It's like pixel art...

[Redshrike]

I've been working in a particular pixel art-ish genre of digital art for quite a while now, and I wanted to post a few pieces here to see what insights you guys might have (there aren't nearly as many people in this particular sub-sub-genre/community as there around here).  The things concerned are 32x32 item icons as well as characters/objects in a sort of oblique-ish perspective.  They tend towards being both detailed and high in color count, which requires a certain tightness that just painting and resizing really can't accomplish reliably.  Basically, I usually start out by working in straight pixels, and then (sometimes/usually) port to photoshop to adjust the colors, contrast, darken/lighten certain areas, etc., and then clean it up with basic pixel tools.  I'm only going to post a few here because most of what I do is for a not-yet-released project.  Anyway, I really like it because, in some ways, it's like having some of the rigor of pixel art but without limits other than size.
So, a few random things.  A werewolf, a skate (item, not monster/environmental) a bird skull (it's an item, but whether they're in perspective or not varies based on mood and precedent) a couple of shields and a couple of axes.

[ptoing]

They look nice, but the treatment is silly. I am just making an edit to show you what I mean.

I edited the shield down to 16 colours including trans and it does not look visibly different at 1x. So I would have to do what you do with this technique is sacrifice control at the gain of not much.

Yours: 57 colours


First manual reduction and very little cleanup: 16 colours


Further cleanup and palette adjustments: still 16




Animation between yours and the first reduction:


If you start with pixelart I say just stick with it for stuff of this size. You had loads of colours which were virtually identical and also a whole bunch of colours only used in one pixel without being significant.

[Timpa]

There is a reason to why there is alot of colors, mainly none of us (I'm also active in the project he's talking about) has ever had that restriction since the projects we work for doesn't have any color restriction. Also some people use resizing when drawing these kind of items which also increases the amount of colors. But ofcourse there could be less colors. It's just that it would add extra work to an already "finished" sprite:P

[ptoing]

If you work with resizing yes. But if he works at this size from the get go it would be faster imo.
Also if it is a "finished" sprite he should not post it on a critique board. This is not a gallery. My edit also holds some crits on the colours used not just the amount.

[Dusty]

I agree with Ptoing about the color reduction. Not only are you wasting time going from pixel to digital art, when the digital art medium could be avoided entirely, but you end up with a nearly identical file as Ptoing's but with a larger filesize to compensate with all those colors. You might not have hard-coded limitations, but you should be as efficient as possible when you can be.

[Zoggles]

I agree with Ptoing about the color reduction. Not only are you wasting time going from pixel to digital art, when the digital art medium could be avoided entirely, but you end up with a nearly identical file as Ptoing's but with a larger filesize to compensate with all those colors. You might not have hard-coded limitations, but you should be as efficient as possible when you can be.

aint that the truth!

Since memory and computers have got better and better - most software just gets lazier and more squanderous. Sure a texture may end up taking up more space in memory when loaded than a reduced colour sprite but it sure adds to the overall file size. Obviously higher quality sound and video tend to be the big culprits here much of the time, but when you take a look at things like .kkreiger and .debris (http://www.theprodukkt.com/) it just goes to show what can still be done at small file sizes.

-Z-

[ndchristie]

it's worth noting too that after ptoing has reduced the palette to a comfortable set, he was able to create a much better version (in terms of color choice and atmosphere and in terms of something which can be better integrated with more contemporary game aesthetics), and I assume he was able to do this quite quickly compared to fiddling with a complex palette and imprecise tools.

I'm talking about this one :

[Perciv@l]

I don't think that pure pixelart would be a better process to achieve the result he is trying to achieve. Dodging and burning are powerfull tools to make quick ajustments and refinements, that would take much more time by picking new colors and re-pixeling entire parts. Obviously pure pixelart can give more sharpness and control of edges, but with a few refinements he can achieve the same. So, I don't believe this process is worthless, silly, nor a worst way to do things, it's just a method that can be more confortable to some people.

If you aim at process (push your skills), that's what pure pixelart is all about. If you aim at results, pure pixelart is not the only way. Any non-pixelartist can hardly tell the difference between the original from Redshrike and Ptoin's edit.

*I'm a pixel-purist, and this is not a method that I use.

[ptoing]

Working with a single ramp like he has here he could use shade mode in Promotion or Grafx2 to quickly darken or lighten parts with the available colours.
How fast you really are in the end depends a lot on the tools as well as practise. No matter how awesome you are at pixelling, you will for example never be as fast as someone equally good when you use MSPaint and they are using something which was designed with pixelart in mind (which MSPaint was not).