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Messages - Manupix
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51
Pixel Art Feature Chest / Re: [WIP][C+C] Chicken
« on: September 08, 2014, 04:38:17 pm »
how does one relate story elements via typeface?
Ha, most difficult question! I have near-zero experience with that so I can't say much. I'd start by getting inspiration, preferably with hand-drawn type. Here are some of my typography bookmarks: Type Theory, Friends of Type, Jessica Hische, Typography Served, Typeverything. Might be a good thing to check gaming sites too.

I can think of two ways to do it: either be literal (make some letters in the shape of feathers, barbed wire, chicken bones, forks and knives, clocks and clock hands, spacey things, you name it) or not literal (letter shapes that just aim to convey an atmosphere, don't ask me how but in the same vein as typical horror or western movie posters type).

While you're at it, maybe give more thought to the game name, too; could use a more fun, engaging twist.

And yeah, the screen does need that badass chicken =)

52
Pixel Art Feature Chest / Re: [WIP][C+C] Chicken
« on: September 08, 2014, 11:08:20 am »
I love that chicken ;D

The start screen isn't very appealing overall though: it's rather empty, the title type is kinda boring and doesn't seem to refer in any way to the story or poultry or space (emptiness could be great with a strong and meaningful composition though).
The smaller type is weirdly irregular in width and weight.
There's one kerning issue with the big type: there's more space around M than other letters (I think it's better with more space).

53
Pixel Art / At
« on: September 06, 2014, 12:51:04 pm »
Much better! Nice wings.

The curve of the back is still a little jaggy at the very top.
The head could possibly use some tweaking too, to keep closer to the ref baby-ish face. The horns will probably need to take some liberty from the ref though; they also might have a different color.
It might be interesting to get away from the ref and try a bigger head anyway, to make better use of what little pixel space you have. It should go well with the cartoon style you're going for.

The brown underside is too thick in the front (neck), as its horizontal outline in continuation of the belly makes an unwanted eye-catching element.

Generally, beware of inside outlines. They take up a lot of space that could (should) be used for shading, and don't help with readability for the smaller elements (eye, claws, wing tip).

Colors: here's a breakdown of your palette.
At least one of the mid-greens should go, possibly two (one is used in only 2 pixels!), and you could do with two browns.

The shadow purple is very dark (almost black on my monitor) and too saturated; also it doesn't make sense as you don't have purple anywhere else, and it's not consistent with the dark green shadows on the dragon itself.
On the contrary in dpixel's edit, the dark blue outlines, dark brown shifted towards colder tones and bluish light greys elsewhere give sense to his light purple shadow.

Avoid pure white, esp in the claws which come out as very noisy.

Try some hue-shifting (as explained in cure's tuto I linked before, also here). Notice how the hues (H column in the HSV breakdown) are very close for all the greens, and for all the browns? You might shift the brighter greens towards warmer colors, and the darker towards colder, and so solve the shadow color issue. You also need near neutrals, to bridge between the greens and browns, for instance. As it is, most of your saturations are above 70.

54
Pixel Art / Re: Scary forest
« on: September 06, 2014, 12:08:42 pm »
Good edits from everyone, but they all more or less give up on the fog which was the main challenge of this piece IMO.

55
Pixel Art / Re: My pixel adventure
« on: September 05, 2014, 07:06:02 pm »
I think you should concentrate on one piece at a time and take it as far as you can, asking specific questions and trying to improve it.

56
Pixel Art / Re: Dragon
« on: September 05, 2014, 10:53:07 am »
It's a good and cute start, but there are some basic flaws.
If you haven't already, you should read this tuto (and / or others like it).
Did you use a reference? If yes, link it. If not, find one (or better: several). It looks like you used one for some of it (head, legs), but not all (wings).

This is a good size for practice because the number of pixels remains manageable, but it also means that line work is unforgiving. You should begin by fixing that: there are many places where the lines look jaggy or sloppy and could be improved. For instance, the curve of the back; the variable thickness of legs and tail.
The wings need to be redrawn entirely, on both readability and realism counts.

Then the palette needs tweaking. Study dpixel's edit, it's a big improvement in this (and others) respect.
Shading: you already have a light source, but you need more contrast to make it obvious, as well as highlights.

