GR#229 - Robot - AA

[ramenradian]

So uhm, hi. New user, hope we get along, etc, etc(there's no intro board, so that's my intro ). So this is the piece I've been wanting some help with:



It's mainly for AA practice, but I also wanted to try doing bigger pieces because most pixelart I've done are game sprites and the like. Anyway, I probably need another buffer color or two, and maybe a highlight as well? I'm still an amateur when it comes to picking colors  Plus some of the lines are iffy, especially on the dark, tube things.

Oh, can I throw in another earlier piece I did? It was mainly to familiarize myself with aseprite.



I'm content with this one, but if you can suggest other improvements, please do!

So.. that's it, thanks for reading. 

[EvilEye]

I think you've got the basic idea, but I don't think you're using a dark enough color for the AA. Also going too heavily makes the lines thicker in sort of a glow-like fashion, which is not really the point. You're trying to soften the jaggedness not increase the line thickness.

[NaCl]

I don't quite see this piece as needing AA. I think AA can be very effective when pixel artists are approaching the work like a painting, utilizing a very tightly controlled palette and rendering. But for something like this with large planes of color, I think AA is not adding anything. Just bringing it closer to a sort of digital painting. I see that you're just practicing, but I do think knowing when to use it and when not to is an important lesson! I feel what would elevate this piece is not AA, but work on the palette. To me, great pixel art lives and dies by its palette!

Also, I don't know if this applies to you at all, but I see newer pixel artists (myself among them) trying to use AA to fix a weak palette. It's hard to get colors that can sit next to each other and really look great, and there is a desire to fudge that by using AA. But that's a mistake. Getting the colors right is too important.

[PixelPiledriver]

Welcome to Pixelation! 

Try integrating the darkest color into various parts of the image instead of using it only for the lines.


You seem to be only applying AA to lines.
But you can also use AA on edges where large, or small, shapes meet.


I also recommend to do some reading on what AA is by definition.
How does a computer rasterize image data?
How does it choose which pixels to render?
Why does it place AA pixels in certain areas?
What RGB should the AA pixel be?
How and when would you make those choices manually?

[Manupix]

I think you're applying AA in an automatic sort of way, like a recipe: classic beginner mistake (no prob with that!)
There is actually only one criterion about AA and other pixel refining techniques: it has to look good (for AA, this means smooth).
You can only check that at 100 or 200%, the intended viewing size and the one where the viewer can see and appreciate at once the overall image AND the pixeling niceness (or brush or pencil strokes, in analog media). If you apply AA at the large zoom factor you're working at without checking at those lower scales, you'll only see the trees (pixels), not the forest (piece).
You'll have to either open 2 windows of the same image if your software allows it (one large to work and one small to check), or constantly zoom in and out, for almost every single pixel you place. Tedious, but there's no workaround.

For the animation, the only crit I'd have is the face (eyes + mouth) look disconnected from the body, because the 'wings' don't appear to move along with it. I have no idea how this could be done, because of the near absence of detail.