AuthorTopic: Is this pixel art...?  (Read 4089 times)

Offline weaselpa

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Is this pixel art...?

on: May 03, 2009, 08:47:03 pm
Greetings to all...

I tried to make a background image of an adventure game... The inspiration came from the golden age of adventures and titles like 'The Legend of Kyrandia' and 'Indiana Jones: The Fate of Atlantis'...

This is the image i created http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/24/pixeladventuremockup.png

I used the pencil tool in Photoshop at 20% opacity and some brightness/contrast, hue/saturation occasionally...
I really wanted to know if this piece qualifies as 'true' pixel art since i used the technique i mentioned... Am i allowed to use it for creating similar background images...?

Thank you in advance for your time and critiques...

Offline Atnas

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Re: Is this pixel art...?

Reply #1 on: May 03, 2009, 09:21:55 pm
No one's stopping you from using it, in fact I think it looks very nice, however I'm not sure if it fits the definition of pixel art that's commonly agreed to here - that the individual pixel is considered when making the art. To a degree it fits it, and to a degree it doesn't, but I'm going to have to say this is more of a digital painting than anything.

Edit: Now that I have more time to examine it, I'm going to add to what I said before. Color conservation isn't actually essential to pixel art, and from what I'm seeing it looks like after you sketch (as in the clouds up near the top) you go in with a single pixel brush, which again isn't necessary for being pixel art, but helps the artist concentrate on the pixel, this does actually meet many of the criteria, however loose, to be pixel art. In my completely honest opinion. It could definitely benefit from refinement, especially a more opaque one.

I think the 20% opacity is okay actually, because you know whats going to happen because there's no auto AA or anything.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2009, 10:02:30 pm by Atnas »

Offline Mathias

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Re: Is this pixel art...?

Reply #2 on: May 04, 2009, 12:24:33 am
I'm curious, why does it matter to you if the guys here consider this pixel art or not?

In my opinion, this isn't pure pixel art, it's a mixture of digi painting and pixelling.

Offline Arne

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Re: Is this pixel art...?

Reply #3 on: May 04, 2009, 12:54:36 am
I think the backgrounds of some scumm games are actually scanned paintings which were color reduced and hand optimized.

When I pixel large with many colors I often just paint even larger, scale down, then use a (sometimes partly transparent) (1) pixel brush to hand optimize.  Then I clean up the edges with a solid brush.

Whether it's pixel art or not... well, it's not a boolean like that. I'd be somewhat hesitant to post the stuff here though.

Offline crab2selout.png

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Re: Is this pixel art...?

Reply #4 on: May 04, 2009, 02:10:59 am
I rather like the painted backgrounds in the LucasArt advneture games. Sam and Max and The Dig had these really nice water effects using the same pallette swapping effects used in waterfalls from hand pixeled JRPGs.

If you hadn't already seen this weasalpa, here's the msot recent thread to come up about what makes somethign pixel art.
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=8039.0

For me, msot of the problems I see with your piece aren't specific to pixel art. I don't really get a sense of volume from your piece. The design of hte path and the scale of the castle tells me it is in the distance, but your colours for the forground have a similar range to the colours in the background which kills any sense of depth. I also feel like you could contast the path more since it's imporant as a gameplay mechanic to make it clear to the player what parts are walkable or not.

And some of hte pixel art problems I see are a lack of AA in places like the tree branches, the whitest parts of the clouds and the path for example. If you put the work into this, I think you could have something that blends really well with pixel art, if not pixel art itself.

Offline weaselpa

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Re: Is this pixel art...?

Reply #5 on: May 04, 2009, 05:08:24 pm
Thank you all for your commenting so far...

Mathias: The reason i care is because i wouldn't know if it is politically correct to use this method for a possible game... Maybe it's a silly question but is it right or wrong for such a game to have these graphics...? I believe that the human sprite is obviously a pixel piece but what about the background...? Again, i do not know if such a question is meaningful that's why i'd like some opinions on this...

crab2selout.png: You're absolutelly correct on your comments... Still, i'd like to point out that this piece is just a wip... There are empty spaces in it and the castle is more of a rock than an actual building... I merely wanted to experiment with the technique adn didn't have anythig specific in mind... Therefore, i didn't pay any attention to volumes, light, etc... I've read the thread you linked to and from what i could understand, my piece is not a 'original' pixel one... Still, i would not know if it is right or wrong to use it in a possible adventure game...

Thank you again for your time...

Offline xbogx

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Re: Is this pixel art...?

Reply #6 on: May 04, 2009, 05:57:31 pm
There are no rules to how the graphics for adventure games or any games in general should be made. Just do whatever you're comfortable with and think looks good. A lot of old adventure games use pixel art character sprites and non pixel art backgrounds. If you can make them work together then don't worry about it.

Just don't try to pass it off as pixel art. People are touchy about that