31
Pixel Art / Re: Critique for Mushroom Monster
« on: September 27, 2017, 08:40:55 am »
Looks finished to me! 
-- Nice job!
-- Nice job!
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32
Pixel Art / Re: Darth Vader Fan Art
« on: September 27, 2017, 08:39:12 am »
Value is the most important aspect of form -- hueshift, color, etc. are simply there to convey mood or tone in most cases, and so the hues you pick should reflect that, above all, while still keeping in consideration the legitimate material properties of the subject/surface you're trying to light.
Joe's edit simply showed what could have been done to help clarify your forms by eliminating noise and focusing on using value to define form in an artistic, but logical, way (i.e. in a way that makes sense and is easy to digest for the viewer -- which is your job as an artist!)
Joe's edit simply showed what could have been done to help clarify your forms by eliminating noise and focusing on using value to define form in an artistic, but logical, way (i.e. in a way that makes sense and is easy to digest for the viewer -- which is your job as an artist!)
33
Pixel Art / Re: First try at pixel animation (walk cycle), looking for advice
« on: September 27, 2017, 05:50:18 am »
I know this is an old post, but I feel it deserves to be addressed.
First, the issue is, if you've ever seen a person run fast, as the angle of the body suggests, the head and arms move a lot farther forward and bounce a lot more, both up and down AND forward and back, usually at a diagonal in this view. Another thing is, on the legs, there's no hint of the hips or shoulders turning in opposition as he runs -- this is kind of mandatory for that kind of locomotion.
The distant arm kind of doesn't do much and suggests the shoulders aren't turning as much as they really would in a brisk run like this. The arm would disappear, not hang forward for no reason (unless he's looking to grab something with that hand). Make it straighter and swing a bit more a bit sooner too, and you'll be on the right track.
First, the issue is, if you've ever seen a person run fast, as the angle of the body suggests, the head and arms move a lot farther forward and bounce a lot more, both up and down AND forward and back, usually at a diagonal in this view. Another thing is, on the legs, there's no hint of the hips or shoulders turning in opposition as he runs -- this is kind of mandatory for that kind of locomotion.
The distant arm kind of doesn't do much and suggests the shoulders aren't turning as much as they really would in a brisk run like this. The arm would disappear, not hang forward for no reason (unless he's looking to grab something with that hand). Make it straighter and swing a bit more a bit sooner too, and you'll be on the right track.
34
Pixel Art / Re: Mortar/special animation (CC)
« on: September 27, 2017, 05:42:27 am »
Study up on anticipation, action, and follow-through. Also "line-of-action" would help too. This has none of the above unfortunately.
For example, what force makes the skull bounce up out of the bag? What makes the loincloth (I think that's what it is there...) move forward and up? That's an example of follow-through.
Anticipation is what MysteryMeat is trying to explain in the gif above with the bending down on one knee. That shows some "tensing" of energy to where it's ready to be released at any moment (the stretch instead of the squash) to give it some "pop" when that energy is released into the hurling bomb-ball that eventually becomes the squash that comes after the stretch.
Just play around with the two and your animation will come to life a lot more.
For example, what force makes the skull bounce up out of the bag? What makes the loincloth (I think that's what it is there...) move forward and up? That's an example of follow-through.
Anticipation is what MysteryMeat is trying to explain in the gif above with the bending down on one knee. That shows some "tensing" of energy to where it's ready to be released at any moment (the stretch instead of the squash) to give it some "pop" when that energy is released into the hurling bomb-ball that eventually becomes the squash that comes after the stretch.
Just play around with the two and your animation will come to life a lot more.
35
Pixel Art / Re: "No no" finger animation...
« on: September 27, 2017, 05:34:36 am »
The first animation is just too jumpy -- seems like some of the frames bounce up/down unexpectedly when the finger is pointing "up" for a long time there -- but I think it is much better than the new one.
If you just eliminated the up/down motion on that hand before and after the finger-wag while the finger is just pointing idly up, you'd have it nailed.
If you just eliminated the up/down motion on that hand before and after the finger-wag while the finger is just pointing idly up, you'd have it nailed.
36
Pixel Art / Re: Darth Vader Fan Art
« on: September 27, 2017, 05:30:47 am »
The new version looks like Darth Vader might if he were standing in full sun on Tatooine at sunset.
Also, I'm a bit colorblind myself -- so I understand your pain.
