Need help going from low-res to not-so-low-res

[Cellusious]

Hi, been stalking these forums for a while and finally decided to join. (hi :>)

I'd love advice on how to take low-res > not-so-low-res

Etc, this is very low res, and i'd love to bring it bigger but i can't seem to make it work.


Here's my portfolio with a few of my pieces if needed, http://cellusious.com/

Cheers!
- Olav

[r1k]

well the best thing to do would be to post an attempt youve done so we can tell you how to improve it.  With a larger image, you dont need to worry about the pixels right away.  So start by just taking a larger brush and sketching it out/blocking out the shapes.  Do that until you have everything roughly how you want it then go into the pixeling.
Sometimes people will blow up their small image, then sketch the higher res version on top in a new layer over it.  If you do this though, remember you dont have to be totally faithful to the placement of things in the low res sprite (in fact you shouldnt be alot of the time).

[Cellusious]

I tried to do high res here then abandoned it and just copied and pasted the stuff around to get textures and abstraction.


These are all failed trials at upping the size, which either makes them look just plain wrong or noisy when i try to not make them look flat.
I'm no fan of outlines and try to avoid that at all cost.
Using brushes + the tablonitor often result in very surreal stuff because of weak lineflow rather than actually getting what i want.

Cheers!
- Olav

[PixelPiledriver]

Hello Cellusious.
Welcome to the forums.
Checked out your gallery.
Very cool stuff, I like it a lot.

I am a bit confused as to what you are asking for in this thread.

Do you want to scale up this sprite?


Or are you looking for pixel art theory in general?
Be more specific and we can more easily help.

[Cellusious]

i want to be able to do pixel art 2x or 3x that size without looking bad, Not just that sprite, but in general. Edit looks great, i want to be able to do stuff like that.

Edit:
Another failure

[coffee]

Edit looks great, i want to be able to do stuff like that.

Well PP's edit is not actually a scale up. He did scale it up but then he took away most of the scaled pixels and replaced them with normal sized ones.
I'm not sure but, I don't really know if there is a special way to do your art so it would look better scaled. The examples you posted looks really interesting even though you pasted some things, in this
case it even looks good, kind of abstract like From Dust (http://oyster.ignimgs.com/ve3d/images/07/44/74472_ProjectDust-02.jpg)

I usually don't do it in a special way than what I usually do even when I know it might be scaled to fit a certain resolution. I guess it's just a matter of good basic technique since any weird thing going on or something like it will be noticed a lot easier when it's scaled.

[Cellusious]

Not look better scaled, do art at the same size as the edit; which looks good.
I don't want my low res to look better scaled up that' seems pointless.

This is rather low res, and therefore took around 2 minutes to pixel and animate.


if i could do the same things, just at a higher res for more detail and space for aa.

These are low res AA'ed to hell.

[Facet]

I think the problem might be that it's just harder to hide some of the technical issues/ambiguities that you might usually get away with without the forced shape abstraction of low resolution or the texture obfuscation of your high res stuff (some absolutely lovely textures btw!).

My advice would be to force yourself to work with minimal textures/stylisation for a while to better root out technical problems; foremost being form/lighting imo. I get the feeling that you don't know exactly what to do with the extra space of these larger pixels without all the texture?

[Cellusious]

Thanks!
Yeah, put in another way; cheating by working at lower res/hiding details in *cleverly* put noise.

I tried to do these, any way to make them show their form better?
These are still what i consider low-res but it's towards the right direction.


I would also (instead) love feedback and critique on the animation over;
how to enlarge it, improve it, etc. Animation/sprite anyhow.

[ptoing]

If you have not already, go here and read the Ramblethread.

It is a longish read and quite technical, but I am sure it will make some things clearer to you.