Then and now

[Dessa]

Of course, all of us have, at some point in our lives, been noobs.  I want to see how far people have come.  Do any of you pixel-senseis have early works that you might have been proud of at the time but look back at like "man, that sucks."  Or alternately, stuff that you're not even proud of at all, but still have lying around for whatever reason.  I know I would find it encouraging to see how far people have come, and I'm sure there are probably some others out there as well that would too.

What's YOUR pixel story?  I think it'd be inspiring to see the kind of progress people can make when they work at something

I started when I was around 12, making sprites for a Hypercard game my friends and I were making at school.  32x32, 2 colors.  It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot by having to deal with such strict limitations.  Shortly after Jr. Hugh though, I stopped.  I restarted about a month ago (20 years later!) after having promised some friends on another board I'd make them a set of smileys.

I wish I could post those old sprites from the 90s, but I honestly don't know if hypercard still exists, much less where that old floppy disk with the game on it went to.  This was the first work I declared "finished" from about 6 weeks ago: , and yeah, I can spot the inexperience (although I'm still fond of a couple of those).  Not trying to pretend like I'm all good now or anything, but I'm better than I was.

But I'm most curious about those of you who have been at this for YEARS.  How much has your stuff changed?

[Cure]

Here's a thread from a while back that might be relevant to your interests.

[Mush]

 This was the first pixel art I made (uses 25 colors!):



http://www.pixeljoint.com/files/icons/full/broc58244524518_iaza.gif
http://www.pixeljoint.com/files/icons/mt._gold2.png
http://64digits.com/users/Mush/ernie2.png

This is the latest (8 colors):


http://64digits.com/users/Mush/pond2.png
http://mushsauce.110mb.com/nesmoc31.png
http://64digits.com/users/Mush/nesmoc12.png

I started pixelling in '06 to create placeholder sprites for my Game Maker games. I then found pixeljoint and haven't stopped since.

[adcrusher524]

My first pixel art was an attempt to get a sprite into my brothers game... unfortunately it fell short and they made fun of me and called it noodle arms, and I'm pretty sure I cried about it (i was only 11 ) anyways i lost that one so here is the oldest one i have:

and newest:

[pistachio]

Wait, Cure. I think she's asking more about how we got interested in pixel art and how we developed, progressed and improved over time. In other words our "Pixel" story. Posting our oldest pixel art could only be a part of it.

Mine's relatively short compared to some of yours (but a lot of things happened in that short time span). Regardless I'll try to keep the length appropriate (hopefully)--often when I do things like this it turns into a full-length autobiography. In case that happens I'll tone down the font size.

I think I started around '05 or '06. I was a huge fan of DeviantArt back then, namely the art that I (and probably many of you) now see could have been improved heaps. All I did was praise and admire through a series of praising, admiring comments. Frankly I wasn't much of a typist back then.

One artist I praised and admired in particular was a guy called Bleedman. I wasn't the only one, though. Read through all his comics, subscribed, commented, messaged, everything. Hell, I even made about five pieces of fanart. I still have my account up, but it hasn't been touched for years--I think I put my oldest pixels over there, and I'd rummage through everything I had and reflect on it had it not been for the fact that I'm now too lazy to find my account information.

Eventually, somewhere about a few months I thought I might start doing something myself. First thing on that list was the aforementioned fanart. Then I started pixelling, mostly terrible fan sprites of several Sonic the Hedgehog fan-characters, one of which I remember was a purple rabbit. I can already remember the sheer amount of pillow-shading on every single one of those things. That's when I got interested in "improving". One among a chain of mistakes I made following that period was hunting down all the tutorials I could find and abiding by all their rules. Unfortunately most of them were bad ones. This was back in the day when a lot of pixellers, or at least those I was around, were still pillow-shading, including me.

This went on for half a year or something. Nothing too special in the first half of 2007, really. Eventually I found a new fandom, that being NiGHTS into Dreams, so that was the subject of a lot of my pixels and art. When the new Wii game came out I was for some reason elated. Only problem, I didn't have a Wii, but it made me almost forget about my past fandom, and it sparked an increase in my pixelling productivity.

I wish I could show you, but shortly after that, everything on that computer died.

