AuthorTopic: Trying Pixel Art again  (Read 3454 times)

Offline Aaron P

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Trying Pixel Art again

on: January 17, 2013, 02:44:06 am

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About 3 or 4 years ago I had a deep interest in Pixel Art, went and lived life a little and now i'm back to it. So I have a Wizard I spent about 30-40 mins on, very plain, what improvements can be made to this guy?

a) I know his legs are kinda short, but I guess I was going for that look. *shrug* Consider this a character to eventually be put into a dungeon crawler.
b) This character would be displayed at 2x resolution.
c) I kind of like a pixel art style that uses no bright highlights and no outlines, but i'm definitely wanting to increase my ability to texture with 3 colors ( of course everything is 2 colors right now ).

Offline YellowLime

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Re: Trying Pixel Art again

Reply #1 on: January 17, 2013, 09:50:09 am
From top to bottom:

The color scheme is sort of boring, as you may know. Just a color for flesh and one for clothes. You said to think of this as in a dungeon crawler. Well, in the finished game it should have at least another color, like red.

The hat doesn't have a line that separates the upper-pointy part with the cover-your-face-from-the-sun part. Looks like a flat triangle.

The guy doesn't have hair. I don't know if this was intentional.

The eyes are too squinty. Maybe because you tried to avoid beady cartoon eyes, and wanted something maybe more realistic. But like this, it looks like he's a bad guy, an Asian stereotype, or a mix of both.  :lol:

The two white pixels are spectacles, right? Or... are those the eyes? Does that mean that what I thought were the eyes, are actually the eyebrows? (If that were the case, the eyes are too far down, and the brows are too big.)

The arms are in a weird outstreched position, like about to give a hug (or cast a spell), not resting. They should be more vertical.

The legs are, as you said, too short, but acceptable if you're not shooting for realism. You said they're OK to you, so... *shrug*

I really think that lines wider than one pixel usually look bad. So I wouldn't shade the robe like that. So you should either use a third color that has an intermediate value for the shadows. Or, if the style is "I don't want to use any lines", use a lighter purple instead, so that it doesn't pop out so much.

Here's an edit that addresses only a couple of the things I mentioned:



Hope I helped  :)
« Last Edit: January 17, 2013, 09:54:16 am by YellowLime »

Offline Aaron P

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Re: Trying Pixel Art again

Reply #2 on: January 28, 2013, 04:23:55 am
Thank you for your response YellowLime!

I Took everything to heart and read some pixel art tuts, art tuts, got myself into a little grove. I'm working on a new character, a Stone Golem



Only the art and a shoulder done...trying to get the texture I'm looking for...

Does the colored and textured Shoulder read as "bulky rock"? What can I do to improve it? Does this red color palette work well?

Offline Cage

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Re: Trying Pixel Art again

Reply #3 on: January 28, 2013, 11:17:51 am
Textures are considered a part of the detailing process - something you do last on your piece.

Since you have your lineart (which is pretty nice, btw!) I recommend that you colour it with a single, midtone colour (if he's not going to be all brown, then one color of each hue in case of differently colored parts) and then block out the general shading - it doesn't have to be precise yet, it's purpose is to show, what geometry, what 3d shapes is your character made out from.

Since it's a stone golem, you might want to go with blocky/cube shapes.


Excuse the roughness, but it's just supposed to give you the idea ;) Of course not perfect cubes, but when working with rocks, think of them as blocks first.

The texture so far, reads in my mind as more of a pillowy surface - like it's edges drop down smoothly. Rocks most of the time have a rough texture or a layered appearance. Another picture to illustrate:




As far as the colors go: I like the muddied-reddish base color, for lighter colors you could warm it a bit to an more orange hue for example. Observe how the lights and shadows shift the color in real life.

Oh, and the current three shades are very close together value wise - don't be afraid of contrast - it's something that makes up the readability of sprite and makes them pop :) If the difference between too colors is too much, you can always add an in-between color. If you're just starting with pixelart, I wouldn't worry too much about the number of colors, but try not to get too overboard ;) In general, you should focus on making things look good first - using lower color counts and clever colors/palettes comes with the experience, don't worry about it yet.

Hope this helps, good luck!