AuthorTopic: CSW Style Character  (Read 11561 times)

Offline Ai

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Re: CSW Style Character

Reply #20 on: July 06, 2010, 08:29:28 am
What should my artistic process look like? Following the tutorial on the CSW site, I make the head and then I draw blobs. Should I be doing stick figures or trying it out by hand first? I am even worse at sketching, should I be trying to improve my art in other fields to help my pixelling?

Your artistic process is really up to you; regarding the CSW tutorial, that is just a process that can be added in to your artistic process - it doesn't really explain much to inform overall art planning. As to whether you should be trying to improve in other fields.. YES. Every so often on Pixelation, someone observes that pixel art is just an art medium, so things you learn about art in general apply just as much to pixel art, and vice versa.

I personally agree that pixel art is only a medium, and as such, it's often unproductive to aim to become better at pixel art when your general art skills are lacking. I recommend instead, aiming to improve your general skills (in areas like.. of primary importance: Anatomy, perspective, composition. Of secondary importance: Color Contrast, Light/shadow, Color Tone.)

In particular, I would pick on your identified inability to sketch well. That is absolutely vital to fix; until you can sketch your ideas quickly and with acceptable accuracy, based on my experience you will often end up with wrong intentions -- trying to fix an ill-conceived picture rather than polishing one that makes fundamental sense to you. (btw, there is nothing wrong with doing bad sketches.. it's just a matter of keeping sketching the thing until you get something that works. that's why speed can help a lot.)

You suggest drawing stick figures -- this is a good idea IMO. I like to draw them one after another on a huge canvas (an app like MyPaint that implements an infinite canvas helps) so that I can have them interacting. The repetition also helps me to remember my mistakes and discoveries better.

Hope some of that helps :)
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Offline Ai

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Re: CSW Style Character

Reply #21 on: July 06, 2010, 08:45:24 am
Never seen that site. Grabbed a copy of the book. Thanks for posting that, Ai!
I inserted "body {background-color:#b0c4de;} " into the page's CSS to get rid of the white bg. Much better.

As for the quote you included above, I think I disagree. If I started over every time I disliked the first strokes I'd probably never get anywhere. I tend to sketch quickly and lightly until I see what I want then go from there - possibly sketching the same arcing line(s) over and over, on top of each other until it's right, or good enough. Maybe when I get some actual skill I could heed Harold's advice.
.. I'd say he's not talking about being perfect artistically, but about being DECISIVE. If you keep on drawing the same curve over and over, I'd argue that means you don't know what that curve is FOR, what you intend with it.
(which means you can't know when you have succeeded (you're not performing a test, just messing around).. so Atnas' observervation* about learning more makes a lot of sense.)

* amusing typo intentionally preserved
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline Moribund

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Re: CSW Style Character

Reply #22 on: July 06, 2010, 06:28:31 pm
 :'( I thought I'd be started on my game by now.

 :y: ALRIGHT, I will be an ARTIST.

Offline Ai

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Re: CSW Style Character

Reply #23 on: July 06, 2010, 11:50:48 pm
Did you say something about making a game, before? (EDIT: apparently you did -- sorry, I don't read the Introduce Yourself thread)

You can certainly reduce your requirements if you want to just make good-enough placeholder art for the time being:
* only use 2 shades per surface -- it's all that's strictly needed to distinguish an element enough. Knowing when to outline is also important.
* focus on correct proportion, relative positioning (as in animation), and coloring (particularly color priority). shape/form is definitely significant, but you can get away somewhat more with kludging the bits you don't quite understand, for faster moving game sprites.
* Ignore special effects like specular highlights and radiosity, except on materials like metal where they are really pronounced. (so on your latest sprite, the belly and hair highlights would be left out. This would leave the sprite with less pop, but more functional and much quicker to edit)
* Looking at Cortex Command, a sense of overall scene lighting seems to be required too.
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.