Background Tips (or, where's the line when it comes to pixel art)

[mitDebo]

Hey guys:

I've been looking around at stuff for inspiration to make some really outstanding eye catching backgrounds. One in particular that I really like is the skull room in the top center of this guy: http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/X360/Castlevania-HarmonyOfDespair-Chapter5-SongOfTheUnslakableBlade.png

So, I've been looking around for pointers on making backgrounds, and a lot of things point to this tutorial: http://www.barnettcollege.com/tutorial1.htm

What surprised me, though, was the tools the guy used in the tutorial. Gradiant tool? Smudge? Aren't these tools going to give him a wide range of colors, so that his backgrounds aren't actually pixel? Maybe I'm just being naive, but I sort of figured that somehow all great pixel art was put in mostly by hand (which always amazed me). I remember one time, I needed a gradient, so I made one with the gradient tool, and then reduced the colors to like six or so. It got the job done, but it felt like cheating.

Am I shooting myself in the foot here by trying to do everything at least partially by hand? If I were to use something like the smudge tool, what would I do to reduce the palette afterwards?

I'm sorry for the non-central question of this post. Basically, what I want to know is two fold:

- Does anyone have any good resources or tips on making really eye catching backgrounds? Anyone know of any links that describe how some really impressive backgrounds were made?

- More importantly, am I hindering myself by not using all the tools at my disposal? If I did use more traditional digital painting tools, how do I keep my palette from exploding?

Thanks a lot guys!

[Helm]

Ηι.

but I sort of figured that somehow all great pixel art was put in mostly by hand (which always amazed me)

Don't feel bad. That's how most outside people thought about demoscene-era pixel art (which is what the indy background tutorial is attempting to look like, even if it doesn't know it). This more loose sort of 'index painting' (as in, painting with an indexed palette) is quite popular and it's very easy for the trained eye to spot where handpixelling ends and where an automatic tool is introduced.

There are advantages to index painting:

1. Faster to get somewhere where it looks like a thing
2. Easier to do some effects like smooth gradients, opacity, blur, softness, so on.
3. Looks less sharp than pixel art (some people like this) on the whole.

There are disadvantages to index painting:

1. Less control over overall palette
2. Less control over pixel placement, cluster-theory becomes more or less meaningless
3. End result occupies a somewhat uneasy aesthetic space between tight and sharp pixel art and photoshop-tooled CG (though some people, again, like this).

There are also advantages to pixelling mostly by hand:

1. More control, tighter, sharper result.
2. Superb palette control.
3. Good clusters and no banding (if you know your technique)
4. End result looks sharp and precise, i.e. "like pixel art". Not just to outsiders but insiders too.

There are disadvantages, also:

1. It takes a long time
2. It's difficult to work from general to specific like a proper painter would/should
3. The end result is usually very sharp
4. You can see where one color ends and another begins (or alternatively, you can see dithering). Some people like that, some others do not.


In the end it's not about which process (or mixture of processes) you go with, but it is about conveying to us here in Pixelation what you did and how so we can help you by having the proper information. Index painting has a bad reputation around some new-school places for one reason foremost: index painters claiming to have pixelled everything by hand. And index painters straight-up copying photos or artwork by Boris Vallejo and never mentioning it, leaving their audience to think that they came up with that stuff on their own. This artificially inflated sense of capability reeks of dishonesty. And whereas in the real art world it is very scarcely that anyone will come up to you and ask you if you've copied something, in places where learning is the goal (as pixelation), process is as important as the end result. We're not selling tickets here, we're helping each other learn. There are no ratings, there is no popularity contest.

So choose your tools appropriately and let everyone know and we can then start talking about what you made with your tools.

Please ask if you have any follow-up questions, and welcome to Pixelation.

[mitDebo]

Thanks for the awesome reply, Helm!

I actually didn't know much about index painting. I had heard of it in a few places, and I think I vaguely knew it had something to do with automatically restricting the palette. I think I also knew it had a bad reputation, but I didn't realize it was more due to the dishonesty involved with people lying about their process. I thought it was something that was just generally frowned upon.

I assume the background I linked to above was more than likely done in an indexed fashion - I took a small 26x26 chunk of one of the pillars and did a color count on it. It has over 100. My skills when it comes to art (and pixel art in particular) are pretty limited, but even I could make a pretty decent looking column in a 26x26 frame with far less than 100 colors. It's good to know that while it may feel like cheating, there's nothing really all that wrong with doing at least a large piece this way - at least, if I understand everything correctly. (As an aside, I sat down last night to do the background for the game I'm working on, and wanted the background to be 512x512. I was almost immediately overwhelmed by the sheer size of the canvas, if I intended to pixel every gradient and hue shift).

I'm certainly going to have to try my hand more at both index painting and traditional pixel art, as to build up my art repertoire.

[Helm]

Yes! Use what you have, and use it according to what you're trying to do. Whereas some people would pixel a whole 520x background by hand and the end result would probably benefit from the per-pixel love, you also have to consider if you ever want to finish your art for your game and to buget your time. But enough theory-talk, experiment and post your art (along with your process) in the pixel art part of the board to get some practical feedback.

I also checked the bone room in promotion and it's indeed so many colors. It seems to me that bits and pieces are made with an 1-pixel brush, but then layers of darkened gradients are put on top of almost everything, it's a mixed technique for certain, and if you ask me it doesn't look as good as straight-up pixelling, but perhaps the wide public would disagree. I don't even think these castlevania shots are made in an indexed palette to begin with, it's just photoshop with occasional 1-pixel brush detail work, if I had to guess.