You might want to keep ALL your hues closer to blue. Your original image wasn't horrible, but your whites were too hot/intense for your blacks and grays.
The thing about Vader is he's supposed to appear cold and brooding / robotic and distant. With the new colors, he looks like he should have little hearts floating above his head while offering you a flower. Look at the new image. Can you see that? Almost as if he's smiling at you under that robot mask -- all because of the warm colors!!
So yeah -- try some blues and blue-purples for your shades -- stay far away from red and yellow hues.
In general, Hunited is correct about the blues and yellows -- but Vader has a very specific mood/feel he is intended to convey, and it's not a generic outdoorsy or cartoony one -- it's cold robotic absence that you should feel when looking at Vader.
You don't have to wash the guy out with grays though -- Like I said bluer-purples (indigo? -- I'm a Crayola 8 person myself) would do just fine for this dude. The white highlight could be tinted with a blue-green or a solid blue, depending on which you like better.
Outside of the colors, work on the jaggy helmet outlines on the silhouette. The image details look great construction-wise, but these jaggies are killing it when you look at it at a single glance.
Also, consider placing some speculars on other areas. Right now they really don't seem like they make any sense. Specularity depends on camera angle and the source of light from where the viewer is looking. That means if the light is behind the viewer, you'd have reflections all over the left side of the head and rim of the bottom of the helmet or something, especially if it's slightly biased to pointing to the right side of Vader's head over the left of the shoulder of the cameraman.
Hope that helps a little more!
Also, I'm a bit colorblind myself -- so I understand your pain.
You might want to keep ALL your hues closer to blue. Your original image wasn't horrible, but your whites were too hot/intense for your blacks and grays.
The thing about Vader is he's supposed to appear cold and brooding / robotic and distant. With the new colors, he looks like he should have little hearts floating above his head while offering you a flower. Look at the new image. Can you see that? Almost as if he's smiling at you under that robot mask -- all because of the warm colors!!
So yeah -- try some blues and blue-purples for your shades -- stay far away from red and yellow hues.
In general, Hunited is correct about the blues and yellows -- but Vader has a very specific mood/feel he is intended to convey, and it's not a generic outdoorsy or cartoony one -- it's cold robotic absence that you should feel when looking at Vader.
You don't have to wash the guy out with grays though -- Like I said bluer-purples (indigo? -- I'm a Crayola 8 person myself) would do just fine for this dude. The white highlight could be tinted with a blue-green or a solid blue, depending on which you like better.
Outside of the colors, work on the jaggy helmet outlines on the silhouette. The image details look great construction-wise, but these jaggies are killing it when you look at it at a single glance.
Also, consider placing some speculars on other areas. Right now they really don't seem like they make any sense. Specularity depends on camera angle and the source of light from where the viewer is looking. That means if the light is behind the viewer, you'd have reflections all over the left side of the head and rim of the bottom of the helmet or something, especially if it's slightly biased to pointing to the right side of Vader's head over the left of the shoulder of the cameraman.
Hope that helps a little more!
37
Pixel Art / Re: Concept Art for Square-style RPG
« on: September 27, 2017, 05:10:28 am »
The most important advice I can give you -- and this comes from personal experience -- is to read others' threads on this forum as much as possible and see how keen you are in spotting mistakes or things they've overlooked in their work. The critique they get is only going to help YOU improve as well. Others will spot mistakes you didn't, but the moment you can spot those mistakes first, and especially when you are validated by others more experienced than you, you'll start to realize you're getting the eye for pixel art. The cool thing is -- that may be sooner than you think! -- and when you start to critique others' work -- people you know are totally better than you at art -- you'll start to improve because you'll start to notice all the things they did *right* in their work too, and on top of that, you'll learn how to avoid the same mistakes they did because, after all -- practice what you preach, right??
The more you challenge yourself to try things you never thought you could do, the more you realize just how capable you are.
Outside of that, remember, if someone offers you advice (i.e. add more contrast) and you feel like you've added the hell out of the contrast, go on and try to add a little more, just to see if it helps. Never play the victim and keep pushing forward to see if they can offer any advice on what you did wrong if it still looks like crap when you post the update lol. -- Remember, everyone has an opinion on how to improve your art (i.e. you need to add more blue, you need to make this character taller, etc., etc.), but when you call them on it and ask them *why* it still looks wonky after you've implemented their suggestions, that's when you get the right to say to yourself "this person has no idea what they're talking about, so I'll try it a different way" because they can't (or usually WONT) offer more advice. At this point though, somebody else more experienced than them will usually step in and say "wait, wtf, don't listen to that guy -- THIS is your problem..." because most of us have been around that block before with bad advice and had to learn on our own how to fix our problems. Now we can do the same for you.
