AuthorTopic: Astroids (wip)  (Read 7830 times)

Offline smithy101

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Astroids (wip)

on: February 05, 2015, 04:02:07 pm
Hello,
here are some astroids where i have been working on. I have redesinged them a few time and this was the best one. So advice to improve would be nice.
« Last Edit: February 06, 2015, 06:14:02 am by smithy101 »

Offline Nirel

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Re: Astroids

Reply #1 on: February 05, 2015, 07:22:11 pm
You need more contrast in the palette, and I'd try to make less banding/pillow shading

Offline winkatawink

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Re: Astroids

Reply #2 on: February 05, 2015, 09:27:49 pm
I've had some experience with pixelling asteroids, though these might not be the best examples.



As Nirel said, you should add more contrast to these to give them more depth. Also, think about where the light is hitting the asteroids, and how it will affect the colours and tones. The asteroids look a little flat at the moment, you try adding depth with shading and lines like i have done above, revealing some of the portruding and receeding parts of the object. It helps to think of them as 3D things rather than flat 2D objects
ey what up

Offline DragonDePlatino

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Re: Astroids

Reply #3 on: February 06, 2015, 04:56:44 am
Well, for starters, you need to be using some references. You're not even close. THIS is what an astroid looks like:



Hee hee, math humor! Anyways, here's what you're looking for:


When you're drawing an asteroid you're going to want to take the same approach as when drawing a sphere. Draw a rough-looking sphere, then break up the outline a bit and add some pockets. It's that simple, really, and there are lots of pixel art tutorials out there on how to draw spheres.
« Last Edit: February 06, 2015, 04:58:30 am by DragonDePlatino »

Offline smithy101

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Re: Astroids

Reply #4 on: February 06, 2015, 06:13:16 am
Thanks for all of the advice you have given my i will redo the astroid when i have some spare time.

Offline Decroded

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Re: Astroids (wip)

Reply #5 on: February 06, 2015, 08:23:01 am
Asteroids are great for learning pixel art :)

Some advice of how to break the process down into steps below.
I recommend you save a copy (or layer) at each of these steps, and post them all for advice so we can see your process.
Especially if you feel like your unsure how to move forward, just post your progress.

Step1) Pick a primary light source e.g. a sun off to the side as is shown in the references.
You will probably also want a secondary light source on the opposite side but a bit more behind the object and something further away preferably a different colour. A secondary light source both helps it to stand out against dark backgrounds and gives you more to work with when creating textures.

Step 2) Paint some solid blobs

Step 3) Roughly paint the light and dark areas of the primary light source without any smoothing and don't get caught up in detail. You forms should look interesting before you move on.

Step 4) IMPLY some craters and texture by varying the line between the light and dark area. At exactly this point the texture should be MOST obvious. Do not get stuck applying this texture all over the rock. At this point we generally still haven't added any new colours.

Step 5) Now's a good time to think about that secondary light source and add some of that colour around the dark edge to further define your forms.

Step 6) Now we start adding 1 or 2 extra colours to the gradients.
A common mistake here is to evenly distribute the shades across the shape because you think this is how to make something seem round when in fact as per those references there is often only a thin gradient between the light and dark. Varying the thickness of the gradient along the line makes for much more realistic and interesting forms.

Step 7) Now we're pretty much at the stage of clean-up, smoothing, anti-aliasing and general pixel-level detail. Be careful not to get sucked into single-pixel noisy textures and detail.


GLHF  :lol:

Offline smithy101

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Re: Astroids (wip)

Reply #6 on: February 11, 2015, 01:40:21 pm
Sorry that it took so long to make a update but it was really hard to find some spare time to work on this. Well this is what i made with you guy's advice.

i used winkatawink work as refrence because decroded steps were to complecated because i had never worked with 2 light sources and i want the only light source to hit the front.

Offline Iceaxe

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Re: Astroids (wip)

Reply #7 on: February 11, 2015, 02:26:04 pm
The shape of the asteroid is looking great, you just need have more of a think about the shading.

At the moment you have pillow shaded your rocks.
I will allow this picture to guide your soul in the right direction:

Here's a link to the tutorial: http://www.natomic.com/hosted/marks/mpat/shading.html
« Last Edit: February 11, 2015, 04:24:08 pm by Iceaxe »

Offline mzn528

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Re: Astroids (wip)

Reply #8 on: February 12, 2015, 05:51:10 pm
The shape of the asteroid is looking great, you just need have more of a think about the shading.

At the moment you have pillow shaded your rocks.
I will allow this picture to guide your soul in the right direction:

Here's a link to the tutorial: http://www.natomic.com/hosted/marks/mpat/shading.html

Ok this is actually really helpful, thank you Iceaxe. *steals it shamelessly and flies away
Noob Game Dev and Pixel Artist - Twitter @mzn528

Current Game: Soul Appeaser, an ARPG inspired by Dark Souls and Berserk (the manga yes)
DevLog here

Offline Decroded

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Re: Astroids (wip)

Reply #9 on: February 14, 2015, 06:39:06 am
ur process is no good mate.
no offense to wintakawink but u shouldnt use that as reference as it suffers badly from pillow shading.
if I was at a computer id make u an edit but I cant so I encourage u again to at least attempt the steps I suggest.
ignore the bit about the secondary light source if it helps.

for reference u can look at real pictures of boulders and rocks such as this ...
http://amandaceaser.com/files/2010/01/giant-boulder.jpg
... Look for images with strong light and dark that brings out the texture, then crank the contrast right up in ur version as space does not have ambient or reflected light as u would find in atmosphere.