AuthorTopic: New to the Forums~ Fountain Help!  (Read 2700 times)

Offline Ruby

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New to the Forums~ Fountain Help!

on: December 16, 2013, 08:25:16 pm
Hi everyone! I've been working on this fountain for some time now and it looks very... Blurry, and I can't seem to fix it, any help?



C+C PLEASE. <3

Offline jahasaja

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Re: New to the Forums~ Fountain Help!

Reply #1 on: December 16, 2013, 09:16:19 pm
The reason why it looks blurry is because you use way too many colors. I was going to do an edit but I think your first step should just be to pick out perhaps around 10-15 colors and remove the rest.

However, I must say that I think the water looks really good. The problem is the texture of the rest of the piece.

(Sorry that I could not be more specific I am also a beginner)

Offline astraldata

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Re: New to the Forums~ Fountain Help!

Reply #2 on: December 17, 2013, 07:18:08 am
It appears you've used the smudge tool in Photoshop or some other program like that. The bad thing is, you're likely not going to be able to save this piece without taking the outlines and just starting over completely. Photoshop isn't designed to work on pieces this small -- read: pixel art

Aside from that, your color choice and contrast is very nice and your outlines look pretty good too. You're just going to have to learn to do manual anti-aliasing to get the crisp look you're going for.

It's best to leave photoshop tools alone when doing pixel art. They create an enormous and usually unmanageable amount of colors for pixel art to work cleanly with. Even if you manage a nice-looking image, it's going to clash with well done pixel art anyhow since most amazing pieces of pixel art use from 4-15 colors (including all shades and color variations used in the piece).

For a crisp pixelled image at this resolution, it's best to create a small palette to start with (plus a few shade variations called a "ramp") and then reuse those colors wherever possible in the image, and only create a new one when you are absolutely certain you cannot use another shade/value/hue you currently have already in the piece.
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Offline Nameless Force

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Re: New to the Forums~ Fountain Help!

Reply #3 on: December 17, 2013, 02:48:04 pm
Quick edit:

Made by reducing the color count with GIMP, then adding the blues back in.  Six colors total: two blues and four greys.  I think the water was nicer in the original, but hey, it's not blurry anymore.

Offline astraldata

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Re: New to the Forums~ Fountain Help!

Reply #4 on: December 17, 2013, 09:46:20 pm
Also, as an FYI, in a design like this, don't overwork yourself -- only do half the image and copy/paste/flip-horizontally the image so you can have the entire thing. At that point, you just tweak the light-source/shadows a bit to hide the fact that you took a shortcut. This is how most professional artists used to do it.

But as an aside, the water does look nice blurred in the original. If you kept any of that from the original, that would be the *only* aspect I'd suggest keeping.
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Offline Sardone

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Re: New to the Forums~ Fountain Help!

Reply #5 on: December 18, 2013, 01:40:47 pm
I think you rip off some pieces from others and put them together.