a piece a need a bit of help with

[kilenc]

I'm relatively new to pixel art; I've been pixelling for a couple of years, but until recently, only in my offtime, so my work is a bit unrefined often. I'm working on a small piece for a challenge over on pixel joint, about a birch tree.

My little idea is a robot smoking a pipe under a hologram of a birch tree.



I have a few questions about its execution:

1) What is the best way to more authentically represent the "digitalness" of the leaves and trees? Right now, I'm just using opacity to make the leaves seem more digital, but it doesn't feel legitimate and it doesn't work well when I do it on the trees, which overlap.

2) What is the best way to produce metallic shading on the bot? Right now, I'm using a pretty generic light source (top right) which doesn't reflect the light from the hologram, and obviously there's not enough bright-on-dark to give a shiny/metallic feel. I haven't implemented that, tho, because I'm not sure how to represent the hologram lighting without compromising a lot of the shape on the rest of the body.

3) I'm not confident in my pallet; it doesn't have a lot of coherence, but I'm not sure how to unify some of the colors (especially the browns and greens, which stand apart from the metal, which I could probably apply to the background and trees)

Thanks for any help!

[Pusty]

Well I like the colors on the robot and the birch tree but the leaves may need some other colors. (And also the robot looks nice! )
I wish I could help more because I'm keen to see this in a finished form ^^

[Roach]

I can't tell the birch tree is a hologram. It just looks like they are disappearing from the frames.

[kilenc]

Well I like the colors on the robot and the birch tree but the leaves may need some other colors. (And also the robot looks nice! )
I wish I could help more because I'm keen to see this in a finished form ^^

thanks, I appreciate it

I can't tell the birch tree is a hologram. It just looks like they are disappearing from the frames.

yep, I agree, that's my first question: how to make something seem like a hologram without cheating and using less than 100% opacity?

[Unnamed1334]

I made a quick edit on the frames with the missing tree to try to make it look more like a hologram.


I tried removing every other row and stretching the lines remaining.

You could try to do something similar to the leaves as well. It also might help to have branches inside the tree that could be seen between the leaves or when the leaves disappear.

[kilenc]

I made a quick edit on the frames with the missing tree to try to make it look more like a hologram.


I tried removing every other row and stretching the lines remaining.

You could try to do something similar to the leaves as well. It also might help to have branches inside the tree that could be seen between the leaves or when the leaves disappear.

Thanks! Didn't think of this, but it helped a lot.

With your technique, I could remove the opacity, and really see how un-unified my pallet was. So I cleaned up my pallet, too, shifting everything toward a more blue-green color. Plus I took a stab at the shading, and I'm pretty happy how it turned out.



Anything I missed on this so far?

[Lavapatrol]

Hey, I don't know if you'd like this or not, but try making the "phasing" of the hologram tree happen all at once, instead of spread out. Might make it better, or worse.

[Pusty]

Hmm I think the changing of shading looks very abrupt.
I really like the changed to the robot tho'!

[Decroded]

u could also try fuzzing and jiggling the pixels a bit