AuthorTopic: how important is drawing skill to pixel art?  (Read 2156 times)

Offline skoby

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how important is drawing skill to pixel art?

on: May 21, 2012, 02:15:34 pm
Having recently gotten back into pixel art only to have my laptop die I've had to go back to pencil and paper. I've been trying to do some concept sketches for sprites/characters and they are coming out terrible! With a good reference my sketches can look ok, but still nothing special. When I attempt more creative sketches relying more on imagination it ends up looking far worse. Looking at the creativity sticky I see a lot of you are very talented in other art techniques too, so its got me wondering how far you can really advance in pixel art when you can't draw.

Ps sorry if this is poorly written I'm using my phone on a break at work.

Offline Helm

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Re: how important is drawing skill to pixel art?

Reply #1 on: May 21, 2012, 04:08:35 pm
'Can't draw' seems like a very psychologically charged thing. The question isn't fit for answering directly, I think. If you want to further your traditional skills, you'll have to suffer that period where, although already capable in one medium (pixels in this case) you can't seem to translate your ideas as readily into something that looks good to you in another medium. It gets better, though. If you could learn one skill to your satisfaction (arranging pixels) then by applied practice you can learn another.

There are many factors that will influence whether you do put in the thousands of hours needed to draw to your satisfaction on paper with pencil. I can't know them, so I can't tell you if you can achieve this. But it's achievable. If you do not achieve it, it is not because it was impossible, but because at some point you made a choice to not struggle with this issue of getting up to speed in a different medium. This is a respected choice, it's one most artists make (otherwise all of them would be equally versed in all media) because there isn't enough time/willpower in a single life for everything.

You can be a decent pixel TECHNICIAN without good fundamental skills. That means, you can dither correctly, avoid banding and control your palette and stuff like that. You can do a lot with good pixel technique. You can immitate a 'game art' type of style and use that lexicon to tell a story or make a game or make a comic, whatever. These are very valuable things and they do not take a lot of pencil and paper ability. It's a limited skill set in itself, and its potential is multiplied drastically when combined with actual good art fundamentals (I don't mean to present myself as any poster boy for this, my fundamental art skills are not great - I still have troubles drawing a face or a complicated hand gesture sometimes). The investment in time and effort to get those fundamental art skills is a personal choice. If you do go for it, I wholeheartedly urge you to study life-drawing, either at a studio or by perusing threads in forums dedicated to that sort of thing and getting constant critique. You will get better faster that way and you'll also have some encouragement to keep at it.
« Last Edit: May 21, 2012, 04:11:17 pm by Helm »

Offline blumunkee

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Re: how important is drawing skill to pixel art?

Reply #2 on: May 21, 2012, 06:06:02 pm
Being able to draw is quite helpful if you see your financial well-being dependent on making art.

In school, I felt sorry for the students around me who where majoring in graphic design but couldn't really draw. It's like they where handicapped, both in skill and in confidence.

If I had a problem, I could just draw it out and get an idea of where to go from there, whereas they had to just throw some spaghetti on the wall and work with what stuck.