Okay, I think we need to do something. I think there's a lot of repeated errors that new people make and whereas it's absolutely important to explain them again and again in personal terms we could at least preface by linking them to older posts that deal with similar errors. For example I am in the habit of posting the AVOID BANDING post sans any further explanation unless the user I suggested this for asks for more, as it is a relatively simple thing to explain and advise against and I don't see the point of editing a new piece of artwork to remove banding every time unless I absolutely have to.

So how about, in lack of a Megatut that we should have done a few years ago but nobody had the time for, we assemble a collection of links in a thread that take care of all the popular errors in making pixel art? So you could say to someone who is new and has the usual errrors here look at these specific posts about pillowshading, banding and dither-aa clash and then ask if they have further questions. I know these posts already exist in the database and if they don't I'll take it upon me to make new ones explaining them, but what I need from you is to search your Pixelation Memory Banks (tm) for threads you though exemplified EDITS THAT EXPLAIN COMMON PIXELLING ERRORS. Posts that just couldn't have been made any plainer and which you thought at the time 'wow, that's a pretty simple and elegant way to explain the problem!'. The avoid banding santa for example deals with this just fine, I don't think it can be really improved upon as a post. Similar things to that, by any user!

Also I hope the people whose artwork was in these edits that we'll use as teaching aids do not mind. If they do they can contact us to remove them from this project.

Here are the things I'd like to see covered:

• BASIC ANATOMY
• FACIAL ANATOMY
• STRAIGHT RAMPS
• PILLOWSHADING
• SELOUT
• DITHER-AA CLASH
• BLURRY AA
• 45 DEGREE NEEDLESS AA
• BANDING
• OVERDITHERING
• VAGUE LIGHTSOURCES
• COLOR CONSERVATION
• LACK OF CONTRAST/SMALL VALUE RANGE
• TOO MUCH SATURATION
• VALUE JUMPS

and the ever-popular,

• GRASS TILE GRID ISSUES
• TOP-DOWN RPG DOLL SPRITE (I call them 'muscle babies'  )

... and whatever else you come up with that you think should need adressing!

A post that deals with one or more of these issues at the same time could fly, as long as it's very clear!

There is no time-limit in getting this done, nor is there any prize involved besides perhaps a level up in data mining, and a sense of positive contribution to this community. You will be credited of course.

Feel free to both discuss the idea, and provide links here.

Hello. I am Telemachus Stavropoulos.





Here's a link to my pixeljoint gallery for more pieces, game art and otherwise: http://pixeljoint.com/p/2203.htm?pg=1&sec=icons

I am 23 years old, from Greece and looking for freelance work in the field. I've done some in the past (for cellphones) and I'm confident I can deal with most current gen limitations for such or handhelds. I have reasonable traditional skill, a good eye for critique and am a fast and precise pixel artist. I am also quite handsome.

Contact: locust.leaves@gmail.com or a private message on this forum.

It seems a lot of new people sign up and completely skip the reading of the rules and regulations, and just go right ahead merilly posting one-liners. Some (I'd like to say most but there's so many posts, I'm sure for every one that we catch, three give us the miss) of these get deleted and then we have the good-old PM dance between new user being all HEY WHY DID YOU DELETE MY GLORIOUS COMMENT and some moderator pointing the user to the clear word of the faq where it says 'do not post one-liners' and then the user goes 'oh... sorry  '.

I know this will have to be reality for such a huge board where there's new users all the time and they think they're too good to read the rules of the forum and for the most part that's understandable because most people don't need to read rules to behave sensibly on the internet. But the one-liner thing many people do not understand right off the bat because they've been conditioned in DeviantArt type boards for a long time and they thing whatever comment comes out of their keyboard is gold that enriches the forum and the thread they're posting on. It's not. 'I like this' and 'omg good colors' are not useful to anyone. So, I make this thread and will keep it afloat for a while to let new - and some old - people know: If you absolutely have to let somebody else know of pleasantries that are not critique like 'you're my favourite pixel artist' or 'dang that's awesome!' do it in a private message.

The reason we're agressively moderating one-liners is twofold: first of all if the forum is clean from them then new users will think 'wait, this doesn't seem to happen here, so I guess I shouldn't be the one to start doing it'. It just breeds good habits. The second reason is that the point of the critique board is to be educational, not just for the people who are posting on the threads right now, but for whomever decides to read the backlogs 2 years from now. Have you ever been in this situation where you know someone has posted something useful in a deviant art comment, and you return to it 2 years from now and have to go through MILLIONS OF ONE-LINERS before you can dig up that comment again? This is what we're trying to avoid. Ideally, every post in a thread should have to do directly with bettering the art in question. Some deviation is welcomed and aknowledged, we are not robots (*hhrrk* SAD-LY! *bzzt*), but no one-liners.

Discussion on the no one liner policy is welcome in this thread as well as ideas or directions on how we could streamline the process or whatnot. If you think one-liners should be allowed, this is your time to speak out too.

Okay, I've been browsing the lineart thread for a while and it's become something of a pocket universe in Pixelation, where it has some users that don't participate on the rest of the forum, and the quality of the colors sometimes is very low, without any attempt to give critique to people who post them. This doesn't promote learning and betterment, so I was thinking perhaps it's time to purge the lineart thread and add an additional rule to its usage. You can only post lineart in it. If you color something, you should make a new thread for it, so it can get critique.

Discuss.

I've been pondering the benefits of this for a while. I'm looking for opinions. I know that first of all, one is almost never stranded for colors to such a degree in most of the pixel art we do that he'd fake aa with dithering. But what if you are, somehow, that limited? Nice skill to have. Second issue, I know this works on either bigger resolutions at 1x zoom, or screens without sharp fidelity, like TV screens best. Lastly, this creates more 'hairy' texture than one might need at a given time. Still, an interesting concept to keep in mind.

EDIT: also there are possible applications in subpixel curving.