AuthorTopic: New to pixeling--first attempts.  (Read 8568 times)

Offline government.agent

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New to pixeling--first attempts.

on: October 05, 2006, 10:03:37 am
I'm an ink illustrator, and have been against CAD-type art for a long time, but a friend showed me the light. To make a long story short, I got my feet wet using the EGA palette. I have to say that working with a mouse is hard work, but doing each pixel is enjoyable and I might add... puts me into a trance similar to the state I"m in when inking.

So, I've mustered the courage to post some gifs for you to cuss, discuss, enjoy, or hate.













Offline Helm

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Re: New to pixeling--first attempts.

Reply #1 on: October 05, 2006, 10:16:21 am
Hello. Here's an edit of a single tentacle from the cthulhoid monster:



check out the antialiasing to ease the tentacle into the surrounding black. I textured pretty naively, just to give an idea of that. Are you using full-saturation colors for some specific reason? Most of these need a few more colors if you want to antialias them, and I suggest you should at least for practice.

Offline government.agent

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Re: New to pixeling--first attempts.

Reply #2 on: October 05, 2006, 11:07:09 am
Wow that looks great. I'm new to using color for the most part--black and white illustration is my comfort zone. I'm going to study this "anit-aliasing" and try to see how you did that. Thanks for taking the time to edit and show me an example, sir!

Yours,

GA

Offline Helm

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Re: New to pixeling--first attempts.

Reply #3 on: October 05, 2006, 11:28:57 am
No worries, this is what we do here.

The main pixel art techniques you need to familiarize yourself with are:

*Antialias
*Dithering
*Palette conservation

Offline Skull

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Re: New to pixeling--first attempts.

Reply #4 on: October 05, 2006, 03:10:54 pm
The metal Gear - esque image is fantastic. I quite like your style.

Offline government.agent

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The MGS

Reply #5 on: October 05, 2006, 04:05:33 pm
No worries, this is what we do here.

The main pixel art techniques you need to familiarize yourself with are:

*Antialias
*Dithering
*Palette conservation


I thought I understood dithering and palette conservation already, and I thought I knew about anti-aliasing. But after checking google it appears there's a lot more to it! Apparently it can get very very technical which I wasn't expecting. (back to reading)

The metal Gear - esque image is fantastic. I quite like your style.

Thanks, nice of you to say so. I linked my avatar to the one with the codec screen animation--it's short, but it took a lot of frames just to do that little bit. Argh!



Yours,
GA

Offline Peppermint Pig

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Re: New to pixeling--first attempts.

Reply #6 on: October 06, 2006, 12:31:55 am
Times like these I wish the wiki were up... Yeah, pixel art can get a little... in-depth.

Just be sure to moderate your time so you're creating as much or more great art, instead of just reading about it.  ;)

Look forward to seeing more.

Offline government.agent

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Update

Reply #7 on: October 06, 2006, 02:16:59 am
Okay, I've taken what I could gleam from your example (helm) and applied it.

Original


After freshman anti-aliasing



So let me know how that looks now. I have a few questions as well.

1. How do you find the value between the two pixels you're trying to AA? I couldn't figure out a method, so I cheated. I made a new 6x6 document in photoshop and dropped the two, sometimes three pixels I was trying to AA and applied a Gaussian Blur. That produced a number of shades to choose from which I color-picked and used in the original piece of art. It smacks of cheesy cheating to me, so is there a better way? Or do you just eye-ball it? Heh.

2. Again, NOT used to working with color--I'm used to drawing black lines and dots. So my question is what some techniques I can use to create depth? In illustration, all I have to do is draw the perspective and shade appropriately. Color is trickier and I can't wrap my artist's brain around it. I don't seem to have this problem with flesh tones/facial features, but artificial forms like this octo-head are giving me trouble. I'd like to give the illusion of one or two tentacles projecting forward and one or two falling backward. Ideas?


Times like these I wish the wiki were up... Yeah, pixel art can get a little... in-depth.

Just be sure to moderate your time so you're creating as much or more great art, instead of just reading about it.  ;)

Look forward to seeing more.

Thanks. Ya, I'm not much of a "reader" anyway, I like to learn by example for the most part. I'm visual (shrug). Post something of yours, Pig?


Yours,
GA

Offline CrumbBread

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Re: New to pixeling--first attempts.

Reply #8 on: October 06, 2006, 03:29:59 am
This answer is a bit daft, but for something so trite it's served me rather well...someone told me a long time ago that shadows tend more towards blue. In theory this means that the shadowy parts of a yellow thing are sort of green, and the shadow parts of a red thing are sort of purple, and who knows what the shadowy parts of a blue thing are? This may be completely off the mark, but nobody has ever told me explicity that it's wrong, either...so I have continued to employ it. (I believe that I also heard that shadows tend to be less saturated, which makes intuitive sense to me).

If that doesn't help you, I hope at least it doesn't harm you.

Offline Crazy Asian Gamer

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Re: Update

Reply #9 on: October 06, 2006, 03:51:07 am
1. How do you find the value between the two pixels you're trying to AA? I couldn't figure out a method, so I cheated. I made a new 6x6 document in photoshop and dropped the two, sometimes three pixels I was trying to AA and applied a Gaussian Blur. That produced a number of shades to choose from which I color-picked and used in the original piece of art. It smacks of cheesy cheating to me, so is there a better way? Or do you just eye-ball it? Heh.
Usually, AA is done at the end of the creation of a piece, as a sort of polish. Or at least that's how I do it, but it depends. If you want to be really indepth with the AA-ing, you might consider adding a few shades, but in most cases, the shades for the shadows, midtones, and highlights should suffice for AAing.
Also, there is not a good technical method in doing AA. I just eye-ball it. In fact, I strongly ENCOURAGE eyeballing it. It helps develop your sense of color. And also, in conserving colors, it is often fun, if not useful, to AA using a color that would not seem to bode well in AAing. Colors to be AAed don't PERFECTLY have to be a shade between the two said colors, but as long as it's not entirely infeasible, it may be used, depending on the situation.

2. Again, NOT used to working with color--I'm used to drawing black lines and dots. So my question is what some techniques I can use to create depth? In illustration, all I have to do is draw the perspective and shade appropriately. Color is trickier and I can't wrap my artist's brain around it. I don't seem to have this problem with flesh tones/facial features, but artificial forms like this octo-head are giving me trouble. I'd like to give the illusion of one or two tentacles projecting forward and one or two falling backward. Ideas?

How Capcom does their fighter sprites, they use darker shades to create the illusion of a farther arm/leg, and lighter shades to bring it closer. This isn't entirely technically correct, but it works (and I do it...). Really, it's the level of detail and size relevant that should be bringing objects closer. A closer object would have a more defined texture, larger features, etc, from the perspective, than the farther.
An answer to CrumbBread's statement: I think it was Dhaos in a color choosing thread by Faktablad... anyways, that's a really good thread for checking out color choosing. Anyways, it's not always true, but generally, I suppose these are not bad assertions. Really depends on the different lighting and objects there to reflect the lighting to create other ambient light sources. There was this really great pixel school thread where we sorta went offtopic into light and ambience and color theory... it was really cool too.

Yeah, that's what I got. Have fun with your stay in this community. (OT: I will get to that piece I'm supposed to be doing, really!)