The Osmosis Pixel Technique

[Aritriste]

In the first post I did shading via pixels, and the main pixel peices are following. So in general this is both a tutorial, and a pixel art presentation.

There is no obviously placed pixels though. if we cannot tell where you placed individual pixels, it defeats the purpose. Just because you change a few pixels to clean up a piece that is nowhere near pixel art does not qualify this to be posted in this section.

Cut down immensely on time. I said this in repetition throughout the post.

Cut down immensley on time doing what? The only thing you seem to have done is taken the long route of cleaning up lines. I could do the same thing in about 2 steps with the  levels sliders in Photoshop. I really don't understand.

It does much more than that if you follow the method process. Like I said I'll go into detail later.

[Ensellitis]

It does much more than that if you follow the method process. Like I said I'll go into detail later.

I would try asking for permission to use someone's art first... 

[flaber]

...
I think this thread should come to a close

The purpose behind this is unclear.
In your descriptions you do not state what your intent of doing this is. You start straight into your procedure. Also people have asked you what it is, and you respond with yet another unclear message:

...
What is this meant to achieve? What does it do?

@Ai, this simply is another way to do it, and it's the fastest I know of, so it may/may not be the best way, but it's the best that I know.

another way to do what?

If this is intended for CG use why all the effort? Just paint ontop of it. This would be the rough sketch for the project - the finished product. If you notice there are alot of mistakes, alot of implications and alot to clean up on. As you paint you would clean these things as you go, almost essentially creating a new image useing that one as a very close reference by painting over it. Atleast thats how I work. I dont spend alot of time cleaning my base lines.
If you are cleaning this for CG so that it looks like a clean, refined finished sketch, again, I dont exactly see the point of cleaning it up like that. I would retrace the lines with an inking pen refining and cleaning them as I go. To make the basic sketch become a complete finished product on a digital medium. Essentially it would be the same ideas as comic books, inkers recieve the pencil sketch and ink over and correct mistakes to make it a finished product. They do not merely darken the lines and make the whites whiter.

Now, if this was to be cleaned up for pixelart... It definatly is not clean and no better than the original sketch. All the lines are blocky and blotchy. Stray pixels here and there. It would be better to make a new layer over it and trace the lines with a pixel tool. It does not take that long - I have done it for other images. As you trace it too, you will have your nice clean crisp lines that help in pixeling. Since you traced on a separate layer ontop, all your spaces are white and you are ready to go.

Honestly, Im not entirely sure of the point of this project. You duplicated my image?
seems quite the process.
---

Next time, if you wish to do a post / tutorial like this it would benefit you in asking the artist for permission first. Seeing as how you did not ask the artist - me - then you do not have any rights in using it, even for demonstration purposes. This image was intended to be just a pencil sketch, unless in some future I decided to change it into something more.
personally, i enjoy the original more.

Then ontop of that, there is no true pixel art in this thread. Perhaps it is trying to explain an idea, give suggestion to a new technique, but there is no true pixelart in this thread. Therefore it does not belong in the pixel art section for the board. Seeing as how this is intended to be a tutorial it would be better suited for the general discussion.

Lastly, you are unclear about what you are trying to get across to us. If this seemed to serve a sufficient purpose and was clear in description perhaps I may have let it slide. But seeing as how most people who read this thread and responded are unclear about the purpose along with myself, I dont see this being overly worthwhile. Not only in your description and responses is there unclarity, but the whole project itself seems unclear. All you are doing is cleaning lines?


If you wish to continue this tutorial by all means go ahead. I do see the effort you put in and I do appreciate how you want to try and help other artists here. But perhaps could you post this in the appropriate section with your own original image or one that you have gotten permission for? Along with that, make sure you are more clear in your original post.

[Helm]

Whatever the point of this thread is, it escapes me. I will leave it running for exactly one more post by the original poster in the hopes that at least my curiosity as to what this does that a simple levels adjustment doesn't will be sated. In the case that the next reply is not satisfactory in that extend, this thread will be locked and moved to gen. Flaber, endure the usage of your art just a little bit more if you can. If you want to see it locked, or your art removed from it though, pm me.

[flaber]

Flaber, endure the usage of your art just a little bit more if you can. If you want to see it locked, or your art removed from it though, pm me.

Sure. I have no problem allowing it to be used if its for something functional and useful. If the author comes up with an acceptable reason like you mentioned I will reconsider.
However, if there is nothing more to this, then this can come to a close.

[Helm]

For the record, this process takes about 5 minutes from scanning to third stage, and the preliminary pixelling I did took another 5. It's stage 1: scan, 2: levels, then brightness/contrast 3: posterize to 4 colors, then... start pixelling.

If that's more or less what you're achieving in a very roundabout -and verbose- way, then you're not saving much time.

[Aritriste]

...
I think this thread should come to a close

The purpose behind this is unclear.
In your descriptions you do not state what your intent of doing this is. You start straight into your procedure. Also people have asked you what it is, and you respond with yet another unclear message:

...
What is this meant to achieve? What does it do?

@Ai, this simply is another way to do it, and it's the fastest I know of, so it may/may not be the best way, but it's the best that I know.

another way to do what?

