Pixel Art Brushes/Shapes

[API-Beast]

Hey folks,
while arround here I noticed that some works seem to make heavy use of shapes/brushes.

Two examples of what I speak of: slym RAMENSHOP

These are quite obvious, but I would guess that a lot other pieces also make use of brushes, more in the shape finding step though.
For example in this picture I had trouble getting some nice shape for the rocks, then I thought screw it and used the calligraphy brush shipped with GIMP, it was way faster and looked better and in the end wasn't really that visible:


Well, my question now is: what brushes do you guys use?

[Ai]

... the builtin set in Grafx2 pretty much covers it.


The ones that I ever use are highlighted with red. But, unless I'm really laying out a lot of similar patterning -- which I don't find common, in pixel art--, I tend to just go with the 1 pixel brush and the next few sizes
(first, second, and third items in top and bottom row of the large red rectangle.). It just seems a lot less trouble to get the same result with the simple brushes than to make my brain realign to the more unusual brushes ( which tend to be particularly unusual in behaviour when you try to do anything but simply place exactly one of them.

Your image, while each individual rock appears as if it were rendered well, actually demonstrates some of these problems.
When you use a brush that is slanted, it makes it easier to draw things that are slanted that way, and harder to draw things that are slanted in opposition to it. Your lighting reflects this -- you are drawing rocks, but there seem to be a startling lack of sharp angles. I characterize the overall appearance as pearl-like.