This is a community, so don't hesitate to be a part of that. Ask questions (specific questions) and people will likely answer you. Give others critique -- and they will likely return the favor when you want critique too!
Above all, even if you're just a total beginner, participate and read these threads with the full-intent to learn -- especially when it's others' threads. You can learn lots from other people making mistakes so you don't have to make the same ones. Granted, the lesson won't stick as hard unless you're part of that lesson -- i.e. make edits of other people's artwork -- and by doing so, you can see firsthand if your advice was good or not. Plus it's a great way to get practice in other styles you yourself might not think to do!!
I hope this gives you some inspiration to keep practicing. Pixel art is fun once you get a good feel for it. I suggest getting a copy of Graphics Gale and an imgur account to start practicing in because it makes it easy to throw pixels around freely. Get an imgur desktop uploader too. This should help you participate here a lot easier, and by doing so, you'll learn a lot faster.
Good luck man!
The more you challenge yourself to try things you never thought you could do, the more you realize just how capable you are.
Outside of that, remember, if someone offers you advice (i.e. add more contrast) and you feel like you've added the hell out of the contrast, go on and try to add a little more, just to see if it helps. Never play the victim and keep pushing forward to see if they can offer any advice on what you did wrong if it still looks like crap when you post the update lol. -- Remember, everyone has an opinion on how to improve your art (i.e. you need to add more blue, you need to make this character taller, etc., etc.), but when you call them on it and ask them *why* it still looks wonky after you've implemented their suggestions, that's when you get the right to say to yourself "this person has no idea what they're talking about, so I'll try it a different way" because they can't (or usually WONT) offer more advice. At this point though, somebody else more experienced than them will usually step in and say "wait, wtf, don't listen to that guy -- THIS is your problem..." because most of us have been around that block before with bad advice and had to learn on our own how to fix our problems. Now we can do the same for you.
This is a community, so don't hesitate to be a part of that. Ask questions (specific questions) and people will likely answer you. Give others critique -- and they will likely return the favor when you want critique too!
Above all, even if you're just a total beginner, participate and read these threads with the full-intent to learn -- especially when it's others' threads. You can learn lots from other people making mistakes so you don't have to make the same ones. Granted, the lesson won't stick as hard unless you're part of that lesson -- i.e. make edits of other people's artwork -- and by doing so, you can see firsthand if your advice was good or not. Plus it's a great way to get practice in other styles you yourself might not think to do!!
I hope this gives you some inspiration to keep practicing. Pixel art is fun once you get a good feel for it. I suggest getting a copy of Graphics Gale and an imgur account to start practicing in because it makes it easy to throw pixels around freely. Get an imgur desktop uploader too. This should help you participate here a lot easier, and by doing so, you'll learn a lot faster.
Good luck man!
38
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] help with colors and shading
« on: September 27, 2017, 04:30:40 am »
I second that.
A few more things -- the hair/beard has a highlight shade that is near-impossible to see unless you zoom waaay in on my machine. You definitely need more contrast there as well. Same with the goggles' shiny parts on the lenses too.
You probably want to also keep the shading consistent across the form, depending on the material. For example, are those blue-jeans or are they supposed to be silky/shiny/plastic pants? -- if they're blue-jeans, they probably shouldn't be as shiny as plastic.
