New to pixeling--first attempts.

[government.agent]

Crumbbread - thanks, I'll use it as general rule of thumb to add a bit of blue for shadows and see how that turns out. I don't suppose there's a magic hue for highlights also? But that would be too easy...


CrazyAsianGamer - Thanks, that's a nicely cropped bit of info. Details and relevant size--gotcha.


You guys are really helpful, I guess I wasn't expecting much of a response until my work looks more up to par. You're giving me a warm fuzzy feeling. Wait, maybe that's the bourbon.


This fluffy little sunrise in another thread: http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=2100.0

for some reason made me want to do a sunset to try out my antialiasing/dithering skills on. So here it is. C&C welcome and encouraged




Yours,

GA

[Helm]

I only edited the right side of the image for lack of time.

You're suffering from banding (or was it called breaking? Pep! Help!) where you layer lines of AA over themselves. This creates an unpleasant 'banding' effect like a gradient that breaks at the same points, hugging a contour. This isn't good in my opinion.

Furthermore, your dithering needs to be cleaner, more controlled, and shaped better, I feel.

Your colors were good for this, but some near identical shades were to be separated, as well as the far darkest shades brought closer to visibility.

You're progressing a lot in a short time. Catch your breath and ponder.

[government.agent]

You're progressing a lot in a short time. Catch your breath and ponder.

I'm going to take your advice and chill for a bit--study your example and spend some quality time with my monitor.

GA

[Bo]

really like the metal gear piece

about the squiddypop. the new version looks alot better. but i feel that some parts that should be round is abit to square.

[government.agent]

Bo - thanks for the observations. Still working on squiddypop.


Okay, here's the new sunset after taking what I could from Helm's example and working it into the piece.

[Helm]

Much better. Usually, unless you want to suggest a very rough texture, don't dither with a shade more than ONE step lighter or darker over your another. Dithering should be used, for such non-standard gradients as a sunset as a buffer: make good solid non-dithered gradients and then dither (50% pattern, checkerboard) 20-30% (with alterations to suit forms and what have you) between the two shades, then go in and customize the dither and add style bits where you need them.

Rule of thumb: where one shade meets another and there's no space to dither between the two: don't. Dither-on-Dither between to further away shades creates clashes and odd texture effects.