cheating?

[ndchristie]

this is not pixel art, it is hand-drawn and reduced, but my question to the group is, does it look ok? (ignore the fact that it is for the moment colorless).
this method saves a huge amount of time and i actually am quite fond of the appearence myself, but others may differ, so i was wondering what the rest of the world thought.  directed mainly at those posessing an LCD monitor, not a CRT one, because this project is headed for the GBA
ill probably end up not reducing it by so many colors next time but this is just a test run

[Ryumaru]

it looks ok, but you can never have the clarity and maximum usage of colors found in pixelart. i would love to pixel those rocks btw 

[AlexHW]

The structure seems to work great in my opinion. Seems to have the right depth(cliffs look like cliffs)
In regards to it aimed for the gba, if it works, it works. It shouldn't matter whether it's pixel-art in that regard.
I would be interested in seeing how you'd color this, because it could look very different when you do.

[Feron]

Looks great on this very bright imac display.  I can't wait untill you shade, your colours are always top-notch and will really emphasise this.  It could probably pass as pixelart - but at least your not claiming it is

[snake]

The main issue with using hand drawn things like this is usually that the styles mix. If you clearly see what part is pixel and what isn't the result can sometimes look awful, like when you put a million-colour gradient in a sprite-based pixel game. Personally, I think this looks great. Just make sure that whatever pixelart you use has a look that mixes well with the background.

[Helm]

This is fine, but you'll find all the time you save in the drawing process will be lost in the optimizing and coloring process. I find that doing VERY CLEAN lineart with a soft pencil and then reducing to 3 colors (background, ink, and one shade of aa) is a good base to work on, nothing more.

[.TakaM]

i think its fine, pre-renders is really the only thing I consider cheating

onto your mockup, they tile pretty well and are interesting to look at, I would like to see a nice coloured version

[Conzeit]

I say go for it, though after playing around a bit with the pallete I can see where Snake and Helm come from.

I'd reccomend you to try and sprite from light to dark

[ndchristie]

This is fine, but you'll find all the time you save in the drawing process will be lost in the optimizing and coloring process. I find that doing VERY CLEAN lineart with a soft pencil and then reducing to 3 colors (background, ink, and one shade of aa) is a good base to work on, nothing more.

that may have been your particular experience, but thats not what ive found when ive used this method now or in the past (although it should be known that i am trying to preserve a feeling of hand-drawn-ness, so all i do is clean and change the palette.  if i wasnt, i wouldnt bother with any of this stuff because you are right, to get it to look like pixelart would take a rediculous amount of time)

the benefit of this lies in the fact that i can do a whole batch of similar objects in nearly the same amount of time as it takes to do one or two.  as long as all these rocks are the same type of stone, they can be colored in much the same way with minimal tweeking

[Helm]

Well of course. All I can offer is practical tips from my own experience.

I am not personally very fond of low-resolution art that looks natural-medium but tiles as well. I am fine with painted backgrounds and stuff, for adventure games, but I don't enjoy tiles that aren't tiley. I think whereas tiles can do well to eliminate the grid and whatnot, they should also not be embarrased to be tiles. Therefore I find pixel-arty tiles to suit my tastes better. But that's just me.