Gallery of Chaos! - New Member, Micro Creator

[pkmays]

So, the fewer colors I use, the better off I am?  What is the purpose of that?  Is it the challenge?  I'm not understanding. 

You make something look good using as few colors as possible. It's the joy of creating aesthetically pleasing art within the (arbitrary) limitations laid out by archaic hardware and software of the past. It's pixel art.

Lastly, The tools on Adobe, PSP, and those other programs were developed to make all of this work easier.  Why do you not use them?

Photoshop and its imitators were developed primarily for photo editing. Tools like blur, smear, dodge, and burn are also useful for mid-to-high resolution digital illustation. But when applied to low resolution detailed images, they create unattractive, inappropriate, inaccurate, amateurish results. It sounds pompous, but a small image with shading does not equal Pixel Art.

[AdamAtomic]

I suppose I may as well chip in, as there is something bugging me about the direction of the thread and crits here.

BUT FIRST - welcome   this community has been a huge boon to me personally, and I know that I can attribute much of my development and success as an artist over the last few months to the feedback and inspiration I've found here.  I hope that you find the same opportunities!

NOW on to business...this thread seems to focus on how these character portraits differ from traditional Pixel Art, which is a practice derived from developing games and software for mostly old hardware (but some new - DS, PSP, GBA, and mobile phones) - and thus has some kinda crazy rules about how many colors you can use, etc.  For me and many other members practicing these strict color restrictions is just pragmatic as we have to use these skills every day developing new games.  For others its a little more esoteric but no less important...

HOWEVER!

The main problem with your character portraits is not that they violate color restrictions, or any such arbitrary rules that may be specific to the realm of "true" pixel art (whatever that may be).  The main issue is that your grasp of color and form is weak and/or non-existent, irregardless of Pixel Art's specific rules.  Every single character is pillowshaded in straight monochromatic ramps; regardless of what tools you decide to use, or even what software (or IF you are using software) this is a really bad idea if you want your results to look good.  The renaissance masters did not use the gradient tool or the airbrush tool, and its not just because they didn't have it.  These are special purpose tools that are designed for the manipulation of an existing, photoreal surface, or for simple graphic design purposes.  Painters use paintbrushes.  Just like they always have, and just like they always will!  Our paintbrush just happens to say "wacom" on the side.  No matter if you are painting in photoshop or pro motion or graphics gale, and no matter if you are even doing pixel art, your work will look noobish unless you understand color and form and light and shadow and you paint it to look like it should!

The fact that ptoing's edit has 16 colors instead of 130, while notable, is not the point of his edit (or at least it shouldn't be).  Pay attention to what he DID with those 16 colors!  Notice the clear light source - the varied, lifelike hues - the accurate shading and crisp, clear details.  The only reason he did that with 16 colors was to exaggerate these points.  Getting a perfectly smooth gradient across your surface is useless if it doesn't communicate anything about the form you are rendering!

Prometheus says it better (or at least more efficiently) than anyone I think: http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
Re-read it every night before bed.  There are very few times in your life where you'll be able to improve just by reading something; especially something short.  However, this is one of those times!

I hope that you are taking all these posts as encouragement, rather than discouragement - it is rare for a new member to receive so much attention, at least since I've been around   it means you have a lot of potential - welcome to pixel art!

[Helm]

I'd like to have an additional word about low color usage:

If you're that awesome, be my guest and use 300 colors if you can.

What do I mean by that? Pixel Art has a few special qualities about it that no other art has. They have to do with the level of control on the image. In pixel art, that level of control is potentially huge because every color is selected by hand, every pixel placed by hand, and both can be changed at any time during the creation of the piece. There is no other artform in the whole world where I can just go "oh hm, every single pixel of this exact shade should have hmm... +2 lightness and +5 saturation now' and you press one button and the change occurs without ANY errors or approximations. Even color channel control by MASTERS in Photoshop isn't as precise and easy t o do. Pixel art is Goldly control of one's small universe, with the pixel being the atom of it. Makes sense, right? If I were painting with a soft brush, would I have control on every new automatically generated shade created? No. If I were using real media, would I be able to magically alter all my green hues to have a yellowish tint in the middle of drawing?

When most of us learned to make pixel art we started studying from video games, as for good or worse, that's where the artform was taken to a great level in the beginning. Therefore we tried to keep to palettes of 16, 8, 32 so on as those obsolete machines as the Amiga and SNES required. However in doing so we learned good control skills we keep to in all of our pixel art, not just game art. It's just a matter of how many different shades your mind can keep tabs on to make optimal use of them. For non-game-art it is only out of homage to the past that we keep to the counts of 8,16,32 and such multiples, but the best equation always remains:

Number of colors the piece needs to number of colors you can use effectively

That being said, there's stuff posted here that keeps to 16 colors that still doesn't have the optimal palette (ptoing showed you what an optimal palette does) so those can be refined even more. Likewise, if someone is so good and has such great control over every shade of his pallete and use them in unexpected places and so on, if they are drawing something that calls for 32, 64, 128 colors, so be it. I still haven't seen any such pixel art around here so far, but theoretically nobody would consider such color counts an error if the artist seemed to have control over such a huge palette.

So yes, partly it's tradition. But partly it is just using the medium in the way it seems to be the strongest, having as much control as possible over your art.

[KidChaos]

I want to continue to thank everyone who is offering this information.  I will probably use this thread as my "textbooK" as time goes by.  It is all very informative and helpful.

Can someone define and point out what "pillow shading" is?

Can some one tell me what "color-ramping" is and how to effectively select it for my piece?

How do you pick out an appropriate palette?

[Meta|Fox]

As i understand it pillowshading is shading without a correct lightsource, usually particularly bad pillow shading will involve front on gradients.

lets look at ptoings edit again,

notice how he has made the shading look more realistic (and more dynamic) by adding a lightsource? while yours, due to being pillowshaded, looks flat in comparison.


oh and

http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=2836.0
This thread on Hue Shifting should help you with colour ramps.

Welcome to the community

[Opacus]

The horror! 

That's my first Pixel Joint submision :>
Makes me cry just looking at it. This forum has a zoom function, zoom in, and find out what pillow shading is.
Because this one is really pilow shaded :3 Especially the arms and the chest.

At pillow shadding the highlight is located in the middle, and is shaded all around, like a pillow from the top.