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Messages - Manupix
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301
Pixel Art / Re: Birthday present for pietepiet
« on: December 10, 2009, 09:39:03 pm »
I wish it was
my birthday    (ass patting twoliner)


Yes, shading is great, I'm amazed that such a low contrast can work so well. Because of the wide-ranging beautiful (more ass-patting) palette?
Me newb, learn something.

Maybe the slightest AA on the wheel? The darkest skin tone might do it I think.

302
2D & 3D / Re: Bitten by the sidescroller bug...
« on: December 08, 2009, 10:45:16 pm »
Wow, this looks great! And thanks for the video too.

The trees look too green and too leafy, I'd suggest to make them look more 'urban', with sparse greyish leaves.

The flags don't mean much to me, they distract from the futuristic feeling. No better idea yet though.

303
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Hunter girl
« on: December 08, 2009, 09:10:12 pm »
The point of view looks like from the height of her eyes: the horizon should then be at that height too.
Since this would not be very nice, you might raise it less, maybe btw breasts and shoulders at breast height.
It will help with the gun butt too, which looks like a house on the horizon.

Anatomy is way off, Jorund's edit helps but doesn't go as far as needed with the arms. Won't say more about it, I'm not good there.

You give the bg a constant amount of detail btw the foreground, and the, well, bg (plants and such). Try to make detail fade away into simple flat colors as you get farther.
A forest is a good idea, think of a misty one, with just a few silhouettes of trees.
Also, you should probably keep most of the warmer / more sat colors for the girl and a few foreground highlights, and leave the bg to the coldest.

304
Pixel Art / Re: Evil Rat [WIP]
« on: December 08, 2009, 08:53:06 pm »
Looks better lighter and shorter.

I'd suggest giving it highlights all around, almost an outline, because of the dark bg. Could be worked out as a 2ndary light source, I think.

Not really helpful probably, but I can't resist linking to this video. I'm amazed at how he just doesn't see the robotic camera despite the spotlights, but feels something's wrong only very close to it.  :crazy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMWuyDLpwTw&feature=related

305
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Town (isometric)
« on: December 08, 2009, 08:34:52 pm »
I think the best point in Ultimaodin's edit is the asymmetry in the shutters, this by itself gives a stronger depth and sideways feeling.
AA would of course help, but this is opening the door to AAing the whole piece: yikes.

Here's my try at it:



1 = original; 2 = shutter change only; 3 = + simpler AA

306
2D & 3D / Re: Almost pixel art; help with perspective please
« on: December 07, 2009, 10:20:20 pm »
Also, you can make the landscape appear a lot deeper by furthering aerial perspective, shoreline actual persp, and making the road more discreet.

Edit (with dirty npa tools):


307
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Iso: House
« on: December 07, 2009, 06:42:43 pm »
Windows: these are the window frames but there are no actual windows; the bars do not look centered, because they are actually centered on the outside of window frames, which they shouldn't be since since they are recessed (does this make sense?); the 3 outline pixels in the lower outer corners should be removed.

Door: it might be recessed too; having it centered is maybe not the best visual option, nor a good structural option (cut of center post).

Chimney: centered on the roof > same thing; the top and all brick joints being horizontal, should have the iso 2x1 angle; chimneys usually are rectangles not squares (from above), and made of far thicker bricks / stones.

308
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Iso: House
« on: December 07, 2009, 10:09:08 am »
... try working with a layer with layer mode set to burn or similar. I found that it can produce pretty nice effects for something like wood. Play with layer modes to find the right one.

But... but... but, that's, well, ah, not pixel art, is it?
109 colors in version #3, >256 in #4...

I'm sure the experienced artist can use layer modes in this way to save time and knows how to retain control, but I wouldn't recommend this as a learning tool.
The point in doing it by hand is, mostly, to learn how things look like, more than how to actually draw them. If you let a tool do the drawing for you, you skip a lesson.