I may be wrong, but it seems like you may confused as to how many shades to use in what areas. This is a common problem to people new to pixel art. The confusion about the number of shades to use seems to spark from terminology like "16 bit" and "8 bit" -- these terms really have no bearing on pixel art or the number of values in your shading. Yeah, you can mimic these hardware limitations, and in some cases (upon color reduction usually) this can indeed affect the number of the shades available to you, but pixel art in and of itself is completely independent of these self-imposed limitations. Even back in the NES days (true "8-bit" btw) attempted to break these shading boundaries whenever it was possible (or necessary) to do so, and they did it in clever ways -- but the difference between them and modern pixel artists is that they never did it to adhere to any sort of "style" -- instead, they did it to keep to giving the viewer a "sense" of whatever material it was they were trying to convey -- and this, I feel, is where you're stumbling a bit. You have no sense of "material" on this character. That is to say, the blue-jeans (assuming they're blue-jeans of course), don't give the sense of a diffuse/rough material with the roughness you'd expect -- instead, they're super-shiny (and, if you've ever studied lighting, that means they're super smooth), and despite them having ridges in them, that *alone* doesn't give any hint of whether they're rough or smooth or metallic or furry or whatever. You need to shade them as the type of material they're made of -- THAT is what determines the number of colors/shades/values you use -- nothing else, aside from intentionally breaking this rule for reasons of either hardware limitations or (*clear*) stylistic choice, should determine that.
I hope that helps "shed some light" on this topic, for you, or anyone else, reading. (sorry, couldn't resist the pun... ^__^ )
This design/pixelwork looks great otherwise. Kind of reminds me of the "Black Dynamite" character a bit lol.
A few more things -- the hair/beard has a highlight shade that is near-impossible to see unless you zoom waaay in on my machine. You definitely need more contrast there as well. Same with the goggles' shiny parts on the lenses too.
You probably want to also keep the shading consistent across the form, depending on the material. For example, are those blue-jeans or are they supposed to be silky/shiny/plastic pants? -- if they're blue-jeans, they probably shouldn't be as shiny as plastic.
I may be wrong, but it seems like you may confused as to how many shades to use in what areas. This is a common problem to people new to pixel art. The confusion about the number of shades to use seems to spark from terminology like "16 bit" and "8 bit" -- these terms really have no bearing on pixel art or the number of values in your shading. Yeah, you can mimic these hardware limitations, and in some cases (upon color reduction usually) this can indeed affect the number of the shades available to you, but pixel art in and of itself is completely independent of these self-imposed limitations. Even back in the NES days (true "8-bit" btw) attempted to break these shading boundaries whenever it was possible (or necessary) to do so, and they did it in clever ways -- but the difference between them and modern pixel artists is that they never did it to adhere to any sort of "style" -- instead, they did it to keep to giving the viewer a "sense" of whatever material it was they were trying to convey -- and this, I feel, is where you're stumbling a bit. You have no sense of "material" on this character. That is to say, the blue-jeans (assuming they're blue-jeans of course), don't give the sense of a diffuse/rough material with the roughness you'd expect -- instead, they're super-shiny (and, if you've ever studied lighting, that means they're super smooth), and despite them having ridges in them, that *alone* doesn't give any hint of whether they're rough or smooth or metallic or furry or whatever. You need to shade them as the type of material they're made of -- THAT is what determines the number of colors/shades/values you use -- nothing else, aside from intentionally breaking this rule for reasons of either hardware limitations or (*clear*) stylistic choice, should determine that.
I hope that helps "shed some light" on this topic, for you, or anyone else, reading. (sorry, couldn't resist the pun... ^__^ )
This design/pixelwork looks great otherwise. Kind of reminds me of the "Black Dynamite" character a bit lol.
39
Pixel Art / Re: Flourish Animation
« on: September 26, 2017, 04:30:03 pm »
Sure, I meant (her) left arm (behind her hair, I'm assuming it is) should be extended to add a little more overlapping and dynamism to the pose if it crosses her hair (let it extend a little more horizontally than diagonally though). This will emphasize the lengthyness of her body as it leans forward to strike and make the action feel a little more punchy at the same time as fixing the silhouette to be more than just a blob.
40
Pixel Art / Re: SciFi Environment Tiles
« on: September 26, 2017, 08:27:44 am »
Looks a lot better, but perhaps you could think about making some floor decals with some other colors that blend into the BG -- right now, everything is pretty gray and bland (but it could be interesting if you found a way to break up that floor with a little more hues -- perhaps some painted lines or arrows running through it?)
Just a note:
This is not really pixel art, or rather only a small portion of it seems to be, so you're probably not getting any replies because this should probably be in the other 2D section. However, that section seems dead lately so I figured I'd help you out if I could since I'm here.
Just a note:
This is not really pixel art, or rather only a small portion of it seems to be, so you're probably not getting any replies because this should probably be in the other 2D section. However, that section seems dead lately so I figured I'd help you out if I could since I'm here.