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Messages - 32
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61
General Discussion / Re: Potential Activity
« on: June 25, 2017, 01:47:12 am »
That sounds like fun crow ;D

I thought about my idea a bit more. I'm thinking maybe the best way to keep it organised and not have dozens of threads to monitor would be to group people and have it be more of a team activity where you get to help the same people who are helping you and you're all working toward a common goal.

In sign up week everyone would submit a WIP piece. Then whoever is running the thing could sort people roughly by skill (just like, novice, intermediate, advanced) and then based on that we could create a number of groups with a good mix of skill levels. Then we would create a thread for each group with the WIP pieces in the first post and the group just turns into an utter chaos of edits and updates for a month :D

At the end each person gets to vote on which group they think improved their works the most. I call it Sensei Showdown :hehe:

I wouldn't mind running something like this but I might need help from someone with some programming knowledge to do the group randomisation. We could certainly do it on a per person basis like I suggested in my previous post but I feel like that would be a lot harder to organise and critiquers would have less motivation to help the people they are assigned to.

62
General Discussion / Re: Potential Activity
« on: June 24, 2017, 02:43:22 am »
I actually like the idea of a collaborative critique based competition. Something like all entrants submit a piece and are assigned some number of randomly selected participants who have to work with them to help develop their piece. The winner is the person who's piece shows the greatest level of improvement (decided by popular vote) rather than the "best" overall piece. Probably their assigned buddies would also get some share of the glory.

I feel like any outright competition undermines the ultimate goals of the site to a degree, but something like this would support our values.

63
Pixel Art / Re: Hello I am stumped as to ease in / out settings
« on: June 23, 2017, 01:06:20 am »
I haven't used flash in a while so it's going to depend on what they call ease in and what they call ease out (both can mean either thing depending on context :blind:)

But either way you're going to want

Frame 0-ease in (or maybe out but probably in)
Frame 100- nothing
Frame 200- ease out (or in if it's the other way around)

You may want to try numbers less than 100%. You also theoretically don't even need a centre frame.

Take a look at the motion graph to see what's going on when you change each of the properties.

Good luck, someone who actually uses flash might pop in to help but hopefully that pushes you in the right direction :y:

64
Pixel Art / Re: Capta1n_Henry Art
« on: June 21, 2017, 08:51:38 am »


Really solid body and costume. Most of the issues are with the head I think. That said I did make some minor alterations to the body so take a look at those side by side, most importantly the lower legs being different sizes.

As for the head right now you're going completely round. The face is longer, the cranium is round but don't forget about the jaw, give him a chin. As for the eye give him an upper eyelid and an expression, right now it's just completely wide open. Eyes are important to personality. Don't forget the eyebrow. The hair is kind of just a mess, try to give it a bit of flow in specific directions.

You're using a lot of colours that don't really do anything. Scale it back to your base colours for now until you start shading. Don't work on this bright blue. Unless you know specifically what background you'll be displaying on use a neutral colour like a mid grey. Using a bright colour will throw off your perception. Plus it is unpleasant to stare at while working.

As I said very nice work on the body. Maybe take a closer look at some anime references and see how they shape the head if that's what you're going for. :y:

65
Challenges & Activities / Re: The Daily Sketch
« on: June 13, 2017, 11:30:30 am »

66
Pixel Art / Re: Back to the roots... simple ball bouncing in place.
« on: June 12, 2017, 11:17:20 pm »
You've rectified it somewhat in the second attempt but the important thing with stretch and squash is to maintain volume. It does depend on the style but generally you want to imagine whatever you're animating as a very elastic version of itself and what shape that would take when you stretch or squash it. Right now I would say you stretch it a little too thin.

There is a different technique called a smear which is more like what you're doing in the first version, however you would usually use that for very fast, long movements.

I always thought practicing stretch and squash on a ball was a bit of a tricky one since balls are actually elastic. With that in mind I would personally not employ any stretch on the way down, only on the way back up. Otherwise it looks like the ball is reaching out to touch the ground, rather than mindlessly bouncing.

The overall vertical motion looks really good. Definitely do as many of these types of exercises as you can find. If you can remember to employ spacing and timing this methodically in more complicated character animation will have a much easier time ;D

67
Pixel Art / Re: Two sprites and a skull
« on: June 10, 2017, 04:14:51 am »
Not as much of a joke as you may think. That's actual a very useful way of thinking about pixel clusters and actually good practice (have a look at my avatar for an example of what MysteryMeat is talking about). You obviously don't need to do it everywhere and don't need to stick to the traditional tetrominos but using small distinct clusters of pixels is a very good way to work. It helps you to avoid banding and single pixel noise. Your recoloured tetris piece is in fact the best version so far ;D

You just need to work on really carving out the important forms. The eye sockets and nasal cavity are too soft. Likewise the cheekbone could be stronger, darker along the underside. And there should be a stronger division and holes above the jaw bone. There shouldn't be anything connecting them beyond the teeth. The rear cheekbone should probably protrude a little bit more.

Just quickly on the sprites I think you need to focus more on the overall forms and less on the details.

68
Pixel Art / Re: Newish to Pixel Art - My first perspective background image.
« on: June 09, 2017, 03:15:15 am »
In regard to using post effects: I think the end result is very nice and definitely support their use but I feel like there is an issue of the underlying art being highly aliased. I feel like adding these very smooth post effects really clashes with that and makes spots with high contrast aliasing look especially jagged, such as the blinds and there the bed frame sits over the mattress. Some anti-aliasing on the underlying pixel image would really help I think.

I do recognise that this is sort of an established style in the pixel landscape now but that's a feeling I always get when I see it.

Very nice image overall though ;D The only thing that stands out to me as being off perspective is the pillows.

69
General Discussion / Re: More colors = less pixel art? Help me understand.
« on: June 08, 2017, 09:43:05 am »
What surt said.

In addition I think we like to push low colour counts due to it leading into a deeper knowledge of how colour works. Low colour counts are also a simple way of harmonising your artwork and assisting colour management.

And most importantly pixel art is closely tied to game art, especially for the newer artists here. Low colour counts are absolutely key to making assets that are realistic to produce and animate easily.

High colour counts are also the cause of many newer artists struggles with creating clear art and often we want to try to help remove as much of the clutter as possible so they can focus on fundamental issues.

Don't overthink it, not a whole lot of people around here are pushing for purism these days, it's just a matter of practicality and pushing people to pursue a path which will lead to a greater understanding of how to approach colour in pixel art. :y:

70
Pixel Art / Re: Farm Field scene mockup - Please help
« on: June 06, 2017, 09:26:20 am »
I really loved the hay bail. I hope you're still planning to use that. The really tall elements like the bail, fence and stalks in the background gave a really lovely sense of scale and low angle perspective. I don't get the sense in the newest mock-up that I am INSIDE the field like I did with the original.

Definitely look into doing something with the sky. You could put a farmhouse and such in the farthest layer. Some trees back there would also be nice, just right in the distance, at the moment it's a little too flat.

The pixel ling overall is looking very tight, love the way you've done the grass and especially the stalks in the foreground. I think overall my advice would just be add more things. More variety. Non dirt elements in the playable area would be very nice. Stones, twigs (or I guess grass stalks since we're in a large field) parts from old farm equipment/structures etc.

I'm a lover of saturation myself but I do think you could tone it down a bit for the darker colours. A bit into the eye-bleed range at the moment.

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