AuthorTopic: Take the dust off your microscopes  (Read 4855 times)

Offline saimo

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Take the dust off your microscopes

on: November 18, 2006, 12:42:56 pm
[To the administrators: I would have posted this in the Challenge & Activities forum, but there I cannot open new topics anymore! :o Has it something to do with the fact that after actually creating a new thread I gave up by going back to some past page? I have cleared the caches, but still the "new topic" button does not appear??? Sorry...]

Hi all,

I'm new here, so just to be clear right from the start, I'm *not* a pixeller, but a coder! However, I love pixelled graphics so much that occasionally I even dare to put together a few pixels... indeed, sometimes I'm just forced to.
I love and feel comfortable with tiny graphics, so this thread is for those who share this preference. Its aim, in fact, is improving the animation of a sprite I drew back in 1995: it's an 8x16 pixels, 14 colors soldier that walks, turns and shoots in four directions. The only restrictions are that the size must not change and the number of colors must not increase (rather, it should decrease ;)).
There's lot of room for improvement and I'm eager to see how beautiful you master pixellers will make it become!



saimo

Offline snake

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Re: Take the dust off your microscopes

Reply #1 on: November 18, 2006, 01:58:34 pm
This reminds me a lot of the "challenge" another member tried to set up where we would all compete in making the best website layout for him/her.

Challenges here are to improve our skills, not to make a better picture for you. If you want help with your sprite, make a general critique topic on it, get some suggestions and try to fix it yourself.

Offline Skull

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Re: Take the dust off your microscopes

Reply #2 on: November 18, 2006, 02:08:44 pm
Looking alright.. perhaps a less saturated green and maybe not black outlines, but if you're going for that, Work it.

Offline saimo

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Re: Take the dust off your microscopes

Reply #3 on: November 18, 2006, 02:10:58 pm
This reminds me a lot of the "challenge" another member tried to set up where we would all compete in making the best website layout for him/her.

Challenges here are to improve our skills, not to make a better picture for you. If you want help with your sprite, make a general critique topic on it, get some suggestions and try to fix it yourself.
I understand your suspicion, but I can assure you I'm not trying to get others to do the job for me ;)
I don't need those graphics for anything. I just thought you could have fun with it and I'm curious to see how far real artists can push it. That's all there is to it, really.

saimo

P.S. I really cannot open new topics in the Challenges & Activities forum... can anybody fix it, please? Thank you!

Offline saimo

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Re: Take the dust off your microscopes

Reply #4 on: November 18, 2006, 02:34:25 pm
Looking alright.. perhaps a less saturated green
Agreed.

Quote
and maybe not black outlines, but if you're going for that, Work it.
Yeah, outlines are probably one of the aspects that should be improved. A complete removal would be OK as well. I have no preference, indeed.

saimo

I realize that this is not the correct forum... could an administrator move this to the right one, please? TIA.

Offline robalan

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Re: Take the dust off your microscopes

Reply #5 on: November 19, 2006, 12:18:35 am
Actually, this is the right forum.  Normal members cannot open new threads in the Challenges and Activities forum, and this is not really a challenge or activity ;)  I think the main problem that these sprites are suffering from is being outlined.  Since they are only 8 pixels wide, 3 pixels for outlines on the legs is nearly half the width of the sprite  :o  Losing the outlines would give you much more room for other details.
Always remember: a preposition is not something you should end a sentence with.

Offline saimo

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Re: Take the dust off your microscopes

Reply #6 on: November 19, 2006, 01:51:20 am
Actually, this is the right forum.  Normal members cannot open new threads in the Challenges and Activities forum, and this is not really a challenge or activity ;)
Oh, well... I'm just... dazzled :o
Both because I was sure that I did get to click "new topic" over there (maybe it was just too late and I was too tired...) and because I thought that improving those sprites was an activity.
Apologies to everybody for messing things up.


Quote
I think the main problem that these sprites are suffering from is being outlined.  Since they are only 8 pixels wide, 3 pixels for outlines on the legs is nearly half the width of the sprite  :o  Losing the outlines would give you much more room for other details.
That's true. I can't remember what I had in mind back then - heh, it's 11 years ago, after all ;) - but probably I did not even consider outlineless sprites because I've always liked outlines, because of contrast reasons and because probably I was too influenced by those tiny sprites in The Amazing Spider-Man ;)

saimo

Offline saimo

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Re: Take the dust off your microscopes

Reply #7 on: November 20, 2006, 07:01:01 pm
Hi again,

instead of opening a new thread, I thought this was fine for this:

Again, these are from an old game of mine and I don't have any use for them, so I'm just interested in your expert opinion in order to learn something for the future - since I lack the time to, I'm not going to edit them.
I selected the tiles that represented more or less known characters, I hope you'll enjoy them (the last two being a bonus for C=64 lovers ;)).

saimo

P.S. I know, the palette is silly ;)
P.P.S. I've slightly reduced the saturation of greens of the little soldier, so the previous comments (by me and others) apply to a picture with a different palette.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2006, 12:00:40 am by saimo »