This house is way too big in my opinion, esp if you plan a pixel city.
I generally agree about comments about shading, contrast and detail.

The contrast difference btw the 2 walls is almost non-existent, compared to the roof. Also, the texture should be much more contrasted and apparent on the sunlit side, than on the shadow side.
Think about shifting hues on both wall and roof: shadows will tend to be a different color than highlights, depending on the situation (bluer shadows on a sunlit day outside, for instance).

309
2D & 3D / Re: Almost pixel art; help with perspective please
« on: December 06, 2009, 12:38:32 am »
I believe this is a two-point perspective, where there are two vanishing points that intersect. The red lines are the points of the top of the wagon, yellow are the bottom corners of the wagon.

That's about right. The vanishing points do appear to be on the horizon (as you said before your edit ;) )  if the road and cart are horizontal. It's not necessarily strictly the case, but not by much, unless you deliberately make the road very rough.

The vanishing points get further apart as the angle of view gets narrow ('telephoto view'), and get closer as the angle of view widens. Looks about ok on Dusty's edit, too.

I think the road is too wide to be nice, and the cart is too wide and low to be realistic. You might check some ref.

310
Thanks for the input guys!

I hadn't thought of pointillism - how silly of me.
However, I have to disagree on the main point: these cards are not pointillist paintings or drawings, reproduced as is.
No halftone reproduction method is visible at all, either mechanical (screen) or chemical (random).
The dithering stems directly from the printing method itself.

By contrast, here are some close-ups at similar resolution (600 dpi) of postcards obviously reproducing paintings (I link to them, so as not to clog the thread with too many big images):
a view of Venice http://files.myfrogbag.com/qe1mq0/Venezia%20notte%20B%20det%20600-6%20tram.jpg and one of Norway http://files.myfrogbag.com/qe1mq0/Nge%20fjord%20CFEN%20det%20600-6%20tram.jpg, both using halftone screens; a view of Egypt http://files.myfrogbag.com/qe1mq0/Memnon%20CPT7364%20det%20600.jpg with random halftoning, which I believe to be a color collotype http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collotype (I'm not positive about it, I'm not even sure color collotypes actually exist; what I know is that this process was widely used for B&W postcards, and has excellent random high res halftoning. Scanning at 600 dpi is not enough to get everything out of the best of these cards. The random texture I see in this one is very reminiscent of that).
All three obviously show the original painting technique and texture: they are reproductions.

I hope the difference with the former images is obvious enough.
This is also why I find those so relevant to pixel art - and posted them here: whoever invented this, was thinking and working in a very similar way to us, and found a great creative way to turn their medium restriction(s) into beauty.


Also silly of me, I actually had the answer all along and didn't think of it: chromolithography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromolithography.
Look at the full res first image, The Old Woman Who Lived in A Shoe, which uses exactly the same dithering technique as my postcards. The other examples shown do not, though.
I have a few of these little naive advertising chromos, most of them with the same dithering and similar palettes; see one below.

The process is described in the article: Each color in the image must be separately drawn onto a new stone or plate and applied to the paper one at a time.
What we have here is a direct graphic creation, of something that only exists as art on the final print; and has by nature a limited palette.

This is somewhat different from pointillist painting: the painter uses pointillism by choice, to the extent that he wishes, remains free to mix whatever colors he wants, and gradually builds the actual piece of art.

An interesting question would be: did pointillism influence chromolithographers? Did chromolithography influence pointillism?
The article dates chromolithography from 1837, although the dithering method was probably introduced much later. The Old Woman Who Lived in A Shoe is from 1883, the year Seurat started work on his first pointillist important work, according to French Wikipedia http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointillisme (more examples shown than in the English page).
I don't know when those cheap chromos appeared, but when they did they were just everywhere (exactly like postcards not long afterwards). The pointillist artists must have seen them, and were probably as interested in them as we are, for the same good reasons!


I might post more chromos later.



Btw, I couldn't find a way to link a url to the text, without showing it whole. Is it at all possible?

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