[C+C] Runensucher's "trying to improve"

[Runensucher]

Hi and hello!

So, where to start? I'm the new guy. My name's Hannes and I'm from Berlin.
A few years ago I started with pixel art. I went for it a few weeks, then I stopped.

Oh, well. There is a long story, but I don't want to bother you with it. Just one thing: If you are a creative person, then all the stuff you don't do will give you a lot of pain. That's what happened to me.
I often have these images in my head and they just ended as that smelly junk that doesn't let you sleep at night.
This time, I want to start with less pressure on myself. I wonder if this forum is the right place for it. ^^

What I want:
- Please feel free to criticise my art. I'm not as sensitive as it seems. It's not possible for you to be that harsh that I am to myself.
- My english is "work in progress" too. I forgot the most of grammar lessons from school. If there is something you don't understand, just ask. And if you sense something that wrong that it hurts: please inform me.
- If there are some other german natives: Say "Hallo!". I really appreciate some company to stay tuned.
- I like to talk about other stuff too, especially games, game music, pets, foxes, films, terry pratchett or cookies.

Now let's talk about art. Here is some of mine:


As you can see, there are some animated sprites too. They once were designed for a gaming app. But I got exchanged by a more experienced artist.
Sorry for posting this stuff resized. I will keep this rule in mind for the future.


And now, here is something we can talk about. I worked at this image today for about... two and a half hours. The first image is an old one. The second was created to get in touch with photoshop and pixel art again. I wanted to make the sprite look more interesting with a few changes and I worked on the anatomy. I didn't add shading because I liked the art style overall.
My questions are: What can I do to make the straw hat look more like straw? And how can I change the colours to better fit together?
Don't hestitate to give me advise about other topics, too. To be honest, I think there are some things I improved and some I worsened.


If you got some time, I want to ask two questions about this forum:
Can I post future art in the same topic? Or is it better to start a new one?
Do you have some additional advice to "get started" with this forum?

Thank you for your time. Read you soon.
Runensucher

[AppleGirl]

Welcome!
I also just joined this forum, and I can say that I really like your art style! I'm not very experienced with pixel art (only been at it for a month or so) but I think your shading is very good. I think this forum is a great place for you to post all your ideas! For the last sprite you posted, one way you could make the hat look more like straw would be to make a few pixels stick out. I think all the colors you picked go pretty well together. To answer your last 2 questions you should check this link out.http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=5624.0
I'm not German sorry  I think you English is very good! Welcome again 

[MysteryMeat]

Hello, sorry I missed this thread until apple bumped it! I'd say the first step would be to do normal art first, the first step is knowing the how-to draw. This is coming from a person who started doing pixel art before he started drawing like a normal person first, and let me tell you I wasted a lot of time grinding those gears before I started paying attention to such alien concepts as "Basic anatomy" and "proper shading".

For that end, I recommend starting with the Loomis guides, which are easily discoverable through google. He's an excellent resource for artists of any skill level, his books on figure drawing and fun with a pencil both EXCELLENT tools for people trying to get a grasp on the basics, which are always worth revisiting from time to time.

As for feedback on your current stuff, avoid dithering so much when you shade unless you're going for a texture! For example, on the apple it makes it look like there's bumps on the skin. Instead, look at the pixel clusters part of the general art help masterpost here on the forum! It can help a lot, but the basic idea is to try and keep like-groups of pixels "clustered" together rather than have them spread out as you would with dithering. It creates a smoother, more uniform look overall!

Next, work from reference even for pixel art! It took me a while to figure out that that was a bat, the wings look like beaver tails with how rounded and uniform they are whereas in reality they tend to look like webbed arms!

[Fieldren]

Dude,i'm pretty sure that all of the nice people here are waaay to better than me doing pixel drawings, but since i posted my first thread i've felt really comfortable, so i'm very excited to see what are your thoughts and work.Since you are one of the newbies like me, can i give my opinion on your drawings? You do have for sure a large variety of styles, like that palm tree,passing through the mushroom and the doge, your art is very versatile.

About your straw hat, i'm looking for something very similar, and i found this:



Hope it helps

and by the way...

 your dog is NEAT.

Gonna name him to myself as Barry.

[Runensucher]

Welcome!
I also just joined this forum, and I can say that I really like your art style! I'm not very experienced with pixel art (only been at it for a month or so) but I think your shading is very good. I think this forum is a great place for you to post all your ideas! For the last sprite you posted, one way you could make the hat look more like straw would be to make a few pixels stick out. I think all the colors you picked go pretty well together. To answer your last 2 questions you should check this link out.http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=5624.0
I'm not German sorry  I think you English is very good! Welcome again 

Thank you AppleGirl! I hope to see more of your art in the future. The hat's on my agenda now. I like your idea with the stalks and I'm going to try how it looks . BTW: It's a wolf. ^^"

Dude,i'm pretty sure that all of the nice people here are waaay to better than me doing pixel drawings, but since i posted my first thread i've felt really comfortable, so i'm very excited to see what are your thoughts and work.Since you are one of the newbies like me, can i give my opinion on your drawings? You do have for sure a large variety of styles, like that palm tree,passing through the mushroom and the doge, your art is very versatile.

and by the way...

 your dog is NEAT.

