Ship Sprites

[Mathias]

(Ok, I went back and actually read your post, #6, this time. Yesterday I spent a portion of the day with my 13 year old nephew, your "intellect" reminds me of him. Needless to say, he can be rather annoying when he wants to be. Only one thing in response to your subjective expressions - some control may benefit you, I'd hate for you to shoot yourself in the foot simply due to unnecessarilly vindictive outbursts in the face of criticism. If you insist on continuing, please just PM me.)


Figure, if you're not the secret benevolent split personality of nickza, why not post some more ships? Now that the misunderstanding is cleared up, your work can be critiqued in the right context.

Version A is my favorite, it's the most interesting. From the looks of it I'd say the two lower "wings" protruding are rotatable jets for navigation. And it looks like the large dome on top can raise and lower. Will it be broken up into separate parts and animate via code?

[figurestone]

Woah guys! I just came here to draw some spaceships and get some advice  

Yep, I apologise for posting this in the wrong area. Typical n00b mistake.

What I am creating is not exactly pixel art, I am however wanting to incorporate some of the fantastic techniques that you guys use to make the work outstanding at such a small scale.
I don't want to get into a debate over what is and isn't pixel art, I just want to know what looks good and what doesn't.  

Thanks for the comments Mathias, Gil and Rickfuzz. It is all appreciated.
I'm used to tough critism, eh Nick?  

The image I posted initially was from my work PC (so, was probably a copy of a copy)... so there is a chance it could have been saved as a JPEG at one point, hence the artifacts.
Gil, if you would like to see the steps taken to get to where the graphic currently is, I'm happy to show and receive advice along the way.

PS. My dad can kick all your dad's arses!

[figurestone]

Mathias, we toyed with the idea of having articulated ships with joints and moving parts etc. But we decided to scope down on some "non essential" parts of the game so we could get something released on time and "on budget".

I will post more designs for crit tomorrow (I am currently posting from a mobile phone; very limited unfortunatly!).

[Mathias]

Haha. Welcome. Thank you for being resonable. I apologize to you if anything I've gleefully typed up has offended you.

I for one would like to get to know your workflow. I may learn something new. If you expound, I'll reciprocate and see if there's something I can dig up, and relate the workflow I used as well. Might be helpful.

[Gil]

I would love to see the workflow yes, as I feel (Nick touched on that) that might be the area that needs work. The end result is not bad and the vectors -> small scale -> detail touch-ups is a valid workflow, so I'd be happy to offer some advice there. In some cases automated palette reduction could be a step to consider. I'd have to see some in between stages first though.

And Mathias: these guys are obviously new and the original post mentions specifically that the author doesn't consider this pixel art, but a close neighbour where the end touch-ups are very much in the same spirit. A simple indication of the low spec forum WOULD have been sufficient and I feel that the whole flame war thing is not the way to go for a more seasoned member like yourself. Critique may be harsh, but I think your discussions could be more civil (peace and love, you know?)

NickZA: I notice you have a passion for our little world of pixel art, so I advice you take it easy on your first posts. I'm sure you'd like to stick around a bit, so it might be wise not to get baited into a flame war as easily. I'm sure you have tons of good advice to give and I'd hate to see you leave again on bad terms because of a silly discussion with a less-polite newer member like Mathias.

[figurestone]

Well, as I can't post my workflow images yet I might as well write it out.

1. Pencil thumbnails to begin with, very rough and flat (monochrome) hopefully to get an interesting shape that works on this level.
2. A few more pencil variations of the thumb, slightly bigger and more detailed. Some shading/relief sculping to show the 3D qualities of the ship. Main focus should still be the overal shape of the ship but detail ideas can't hurt now right?
3. At this point I took the scan into Flash and vectored over it. In this case we selected 1 design from step 2 and made a few black silouettes on white to refine the overall shape. Some variations arise out of this.
4. We then selected the best design from the previous step and I added gradient to show the 3Dness.
5. I then added some detail and colour to the design.
6. Here I reduce the ship to the 'ingame' size and import into photoshop **I think this is where I must be going wrong, I am designing the overall design at 200% (or more) the actual size, so detail is lost in the process!**
7. I then play with the rasterised version, adding detail, bringing out highlights and 'carving in' indentations.

I'd love to hear some of the processes you guys have to create your work and suggestions to improve my own.

[Gil]

Yes, I think that you should either work in full size and downscale to the right size or downscale to the right size, then add detailing. Right now, you're not maximizing the detail phase. Lots of artist prefer to stay in full size until the end, which works fine too. It does have an added bonus of being able to work faster and slightly sloppy. On the other hand, you'll never got access to the nitty gritty detail working full size.

The work on the silhouette during concept stage is obviously a very good step. I feel though that with this ship, the silhouette is actually a fair bit better than the actual inside details. I'd add a bit more to it. I can understand the dome shape, but the half circle thing sticking out is a bit bland. Maybe mix up the detail a bit there. Exposed machinery or some different material would have worked better. I like the lower half and the bridge piece, though I feel that, again, the dome shape might be slightly bland.

Here's a sample of hand-made pixel level detail. Some of it works, some of it doesn't. It's just a proof of concept that pixel level details can enhance parts of the image. I obviously didn't think about the ship design, I just slapped some detail on to show something.

[Mathias]

This party blows, I'm leaving.

(Gil, PM'ed you)

[NickZA]

@Gil, some good points there!

The work on the silhouette during concept stage is obviously a very good step. I feel though that with this ship, the silhouette is actually a fair bit better than the actual inside details.

I agree there could be more done with the disk, and I think the arms/nacelles have a certain flatness to them; but this may be hard to clear up considering how brightly the energy "windows" on the nacelles glow. What do you think?

I really like your extra detail on the rear section. I personally would think about toning down the strength of those lines/panels slightly just so the contrast is not so great, but I do love it. I'm not sure about the chevron effect on the arms, but let's get figurestone's opinion?

You've also hardened the highlight running along the equator of that hemisphere which strengthens the form. I knew there was something wrong there but I hadn't been able to put my finger on it.

@figurestone, did you notice the very sort of flat section along the front of your bridge window? I think that might be where a rescale is evident, needs a bit of touching up.


PS. Gil, your diplomatic words are well-taken and believe me, that thought occurred to me several times before I hit the sack last night. I've got enough respect for these forums and most of the people here that this wasn't my idea of the ideal honeymooon, either. Well, live and learn, I guess. My insulting Mathias' work was a dirty punch, just for the record. I will not do that again.

[figurestone]

Gil, its such a subtle change but it really adds a lot to the ship. Thanks for that!

Here's a few images showing the process: