AuthorTopic: How to draw pixels from different angles  (Read 3007 times)

Offline mancity

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How to draw pixels from different angles

on: November 14, 2012, 08:26:58 am
Hi all,

Im looking for some advice please.

Im trying to draw a 2d sprite of a ship for a shmup and im really struggling to re-draw it from different angles (rolling to the left and right). Can somebody suggest the best way of doing this?

I was thinking of making a 3d mesh in blender and screen-printing it from all the angles I need and then importing it into paint and colouring it in pixel by pixel, but not sure that's the best way?

Im trying to create a game graphically similar to Dodonpachi.

Thank you for reading

Offline Ai

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Re: How to draw pixels from different angles

Reply #1 on: November 14, 2012, 10:35:10 am
Playing with 3d modelling will help you understand the forms involved and how light plays across them.

What it will not do is grant you speed or consistency. In your position, where you have many different ships to design and render, having a really solid understanding of forms and perspective is really the primary thing that will let you do that in a reasonable time frame with reasonably consistent results.

tl;dr: if I was in your position, I'd use blender as an educational tool, to understand form, perspective and perhaps lighting better, but not as a direct part of my workflow.

If you want some more direct advice: break everything down into boxes. If you can draw boxes in perspective, it's relatively easy to draw other shapes like ramps, curves, cylinders, cones, and spheres that can be fitted inside that box. Same thing with lighting -- if you can light the box correctly, it's not too hard to approximate the lighting for any other simple shape from that.

Also if you're struggling with perspective don't bother with making it specifically as pixel art -- you can always do that once you've worked out how the perspective should work with a much looser drawing.
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline Indigo

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Re: How to draw pixels from different angles

Reply #2 on: November 15, 2012, 09:37:45 pm
You probably don't need it for a slight roll animation for a shmup, though I guess it couldn't hurt either provided you're fast and comfortable in 3D - in which case it may help as a starting point.

That's what I did for Lucky train, though it was a bit more needed being an isometric game with 16 directional trains.  Here's a step-by-step.  People keep asking me about this.  Perhaps I should write an official blog post some time

General Model:


Flat-shade, Vertex Painting, and outline (inverted geo):


Rough render:


Final pixel-over:

« Last Edit: November 15, 2012, 09:41:00 pm by Indigo »