The next thing I remember being significant was a movie called 9... Oh boy. Up to this point I wasn't really too interested in the "art" part of fanart; rather, the "fan" aspect. That changed when I saw the trailer for that movie. I don't know what made me say, "Ragdolls running around in a post-apocalyptic environment? Sweet!" but I did. I certainly have drawings of the movie's characters laying around. It was the first thing I really wanted to draw properly. I suppose I'd get more attention that way. So what did I do? Practice. But mostly tutorials. I did that until I thought I drew things like that perfectly. The next step was to show it off to people who might like it. After joining a forum and realizing the community’s presumably caffeine-fueled, chock-full-of-emoticons energy was starting to cling to me, frankly, I thought I'd be better off leaving and keeping that fandom to myself. From time to time, though, I still look back at the regrettable things I did.

Either before or after that fiasco, I discovered the haven that is Pixelation--before that, PixelJoint, but for some reason this site caught my interest more. That was when I realized that those ragdolls were the only thing I knew how to draw properly. That I wasn't taking art very seriously, really. Pixelling had become one of my hobbies over time. Well, here I am now, 5 "fandoms" later and still going. I still consider myself something of a beginner even to this day. I know I still have a lot to learn (like don't turn posts into autobiographies) and hope this forum, and maybe that ConceptArt place if I join, will help me along the way.

One heck of a wall of text, ain't it? Pixel art is coming when I find it. The oldest one I have now is actually somewhat recent, and my most recent ones are mostly edits.

In fact I don't think any of my older ones on here are actually pixels. Closest thing I have + oldest and closest thing to a pixel (silly 9 fan-art):



Recent-est (unfinished):

[Nmb910]

Posting my 'pixel story' would be like posting a short Bio.

anyways, I made games as i improved.  Some have been reworked, but most have their original tiles.
Some are also not finished.
THE THINGS Experimental purely.  Very start of pixeling.
Petland A cheap clone I made, shortly after my first game.
City Just starting to get better.  Some sprites have been changed, but i never got to finishing.
Village Another experimental game, slighty reworked.

This is when I started getting seriously into pixeling.

Fatality Pieced together for a competition, I never linked the titlescreen to the game.
Left 4 Dead 3 Another competition piece, I only finished the titlescreen.
Kron Adventure Most up to date art I can post right now.
Not finished and some stuff is place-holder tiles.

It seems I started a lot worse then most of you did, and I'm still not as good as many of you. :/
Hope you enjoyed looking at my work.

By the way:  At the moment, I have had less then a year of pixel experience.

[Cure]

Well in that case,

First computer art program I ever recall using was Kid Pix
Then starting making stuff using mspaint (scribbles and pictures using lots of circle tool and floodfill, etc)
Then I realized you could zoom, so I could make my mspaint pictures a little more detailed
Combined this with the desire to make something cool like the pokemon creature/trainer sprites, and I started pixelling
Early stuff is long gone, one I recall was a horned dude's face that used over 200 colors or something, and I also made a bunch of tiny people (maybe 10 pixels tall)

Found out about online art through elfwood (fantasy-type drawings), heard about deviantart from there. Hung out at dA for a little while, then I heard about pixeljoint, and that's where any real progress started.

Here's the roughest-lookin' early stuff I can find, via my PJ profile:



~5 years later:

(actual most recent stuff is just some small sprites, this better illustrates the skill gap I assume you're lookin' for)

- - -
sorry for the huge post.

[skamocore]

Well in that case,

First computer art program I ever recall using was Kid Pix

:O Zomg, I remember using that.

Anyway, I suppose the underwater theme might make this a good comparison (also, sorry for the huge size ):

2001

2007

2010

[Dessa]

Okay, well Cure is some kind of pixel freak, because he started out half-decent and just got amazing.

As for the long post apologies, feel free to make a long post!  This is your Pixel-Story!  Rome wasn't built in a day, and I'm interested in the journey.

[Jeremy]

I remember drawing Pokemon on our class's computer at Primary School, would have been about 8 or so. Just circle tool etc.

Found out about pixelart in around 2007, probably from looking at smileys and other sprites/icons closely, like many others. Probably did some huge oekaki stuffs, which is either deleted or on my old computer somewhere.

Discovered PJ and Pixelation, also in 2007/2008, read all the tutorials I could find on both. Lurked for about a year on PJ before joining in 2008, a little later here.

Pixelled lots and lots and lots, improved a bit 

2008



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2009




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2010



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2011





too many pictures