Tips for a beginner?

[BeckaMan]

Hi all just registered,
I'm making an old school platformer game. I've never done any pixel art (or art of any kind really ). I started trying to make the main character with GraphicsGale to try and learn this stuff so I can someday hopefully make my own art for my games.

Any good tutorials to check out (creating very simple 8bit style game art)?

Here's my character, hes supposed to have a grey sleeveless top of some kind, grey pants, red gauntlets, purple belt and scabbard for the sword and some white boots. The red/black thing on his back is supposed to look like a cape... :-p

Tips on how to make him look better? This is the amount of detail I want to make it look like an NES game

standing


running cycle. I don't know how to make an animation yet

[Kamillo]

Here is your Animation


i think you need more than 3 frames and the body of your char should be moving more.

[BeckaMan]

thanks. how did you do it?

actually many NES/Master System games wouldn't animate the upper body or use more than a few frames for a run cycle. I might try adding some movement to the upper body to see how it looks. Most likely I'm not going to use this sprite for anything, it's just for practive

[r1k]

I can tell you either drew on top of, or heavily referenced the ninja gaiden sprite.  Youll learn more if you learn how to construct a run cycle yourself than copying frames someone else has made.

I think the ninja gaiden run is referencing the way you see ninjas running in animes.  Like theyre moving so fast and controlled they cancel out the normal vertical body movement a run has.  And the upper body remains static to show his control and concentration.  The point is that the way he runs reveals something about the character and you should consider that when making a run/walk cycle.

[PixelPiledriver]

Welcome to Pixelation.

I can tell you either drew on top of, or heavily referenced the ninja gaiden sprite.  Youll learn more if you learn how to construct a run cycle yourself than copying frames someone else has made.

It's not just the animation a lot of your pixel clusters are exactly the same, re colored, or slightly altered.

I've never done any pixel art (or art of any kind really ).

BeckaMan, this can be a good exercise in studying other peoples art.
But if you really want to improve your own abilities you need to work from scratch and apply what you learn from observations and thought.
Come back with some original pixels.
Same character, animation, colors, pose, etc, are fine.
As an example I've used your image and the ninja gaiden image as a reference to redraw your character from scratch.

See what you can come up with.

[BeckaMan]

Welcome to Pixelation.

Thanks

Yeah, Ninja Gaiden is the inspiration for the game and I want that to reflect on the characters and animation as well. This is a first draft so I copied Ryus sprites to learn how game sprites are made but I will start to differentiate it more in the future. I'm using these sprites + ninja gaiden sprites as placeholders when testing the game for now.

I still want to keep the basic pose from Ryu and probably the anime style running (but I'll try the upper body movement just to learn how to do it and see what it looks like).

PixelPiledriver (another rasslin fan? ), thats really nice, something like that is what I'm going for as I try and develop my own style. But as I said I just started learning and I might do some more copying for now to learn how others did it and then try to start something from the scratch.

One problem I'm debating now on the design level is that I find more "childish" characters of the 8bit era with their big heads etc have more character (Mega Man for example), but my game's story is dark and mature so I feel like a more "realistic" character is needed. Problem is realistic 8bit characters often look boring with their squinty one pixel eyes, realistic body proportions and blocky heads...

Thanks for the answers. I'll come back with v.2.0 at some point. Might take some time, have to divide my time between pixel art, programming, studies/thesis and life :-]

Still haven't found the perfect tutorial, though. I went through these http://wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=3467.0  but many of them don't exist anymore or are not right for me. Learn by doing I guess and looking at references. Thsi was an OK read, though http://superwalrusland.com/ohr/issue63/lp/lp.html

Btw, I've been using the free version of GraphicsGale which annoyingly doesn't work with GIFs. Should I fork over the 15€ for it, or are the better free options?

[Zizka]

Welcome, BeckaMan,

Word of advice, always, always, always post your references. Better safe than sorry, trust me. Even if it's a minor thing, people appreciate it when artists are as upfront as they can be.

Not sure how much you'll learn copying stuff... I think you'd probably learn more by trying your own version even if it's really bad at first. Ptoing did a really good running tutorial which explains how to draw each frame step by step. If you take the time to follow it, you could come up with something much more unique and learn in the process. Just my two cents.

[BeckaMan]

Not sure how much you'll learn copying stuff... I think you'd probably learn more by trying your own version even if it's really bad at first.

Well, I mean how do I know how to do something out of thin air if I've never done it or seen someone else do it before? Or is that what art is then? I dunno.

Anyways, did this steampunk ninja. I was supposed to do something else than pixel art today, but here we are :0 without any black borders this time:

Having trouble with positioning the hands and the feet.

Digging the hair and the night the vision goggles, Ninja Dude!
Hand on sword
Ready to throw some shurikens or sumthin?
Thumbs up!

[32]

I personally think copying is a valid method of learning, just as long as your end goal is to learn from the experience and not to simply copy. In regards to .gif animations I wholeheartedly recommend purchasing GraphicsGale, it's very very cheap for art software. If you really don't want to shell out the money you can still export sheets and image sequences in the free version if I recall, just a matter of getting a free software to turn that export into a .gif.

[BeckaMan]

I personally think copying is a valid method of learning, just as long as your end goal is to learn from the experience and not to simply copy.

That's my thinking too

In regards to .gif animations I wholeheartedly recommend purchasing GraphicsGale, it's very very cheap for art software. If you really don't want to shell out the money you can still export sheets and image sequences in the free version if I recall, just a matter of getting a free software to turn that export into a .gif.

I like it and from what I've read it seems to be well recommended, so I bought it

Should I try and learn some traditional drawing as well because I can't draw at all. Maybe to draw simple pose figures to plan my pixel characters?