Calling All Critics!

[Pinacoladaxb]

So Basically, I make games. I've gotten so good at it that at this point my only limitation is I can't draw or animate. I made an attempt yesterday, and someone told me to post it here so that I can get hammered. Here's my first pixel art drawing:

[skeddles]

All I can say at this point is that you should read some tutorials: http://pixeljoint.com/pixels/tutorials.asp

The line art is messy
Shading is very flat
Armor doesnt look shiny
Pose looks unnatural
What kind of game whould that be in(if any)? Doesn't look like it would work in an rpg or a platformer.
The cross on the armor sticks out too much

[Pinacoladaxb]

lol. That drawing wasn't for any game. I just wanted to practice pixel art, so I dove in and thought up that character literally as I was drawing him.

EDIT: Thanks for the criticism and tutorial, though!

[AdamAtomic]

Welcome to pixelation and getting hammered    Skeddles is quite right, a great place to start would be the tutorials.  There is something energetic and fun about your work already, but working on your fundamentals and learning more about how pixel art specifically works will be really positive influences on you I think.

Hopefully I won't re-tread skeddles' points too much, but if I do, well...oh well:

1 - Too much reliance on coloring-book style execution!  This is very common when you are just starting out.  The best thing you can do is work really hard at trying to see your art as a collection of volumes, rather than lines that contain colors.  For example, try drawing this character using NO outlines and only three shades of gray (NO colors) and see what you get out of it!  This should highlight a lot of the weaknesses that are introduced by approaching your art like a coloring book.

2 - Another classic beginner's error is this tendency to (a la coloring books again) compartmentalize all your colors.  In your case, Yellow is for skin, Gray is for armor, Blue is for pants, Red is for cross.  Pixel art is the art of making every color and every pixel really count; but even traditional paint-on-canvas painters will only really use about 6 or 8 basic colors as they work.  For example, in this particular piece, you'll find that your dark gray and dark blue are fairly similar colors, and that the brightest shade of yellow and red is practically identical.  For the sake of efficiency it is a good idea to re-use colors as much as you can, but you'll find that as you mix your colors more, you'll get a more cohesive piece of artwork as well.

3 - No real lightsource or consideration of the character as a 3d object in space.  This is something that will be made more obvious if you attempt to do a simple, grayscale painting of this character with no outlines.

Again, welcome to pixelation, and enjoy your journey

[Pinacoladaxb]

Thanks for all of your input, AdamAtomic! I re-drew the sprite using 3 shades of gray, like you told me to do. It looks....decent.


Then, I put that image over my origional one and blurred it in. It looks really cool! I'm just concerned that it isn't considered pixel art anymore.


Would it be ok if I did it my way if it's a graphic for a game, or should I still try to make my sprites with as few colors as possible?

[#36005A]

I'm pretty sure Adam meant to use that exercise (drawing with only three shades of gray) as practice and to help you understand volumes/forms, not as a part of your final piece. Maybe as a starting point, but not actually as something used in the final, "blurred in" or anything like that. Also, you stuck pretty much to your original lines, which is a problem and defeats part of the purpose. You've shown that you have a fairly good concept of volumes, but all that is thrown to the wind when you use your original (fairly static) character design almost exactly. I think the idea was, start from scratch - try re-doing the way you did his exercise in the last post, but don't even think about your first version (you can forget using its lines) while drawing it.

In any case, your "three shades of gray" drawing is probably the best in this thread, which makes it clear that volumes are definitely not your weakest point - although it could use a lot of work. I don't think it would be a bad idea at all to begin with non-pixel art, drawing or painting in real life, in order to better understand many art concepts that you can later apply to pixel art. This is one place where a lot of information is really nicely organized and visually presented, and I'd recommend it if you're at all interested. It's also written by Arne, a fellow Pixelator!

Apologies if I sounded a bit harsh at any time, just trying to help out.

[Pinacoladaxb]

I realize that using 3 shades was supposed to be an exercise. I just felt like putting it over the origional one to see how it looked.

I'm confused. Was I supposed to do the 3 shade image as a whole new drawing and not keep the shape of my origional sprite? Why? 

But thanks for writing all of that and showing me that tutorial. It looks really long, but I think I might have to read it anyway. 

[#36005A]

What AdamAtomic was saying in his first point was that you started with the lines and then colored in from there. The problem with this is that, in real life, things do not have outlines, but are in fact 3d objects in space that have forms and volume. The idea was, using only grayscale and no lines, you would eliminate both lines and color and start with just volume. When you just ended up keeping the lines and just painting over them, you sort of defeated the purpose because you were still using lines - it just wasn't visible in the end product.
Perhaps I'm wrong, though, and he had intended you to use your lines - I guess I should wait for him to comment before I assume his intentions.

[Pinacoladaxb]

Oh, I get it....I think. Was I supposed to use the three colors for shading, though? I just assumed so.  Was I supposed to imagine the character as a blob? Should I not start with lines in my sprites? 

[AdamAtomic]

I don't want to come across as anti-lineart by any means, but its clear in your lineart specifically that you are not thinking in volumes but in flat, 2d shapes.  Painting without lines is and will be I think good practice for you because you will have no choice but to start thinking about things in 3d rather than in 2d.  Your gray-scale blob version has MUCH better volumes and lighting than your lineart version.  A good next step for this piece would be to re-color the lineart piece based on the lighting from your blob painting!

[PypeBros]

your 3-greys essay present a good idea of volume, but imho "blurring in" was a bad idea. Rather than having sharp light/med/shadow transition, what you get is an all-fluffy-smoothy look that make the final picture look like a stuffed animal made in an undeterminable material, not a furry creature in a metal armor.

For one thing, fur and metal would not reflect light in the same way, so while you'd 'smooth" the greys on the arms and face (with e.g. 2 intermediate shades of grey), you'd keep just those 3 for the armor, to insist on its shininess. And you could stick on 3 shades for the pants, but add ripples with horizontal shadows.

Rather than having a computer do the job of mixing your original colours and your new grey "3D model" (to call it so), i'd suggest you select yourself the three shades of blue and brown you're going to use, and colorize your greys. I would not re-introduce outlines too fast, too. Wait to see what it looks like, and probably just use the darkest shades to do the outline (i mean *out*lines, not between-lines, except if you still think you're missing something).

HTH.