Christmas Wreath

[twodayslate]

I guess you could say this is my 2nd attempt at pixel art?

I have the PSD is anyone wants it.  I think there are 6 colors?

There has to be a better way of doing this in photoshop. Right now I use the marquee tool and do each pixel with that. Indexed mode seems like what I would want but it does not allow layers. How do you all do this?

[EvilEye]

You don't need an indexed mode. Just pick your colors and then paint them on your workspace. Whenever you want a color from your palette, use the eyedropper tool to grab it.

[twodayslate]

You don't need an indexed mode. Just pick your colors and then paint them on your workspace. Whenever you want a color from your palette, use the eyedropper tool to grab it.

I find that using the paint brush always adds extra transparency by trying to make everything smooth. Do not want. But that made me think of the pencil tool. That works wonders

Thanks!

(I feel dumb now)

[Jeremy]

Hey, cute concept

The detail is a bit hard to find with a white background, which washes out your colours, green especially. The green doesn't really have much contrast between tones (Difference in hue, saturation and value) and so it's difficult to see the shape of the leaves!

Since green and red are complimentaries, they go well together in real life. unfortunately in pixel when you have small clusters of each right next to each other things can look muddled (e.g, can't really see the berries at 1x zoom) in fact, 1-pixel dots by themselves do what pixel art is generally about hiding - the true low resolution. With the colours, I believe that the reds could be more desaturated, or you have that problem with white, green and red fighting for dominance. There are a lot of one-off colours in the greens btw, probably got missed during recolour or something
If you employ hue shifting (in this example going further towards yellow-greens for the highlights and blue-greens for shadows) in the wreath and show bigger leaves (Remember: you dont need to fit everysingletinydetail into your pic ) The fact of what it is becomes much more recognisable.

I've made an edit to show what I meant & what in my opinion could be improved (Shown at double resolution incase your browser makes fuzzies):


I changed the shape of the bow too- I think you may have gotten confused with the shape of a bowtie?

[twodayslate]

I was using a reference bow that looked something like this: http://mysticalley.com/bows_RPV_velvetbowtiecu.jpg
This isn't the exact bow but you should get the idea... there are no visible loops or whatnot

I really like what you did with the greens. A darker green outline with dark and super light green leaves. and then light green base. It does make my colors look way to similar.

I do like your berries but I feel they are a bit too big. I admit that mine may be hard to see but... Probably should have made a cluster of them to make them easier to see. And then maybe add some pinecones.

Thank you for including the double resolution. My browser does make the fuzzies. What browser are you using that it doesn't? I'm using Firefox.

Here are my fixes after your critique... thanks a bunch
>>>
#1 Original
#2: I basically just changed the colors. Better? I took out the berries until I can figure out exactly what I want to do with those
#3: edited the wreath a bit and added big berry clusters
#4: snow! 8 colors

[bitterbug]

I think your bright green is a bit too bright. But nice revisions! Especially the snow

Welcome from another newbie

[twodayslate]

thanks for the welcome

I would generally agree that the green is too bright but I kinda like it. :\

edit:// or the colors may just look good cause of my monitor... idk

[Jeremy]

Ah, I see about the bow

I use Safari which does do the fuzzies but IE 6 doesn't (With the drawback of... being IE 6) and my mouse has a nifty zoom button. I think some browsers do now have the option. (Proper name is bilinear filtering if you wanna research more )

In the shading of the bow and snow you've got some banding (hugging pixel by pixel shading) it can make unwanted jaggies. Check out reply #20 on this thread for more info.

The lightest green and red is probably a little too saturated, making them look a little like plastic. Unless you want that. The darkest of your greens and reds are probably too dark, could probably be swapped straight to black

The berry clusters are much better, I'm pretty sure that's the traditional thing anyway

[twodayslate]

I'm not 100% sure I understand the banding fully yet. I'll make a quick edit. edit:// n/m I don't really get it at all. I don't see how the shading can't hug the pixels. :\ The bow is only 3 pixels wide so the inner shadow has to touch some of the pixels...

The dark red replaced a black outline previously and I like the dark red much more than the black.

IE6 blows and I am not going to be switching just so I can get a good zoom

Thanks a bunch! You have been a lot of help!

(replying at 2AM - sorry for typos etc)

[Jeremy]

It's difficult to explain (The reason I linked to the tut ).

The easiest example on your piece is the ends of the bow. You have 3 2px-step lines, one in the midtone, then highlight, then darkest. In my edit you can see that breaking up the hugging of each tone leaves a more organic, flowing shape (Also, anti-aliasing with the midtone! The lightest-tone-on-the-lightest-edge thing is really common among becinners, but it just flattens the pic out.

An edit showing banding and colour edits