Gonna name him to myself as Barry.

Hi Fieldren! Your critiques are very welcome. Please don't degrade yourself. Your seemingly strong will and your imagination will let you create great art. Just don't stop.
Maybe we can encourage each other from time to time. That's what this forum is about, right?

I'm glad Barry got his name. Now I can write something on the sign at his cage, since he is a wolf.
(See the answer for MysteryMeat for more informations.)

Hello, sorry I missed this thread until apple bumped it! I'd say the first step would be to do normal art first, the first step is knowing the how-to draw. This is coming from a person who started doing pixel art before he started drawing like a normal person first, and let me tell you I wasted a lot of time grinding those gears before I started paying attention to such alien concepts as "Basic anatomy" and "proper shading".

For that end, I recommend starting with the Loomis guides, which are easily discoverable through google. He's an excellent resource for artists of any skill level, his books on figure drawing and fun with a pencil both EXCELLENT tools for people trying to get a grasp on the basics, which are always worth revisiting from time to time.

As for feedback on your current stuff, avoid dithering so much when you shade unless you're going for a texture! For example, on the apple it makes it look like there's bumps on the skin. Instead, look at the pixel clusters part of the general art help masterpost here on the forum! It can help a lot, but the basic idea is to try and keep like-groups of pixels "clustered" together rather than have them spread out as you would with dithering. It creates a smoother, more uniform look overall!

Next, work from reference even for pixel art! It took me a while to figure out that that was a bat, the wings look like beaver tails with how rounded and uniform they are whereas in reality they tend to look like webbed arms!

Hi MysteryMeat! Thanks for your time. Nothing to apologize about. It's not like I paid you to answer me or something.
I started to train my drawing skills two days ago, as you (and some other user of this forum) are advising. I decided to follow "drawabox" as it fits better to me. But there is no reason to try some of the sketches of Loomi later on.

The apple is a one of my first piece. I don't think I'm going to fix it, because I want to look forward. But your tip is very welcome. You don't need any theorie to see what the dithering has done here. But I will not forget about pixel clusters in my future works.

Let's come to your last lesson: As everyone considers my wolf a dog, I got your point. See what I've done to the bat. It's just a short workaround because the whole pose isn't right. But I felt like doing something with all your suggestions. Thanks a lot.

[MysteryMeat]

Huge improvement on the bat! Good work, and don't forget to draw daily!
It's like a muscle, yo!

[Runensucher]

I decided to use this thread to talk about my next sprites.

Today I started with something I skipped all the time, and that's a tree. Now I know why I skipped it, pixeling trees is terrifying.
I allready lowered the size and just made up a form for the tree top I liked.
But now I don't know what to do next. I tried a lot of possibilities for shading but nothing looked right. This is the best I got.

In all the tree tutorials they add the lighter parts first. Is this what I'm doing wrong? I admit, I don't have an imagination of the form of the tree. It blurred while the process.
Here's the tree without shadows:


Tomorrow is my day off. So your suggestions will be applied soon.

[MysteryMeat]

Consider the nature of trees: big bundles of leaves and twigs, conglomerated into one form.
Try drawing clusters of leaves in shadow, work from that!

[Fieldren]

I'm starting to love this forum, gonna give Barry a good friend in the next weeks.Keep it up my amigo! I'll be gladly here to listen and give you my humble point of view, cheers friend!  

[Curly]

When making trees you usually begin with a big blob of the darkest color and then add the lighter ones over it, since the leaves at the top will be the ones that receive more light, I guess.

[Runensucher]

Thanks for the advises (and the cheering).
Here is the next step. But what ever I do, the image doesn't "pop out". Is this caused by missing logic? 

[sonicspin]

let's draw a tree

a tree is not simply a drawing, it is a lifeform, i assume you wanted to draw a oak tree, aka the tree everybody draws
so, to draw an oak, you gotta know how an oak is, from the bottom up
first, the roots
from the images i've seen, the key word was "crossing", the roots crossed and fused with each other, without changing the direction of their growth

next, the trunk
the trunk seems to go up with no bends, with the branches splitting in pairs from the trunk

next, the fun part, leaves, the leaves come from the tips from the branches, and their distribution seem very uniform

you might have noticed i haven't changed your colors, so im gonna say how they are
seems the trunk are very very desaturated and dark browns, while the leaves have from dark green to a bright almost yellow color
so, here, have a sloppy coloring

hope you learn something fromt his, i know i did 

[Runensucher]

let's draw a tree
a tree is not simply a drawing, it is a lifeform, i assume you wanted to draw a oak tree, aka the tree everybody draws
so, to draw an oak, you gotta know how an oak is, from the bottom up

you might have noticed i haven't changed your colors, so im gonna say how they are
seems the trunk are very very desaturated and dark browns, while the leaves have from dark green to a bright almost yellow color

hope you learn something fromt his, i know i did 

Oh, wow. This was so helpfull.
First of all: I interpreted your post as "let's start again" und you actually don't know how much I needed this. Thank you.

