Greetings and firebat

[Ricardo]

Hi guys and girls!
How you doing? I'm new here, and this is my first post. I'm Spanish (sorry for my english), and I'm new in this world, pixel-art I mean of course, not the planet Earth. I'm 34 years old so I'm a "old school gamer".  My first contact with computers, games an graphics was with Spectrum, and after a few years I had a Amiga500, and the program Deluxe Paint... But I didnt draw graphics for several years... So in some way I'm old in this world, and I'm really newbie aswell.
I was checking your forums for days, and I'm amazed about how good and talented works you do. Some of your art is, for sure, better than more of all that old games (Shadow of the Beast, e.g.).
I think pixel-art is really beautiful, and there is not compare with modern 3D engines. I dont understand that fanatic fashion about 3D, including games like strategy, where is unnecesary the 3D engine. I like more Baldur's Gate's graphics than Neverwinter Nights.
I'm working in some stuff for a game (just a proyect), and I'll show you one piece of my work, I know it's nothing special, but it's just the excuse for this thread.
This is a evil-firebat-robot

Sorry for my long and boring text, and see you around.

[ceddo]

Off-topic:
Well, I must say that in my opinion, Starcraft 2's gameplay demo looks sleeker than any pixel art game I'll ever find. It's just that I don't think you can get that level of dynamicism and perfection when you're using pixels at low resolutions.

On-topic:
First of all, I strongly suggest you remove the pink background, until the final version of your Firebat. Reason? I find it extremely painful to work for hours on a piece that has the brightest, most annoying possible pink as a background. You'll work better with another background - you can either make it plain white, or pick the average color your background will have, to make sure your sprite will look good when it's superposed to the real background.

I think you should rework the pose of the legs. At the moment, your Firebat would probably fall backwards from the weight of his jet-pack, or whatever it is. His stiff appearance is probably on the most part because of the legs.
You also made the shading too monotonous in many areas. It's a common mistake to do, when you're starting off art. One tries to make the shading equal on all parts of the pece, in an attempt to make everything look like it fits together. You're also pillow shading on the chest plate, which is bad. Pillow shading is the act of shading a piece from the outline to the center, darkest near the outline, brightest at the center.

It's good that you didn't use too many colors, but I think you should rethink your palette. Chromatic palettes (palettes that don't have any saturation or hue shift between shades) make a piece very boring. Many artists make their shadow shades a slightly bluish hue, whereas their light shades a slightly yellowish hue. This makes the piece more interesting to look at.
In this case, I suggest making your dark shades slightly purple, and your highlights slightly orange. You can keep the white, since the Firebat seems to be wearing very shiny armor.

Last thing: the boots aren't in complete shadow - I would shade them a bit just to give the viewer an idea of their form.

Hope it helps.
.ceddo

[candiru]

Your firebat is very good as first pieces go. I second cedo on the pose and palette issues. The reds are too saturated. It depends on the style, but usually lighter colors (highlights) look better with less saturation. I also think you should get rid of the black lines inside the piece. For example, look at the two pieces below, the top one has black lines like yours, the bottom one doesn't. Also notice how the second one is shaded according to the position of the lightsource.

[setz]

I had made this edit earlier



I changed around the colors and shading alot; I got rid of the pure-black outline, thats generally seen as all kinds of bad and not-good (to me/most people anyways). alot of parts felt pillow-shaded and such, I picked the top-left as my lightsource and set the highlights and shadows accordingly. Another thing about outlines is they make things feel bulky and can tear out some detail, so by softening them up or getting rid of them entirely you can make things look generally better by fitting in more details. I also re-did the palette, the hues you picked seem boring and bland, and didn't work entirely well together IMO, I shifted the greys towards a blue and the reds towards a brownish to try and make them abit more eye-pleasing. Alot was said in the previous posts and I'm too lazy to think of anything else to say, so have fun and enjoy your stay.

[Ricardo]

Thank you a lot for yours answers. I'll show you my progress... When i'll do something else. I take notice about your advice, but I'm not sure I can do it better...
Just two more question. Why everybody think "pillow-shading" is wrong? Why shining colours and high contrast is wrong? I'm only asking, I dont know more than you.

[fil_razorback]

Pillow shading is wrong because it's not in adeaquation with light in reality. Therefore, it makes your art look flat and uninteresting to look at.

Concerning colours, contrast is not necessarily bad but you must control it. Some surfaces (metal for example) need a lot of contrast whereas some do not ^^.