And stronger use of dithering implies texture (scales) well.
Although I agree with this, I strongly advise against dithering at this point.
Dithering (and generally refining) is something you should only do on a solid basis, which means a piece where composition, anatomy, color and shading issues have all been fixed.
Also dithering is advanced. That's no reason for not trying though, but just be aware that it's a long, pixel by pixel adventure. Generally, the less dithering, the better.

57
Pixel Art / Re: Army Barack - How to improve it?
« on: September 05, 2014, 10:33:49 am »
I'm afraid the variable shadows, although true, make it confused and hard to read. Given the unrealistic visual conventions that this type of perspective is based on, it's probably better to give all the beds the same shading.

I'm still bothered by the floor. It clashes with the beds on a composition pov, it doesn't read like army barracks floor (more like a spacecraft-like floor), it's unnecessarily distracting (unless useful in the gameplay). How about a 'simple' ordinary planks or tiles floor?

58
Pixel Art Feature Chest / Re: Tree :(
« on: September 05, 2014, 10:26:23 am »
Simple shapes can be ok if they fit the context (are these for a game?). The smaller ones in particular could have enough detail for most uses, although the specific pixeling of that detail looks a bit random.

Agree with decroded about warmer light tones.

Shading isn't great either. For one thing, the trunk is impossibly brighter than the darkest leaves; also you used unrealistic, evenly spaced gradients which are not specific to any kind of light source.
Example:

Notice how some large areas are almost evenly lit while others change a lot in a short distance. This is something that restricted palettes are good at: use it to your advantage!
This is just a generic shading tuto for a sphere in harsh light; according to your intended light source  and tree texture, the result might be entirely different but you've got to think about how a specific light works on a specific object, with help from references or IRL experiments if need be.

59
Pixel Art Feature Chest / Re: [WIP] Improving my spooky ghost
« on: September 03, 2014, 12:11:57 pm »
Mathias, you cheater you  :o

Ok, I have a few problems with this (potentially great) piece.

Perspective: to me it looked seen from a low angle, as the characters frontal view and lamp post (both versions) imply. Consequently I didn't see water at all in the bg, only fog. The pavement was partly inconsistent with that, but I saw the scene as taking place on some sort of hillock and all that would be needed in this case was some rounding of the pavement.
At such an angle we wouldn't (or barely) see anything behind the hillock.
The higher angle of view implied by the water is seriously inconsistent with the characters frontal view and lamp post; and more importantly, it's not as 'spooky' as the lower view.
Also it then looks that the dolls are standing just at the edge of the water, yet they're not dripping wet as if they had just emerged, we don't see a pavement-water transition, the presence of bushes and lamp at the edge of water is weird, etc.

Focus: I think the water, esp animated, takes too much attention from the characters anyway. You just want to give a few visual clues of where the scene is located. Also an elaborate scene animation which leaves the main potentially animated element(s) still (characters) looks unfinished to me.

Light: it's good, but could be more striking. Remember the inverse square law: the bushes on the left being 2 to 3 times more distant from the lamp than the large doll's head, they should look 4-9 times darker (whatever that means!). These bushes (also pavement and dress to a lesser extent) should be just hinted at with a few dark patches.
That might also help with the luminous eyes visibility.
If you keep going with the animation, you should have some low diffuse light in the dark phases, at least on the characters, to reduce the jarring blinking contrast.

Bushes: I'd go for some easier and more defined elements such as a few grass blades or other plants that could convey some atmosphere (twisted, lifeless, etc), rocks, derelict wall or fence, etc.

60
Pixel Art / Re: SaxonRah's Self Portrait
« on: September 01, 2014, 10:07:38 pm »
Every pixel was placed by hand of course

I have a very hard time believing this, as it looks like not a single one was. It would sure be interesting to see your reference image.
Additionally, there are 44 colors including some semi-transparency, where there should be 5 including full transp.

Sorry but I can't say much except start again. Pick a reasonable size for hand pixelling (100x100 max), a 4-color palette (you can adjust that later, no need for precision at this point), and before that do a lot of reading-up through these forums to understand what pixel art is (and what it isn't).

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