I did not intend to draw any real tree, so it was a dead end from the beginning. To pixel the trunk first was the best idea and I think this is important, especially for fantasy trees.

I'm not sure if I understood everything you said about my colours. What exactly wasn't right with them? Was it just a comparison to the real colours? I appreciate your positive way to give advice, though.

So this is my result. I think I'm not terrified any more.
Any thoughts about a good clean up? Of course I will work on the trunk. And some of the lighting needs a rounder shape.



Thank you again sonicspin. This was awesome.

[MysteryMeat]

I'd say "feather" the edges a bit more to create the impression of leaves!
Like so:


By adding that bit of noise to the picture you can create all kinds of textures, play around with the effect in some other things and see how you can work it!

[Runensucher]

I've been doing as requested. What do you think?
I lowered the contrast because the highlights of the leaves were very disturbing.

This was a lot of fun.

[MysteryMeat]

Looks good! Excellent work!

[Runensucher]

I'm trying to make an avatar for my bf he wanted. It is a character from WOW. There are so much details within the reference, but I think for me it is a good practice. I often think to complicated.



I'm not sure what to do next. We will see.
What are your thoughts? Are there any mistakes with anatomy?

And what parts I better add to a seperate layer?

[MysteryMeat]

Ideally, every part of the outfit should be a seperate layer.
Start with the face and shoulders, then layer the cloth bits on top of that, then the armor atop that. You might even need to layer out the various parts of the armor, but start with the head and work your way out.

[Runensucher]

Ideally, every part of the outfit should be a seperate layer.
Start with the face and shoulders, then layer the cloth bits on top of that, then the armor atop that. You might even need to layer out the various parts of the armor, but start with the head and work your way out.

Thank you. This process is as logic as it is helpful. See how far I've come.


The colours are just placeholders.
I think I will need five hues:
- something for gold and the eyes
- a brown for the hat, the collar and the shoulder armor
- a colour for the skin
- some purple for the wrap and the thing on his back
- some grey for the beard, the shirt and the band on the hat

[MysteryMeat]

When in doubt, I use google and find hex codes to plonk in. I'm colorblind though, so I can't say I recommend that unless you want to start over-relying on a crutch you don't necessarily need!

[Runensucher]

When in doubt, I use google and find hex codes to plonk in. I'm colorblind though, so I can't say I recommend that unless you want to start over-relying on a crutch you don't necessarily need!

Hm, thanks for the tip. I don't have the feeling that I need to do this at the moment. I mostly can point out wrong colours.


*sigh*
I have so little time and since I have evening shifts like every day, I'm feeling a little impatient. This isn't nearly done.
What I wonder about are the colour ramps. In the original screenshot, some colours get less saturated when they get darker. I know that's not irregular, but it makes it hard for me to find ramps that share colours.
Additional, I can't make the armor look geometric as it is supposed to.

[MysteryMeat]

Try thickening the outlines by one pixel!

[Runensucher]

Try thickening the outlines by one pixel!

It helped a little.
Now I'm running out of ideas. I'm glad I don't get paid for this. 

EDIT: Messed around with the headgear a litte to give it a shape.

[TEETH]

Looks like a good start. Try color shifting your colors a little bit. A good rule of thumb is to never shade your colors with just a darker color of the original. (For example: if you have green, don't shade it with a dark green. shade it with a darker teal. shade grey with purple. yellow with pink. etc etc etc.)

[Runensucher]

Looks like a good start. Try color shifting your colors a little bit. A good rule of thumb is to never shade your colors with just a darker color of the original. (For example: if you have green, don't shade it with a dark green. shade it with a darker teal. shade grey with purple. yellow with pink. etc etc etc.)

Hey Teeth!
Thank you for your advise. Of course I know that rule. I never worked at something where I had to use it obviously. (And sometimes I'm not brave enough.)
I don't think I can shade the WOW-character like this, as the colours of the original work way different.
I will give it a try tomorrow.

[Runensucher]

As I'm not going to finish the avatar, I'm up for your ideas what I should do next. It's okay to ask, is it? I'm happy with every guidance.

[Runensucher]

That's my third post in a row. I'm sorry.

Today I started to work on a grasshopper character.


I'm not sure how anthropomorphic I want to look it like.
This is something that comes close to my imagination: http://pre01.deviantart.net/ab3a/th/pre/i/2010/178/f/5/grasshopper_guy_by_darkkitsunegirl.jpg

[Fieldren]

Dude , even tho i'm trying to create monsters, that grasshopper-man creeps me out more than it should. Creepy, great idea.