussion of current videogame graphics. The pixel art niche includes good games that, in many cases, aren' even particularly "retro": if the newest game in the Commercial Critique section is Pokemon Red/Blue it's a clear sign of an overly nostalgic point of view.

44
Pixel Art Feature Chest / Re: SHMUP mockup
« on: January 10, 2014, 02:56:20 pm »
The halos (in fact mere rings) around the "P" powerups are unneeded, huge and less detailed than the rest.
If you want something animated in your powerups, glittering moving reflections on metal or spinning "coins" are proven designs that look familiar and don't increase the effective size of the item.
The "P" marked disk itelf has two problems:
  • The letter is too large relative to the black background; you might extend the center one or two pixels in all directions at the expense of the purple outer part to improve proportions.
  • The shading is good, but the light source is diagonal! You should be able to redraw it equally well with the correct frontal light source.
Maybe it looks better in motion, but the blue shot from the middle enemy is pillowshaded and lacks brightness. If the dark blue disks are a burst of shots, the rear ones should be identical or even brighter than the first one; if they are a trail, they should be continuous (similar to the shots from the green enemy on the left).

45
General Discussion / Re: Preventing banding while shading
« on: July 29, 2013, 10:56:38 am »
Quote from: Jeremy on July 29, 2013, 07:42:37 am
I think the trick is to avoid having a solid band of colour between two different shades (sounds obvious :ouch:)

What I find I end up doing is making sure different tones have quite different "outlines", so my darker colour and lighter colour end up almost touching at a couple of points while the midtone acts kind of like large-scale AA on the sides. I'm sure I've explained that poorly, so here's an example:

(banded version exaggerated)

see how the shape of the red-orage blob is different from the mid orange blob is different from the yellow orange blob:


The principle of avoiding band shapes is promising in the abstract, but the arm example demonstrates that defining shapes with correct lighting is vastly more important than banding and banding avoidance.
The "banded" version has a more rounded and better looking shoulder, a pillowshaded but reasonably shaped biceps, and a strangely lit but rounded forearm, while the "better" version has stronger and harsher lights (due to the lightest orange clusters being much larger with the darkest orange clusters remaining about the same), abnormally flat biceps and forearm (as if pressed against glass), and the same incoherent light sources.

When the size of banding-related clusters is comparable to the size of the depicted objects, they simply cannot be altered in such arbitrary ways: working at the single pixel level is required to reduce banding without butchering shapes.

46
Pixel Art / Re: spaceship crash
« on: March 18, 2013, 08:58:53 am »
The spaceship has so little shading that its basic shape is ambiguous. Maximum priority corrections:
  • Change wing colour to show the left edge of the fuselage over the left wing (visible on the right wing as a vertical surface)
  • The blue stuff in the middle and back is too flat: it looks painted over the cockpit, asymmetrical, and suspended beyond the implied edge of the fuselage (back and right wing, effect enhanced by an involuntary light outline in the dirt behind it).
  • The overly thick fin (?) in the back is quite asymmetrical. Using a rendered 3D model of the spaceship for reference would be useful.
  • The cockpit in front is strange: the highlight is well placed but, without further shading of the glass panels and the rest of the ship, incongruous; the darker parts are ambiguous between shading and objects seen trough the glass.

47
Pixel Art / Re: Space Shooter Ship [C+C] [WIP]
« on: January 13, 2013, 08:33:02 pm »
  • The turret is large enough to require banked frames; do you really need both a rotating turret and banking? How many turret orientations do you plan to draw?
  • The right-banked frame has very strange lighting: the wings appear hollow (raised front edge) and the flat part that bears the turret appears larger (it's the turret shadow, and it's inordinately larger).
  • I second the suggestion to animate exhaust jets; consider variants with different power levels, including off. Why is the center thruster so big?

48
General Discussion / Re: Favourite pixel art tool
« on: December 31, 2012, 04:50:24 pm »
Quote from: Ai on November 30, 2012, 10:30:37 pm
The only issue I have with GrafX2* is that it doesn't import/export palettes from/to .gpl files, which are becoming the standard among Open Source graphics applications: GIMP originated the format, Inkscape, Krita, Scribus, GPick, and others use it.

* Note the capitalization. "GrafX2" is the correct way to spell the name, "Grafx2" is not.
It appears to be almost done, see issue 518 in the tracker.

49
Pixel Art / Re: Glow affect for plasma weapons
« on: October 11, 2012, 05:16:39 pm »
Keep in mind that the "plasma blade" is not an opaque object, neither green with a white highlight in the middle, or white with a green outline, but a volume of transparent gas that glows green:
  • It is transparent all the way to the center, but of course more transparent near the edges where the plasma has less thickness. The right kind of compositing is addition, not normal alpha blending; light absorption, and thus opacity of the blade, should be negligible.
  • It cannot have outlines, unless you want the forcefield that contains the plasma to be somehow visible outside the blade proper. (Sparks etc. where the blade touches a target could act as temporary and partial outlines, making blade shape as clear as if outlined in a traditional way, particularly in the case of crossing plasma blades.)
  • There are two physically reasonable colour choices for plasma light: strictly monochromatic (specific excited states of specific substances), fading through all tones of green (or another hue), from very dark to very light, but not white; and black body radiation (any gas at very high temperatures), which for all practical purposes should be white, fading to grey.
  • Unless it's intended to be a toy weapon, the tip of the blade should be pointed rather than blunt and pillowshaded.

50
General Discussion / Re: Individual Pixel-placement Stress
« on: September 17, 2012, 08:17:32 am »
Quote from: Dr D on September 16, 2012, 02:40:31 pm
@yaomon17
I don't think the technique is the problem. I mean at some point in time, I will go in to fine detailing regardless. But maybe that will change if I go into a more broad/loose style altogether. But, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
But you are definitely right that people won't see or care about small changes. I dunno if that's a good way to rationalize not trying to make something the best it could be, though.
Even if you are compelled to "go in to fine detailing" because you are urged to "try to make something the best it could be", yaomon17's advice to refine iteratively is good for at least two reasons:
  • It reduces the amount and difficulty of pixel by pixel changes. Many pixels will already get their final colour in the initial or intermediate "blocking out" of shapes and shades; the rest of the pixels, the ones which you are going to edit to take care of dithering, small details, unwanted clusters etc. will at least be embedded in a good context that will guide your painting.
  • It offers an exit strategy. As you force yourself to learn to paint "top down", you'll learn to care less about individual pixels and more about the whole piece and general concerns like colour choice or effective shading, hopefully replacing your obsessive tendencies with skill and confidence.

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