If this is intended for CG use why all the effort? Just paint ontop of it. This would be the rough sketch for the project - the finished product. If you notice there are alot of mistakes, alot of implications and alot to clean up on. As you paint you would clean these things as you go, almost essentially creating a new image useing that one as a very close reference by painting over it. Atleast thats how I work. I dont spend alot of time cleaning my base lines.
If you are cleaning this for CG so that it looks like a clean, refined finished sketch, again, I dont exactly see the point of cleaning it up like that. I would retrace the lines with an inking pen refining and cleaning them as I go. To make the basic sketch become a complete finished product on a digital medium. Essentially it would be the same ideas as comic books, inkers recieve the pencil sketch and ink over and correct mistakes to make it a finished product. They do not merely darken the lines and make the whites whiter.

Now, if this was to be cleaned up for pixelart... It definatly is not clean and no better than the original sketch. All the lines are blocky and blotchy. Stray pixels here and there. It would be better to make a new layer over it and trace the lines with a pixel tool. It does not take that long - I have done it for other images. As you trace it too, you will have your nice clean crisp lines that help in pixeling. Since you traced on a separate layer ontop, all your spaces are white and you are ready to go.

Honestly, Im not entirely sure of the point of this project. You duplicated my image?
seems quite the process.
---

Next time, if you wish to do a post / tutorial like this it would benefit you in asking the artist for permission first. Seeing as how you did not ask the artist - me - then you do not have any rights in using it, even for demonstration purposes. This image was intended to be just a pencil sketch, unless in some future I decided to change it into something more.
personally, i enjoy the original more.

Then ontop of that, there is no true pixel art in this thread. Perhaps it is trying to explain an idea, give suggestion to a new technique, but there is no true pixelart in this thread. Therefore it does not belong in the pixel art section for the board. Seeing as how this is intended to be a tutorial it would be better suited for the general discussion.

Lastly, you are unclear about what you are trying to get across to us. If this seemed to serve a sufficient purpose and was clear in description perhaps I may have let it slide. But seeing as how most people who read this thread and responded are unclear about the purpose along with myself, I dont see this being overly worthwhile. Not only in your description and responses is there unclarity, but the whole project itself seems unclear. All you are doing is cleaning lines?


If you wish to continue this tutorial by all means go ahead. I do see the effort you put in and I do appreciate how you want to try and help other artists here. But perhaps could you post this in the appropriate section with your own original image or one that you have gotten permission for? Along with that, make sure you are more clear in your original post.

May apologies for not asking. I thought using a larger demonstration on this technique would have a much greater impact, and since I myself can't draw I needed to find an applicable peice. Though once more as I said, I apologize for not asking permission. Yet notice, that by far this is not an attempt to, "steal", "copy", etc. your art, it's simply a piece being demonstrated and I would happily use another if this upsets you in any way.

Now, in this technique as listed above, I've personally used it before, and it's come about with a much better end result, and it's cut down drastically on time. As it was said, elsewhere in this thread, pixel artists are looking for ways to speed up their projects. So I decided to post this technique so that pixelists may have that option of finishing faster and with possibly better results.

So in the first few steps of the process you clean the image, mainly outside of the body area, but you save this as an independant file so that you may revert to it later in the steps. Now, reverting back all the steps that you did to clean the image, this is when you change the outlines so it's visually easier to decipher colors faint or otherwise, I personally do this as I said above because it's my preference and it's what I find easier than to try and see if it's a very faint gray color and make mistakes while pixeling. Now unlike others, this technique cuts time in this step because you only have to do shading, not detailed coloring. So in the following step, you need to re-open your previous file that you seperately saved, color it in flat colors, copy this image, go to the shaded file, and paste it over the shaded file, and then change the transparency of it, until you acheive the exact color intensity. Then if the image was pre-perfected then you would be finished, and as I said more than likely saved a great amount of time. Yet if the image's lines weren't pre-fixed then all that would be left is to speckle add little detail and fix any lines that may look awkward, etc.

Yet the entire motive for this entire method is to save time. That's all I've intended it to do. Though I can guarrenttee this does work, and I can refer that in my first post that I did mention that I show an example, but Flaber as you seem to be opposed to me exampling with your art I will choose a different image to example upon. Once again, sorry for upsetting you by exampling with your art.

Edit: Instead I'll be using a character concept from ".Hack//The World R:2" courtesy of CC Corp. .

[ptoing]

I still don't see how this does save time when pixelling. Look at what Helm did, much faster. If you are an adept pixelartist managing a few shades of grey and cleaning up should not be hard.

[Aritriste]

I still don't see how this does save time when pixelling. Look at what Helm did, much faster. If you are an adept pixelartist managing a few shades of grey and cleaning up should not be hard.

It works much better on larger and more complex images.

[Helm]

Nobody works at such sizes because it's meaningless for pixel art, really. We're dealing with individual pixels here. Even the super-patient that work large canvases use microscopic pixel art techniques all-over, just takes more time as is reasonable. Like painting a 3x3 meter oil painting with a feathertip brush would.

Much more sense and faster to just CG work at such sizes as the images you've provided.

That being said, your process, whatever it is that it is doing has been um, explained enough, on this forum. Thank you. I'm moving this on gen but not locking it, who knows, somebody might have something more of value to add to this.