The Walking Dead (Anti Aliasing by hand) [WIP][C+C]

[HarveyDentMustDie]

Hi guys, this is the first time I'm trying to create pixel art with anti-aliasing. It's still WIP, but I would like to hear your comments and advices. In my humble opinion I think that it's pretty good so far... 
 



This is updated version...


Merged. Try to avoid double posts if the topic is still on the first page. - Crow

[Sohei]

It looks more like blur, not AA. My eyes start to blink unconsciously.
I actually like version with solid blocks better.

[Beetleking22]

Borrowed this from ptoing.. Hope its help.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

Thank you so much, It's really hart to find good AA tutorials. I'll try to correct my mistakes... 

[NaCl]

There are over 600 colors in this piece. It's well constructed but because there are so many colors, it's not really subject to the techniques of pixel art. I do not think these colors were hand chosen. The limited and carefully selected palette of pixel art is what gives it it's crispiness, that good pixel feel. It's not that you're doing anything wrong, just that the critiques on this forum are about pixel art techniques.

I was going to do a color edit, and add contrast to the faces to try and crisp everything up, but it's impossible with all these colors.

[tim]

A lot of colors + anti-aliasing doesn't make sense indeed. You would work faster with high resolution art and reducing it for almost the same results. Pixel art is about getting this pixel feeling. It means very subtle AA usually and fewer colors. Otherwise your work is pretty solid and well done.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

It's a hand drawn, it would be cheating to just resize image. I create pixel art, and this is just something new I'm trying.
It's always fun to try new things, and art has no limits. If I waned to create art with 4 colors I would do that.

Here is one of the first versions->
And here is the image with 256 colors->

[NaCl]

I'm not accusing you of resizing. Just saying that applying pixel art techniques is hard or impossible without a tightly controlled and hand selected palette.

[Phlakes]

Here's a bit from cure's tutorial that explains it better than I could-

You may find that pixel artists often advocate a low color count. You might assume that this is just a tradition leftover from the olden days of pixel art, back when video game consoles could only display a certain amount of colors.

If modern computers can easily display hundreds of colors, why shouldn't you use them all?  In truth, using small palettes isn't an outdated tradition of pixel art, and there are very logical reasons behind this practice.

Cohesion- When you're using less colors, the same colors will reappear throughout the piece more frequently. Since the different areas of the work share the same colors, the palette ties the piece together, unifying the work.

Control- The smaller the palette, the easier it is to manage. You may, and probably will, want to change adjust a color later on. If you've got 200 colors, it's going to take you a lot longer to make the adjustments, because by changing one color you've thrown off its relationship with the colors neighboring it on its color ramps, and adjusting them means changing the relationships between those colors and their neighbors! You can see how this quickly adds up to a lot of work. With a smaller palette, the effect of changing a single color is more substantial, and there are less micro-relationships to worry about.

You're right, art has no limits, but what you have right now is a little blurry and incoherent. The first step in solving that is reducing the colors.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

I'll reduce number of colors and try to make it work. I'll post it here soon. Thanks guys...