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[cynicalsandel]

First off, let me apologize for not knowing how to scale pixel art. I don't really know what I'm doing, which is why I'm starting this thread in the first place. I'm hoping to get some feedback and am going to attempt to improve at pixel art.

The past 2 days have been my first real attempt to do some pixel art. I've done some pixel art on shirts on animal crossing, but none were my actual own creations. The art side of video games is my personal preference, but I am not that great at it. I'm even worse at programming. I've been procrastinating for about a year, and finally, I am now starting to actually try to get some practice in.

Anyway, this was my first attempt yesterday.



Yeah, it sucks. This is what I've done today to improve on that.



It's still a work in progress, but I feel its a bit better than the first one. I'm struggling a bit on the beard. I don't want to outline it at the top, but to me, it doesn't look quite right yet. Also, sorry if it looks transparent. It isn't. It's just similar to the color of the forums. Additionally, I feel that the legs are lacking.

Any advice anyone has will be greatly appreciated. I'll be posting more work soon.

[cynicalsandel]

I attempted my first tile. It's dirt.



And if the gnome were a part of it..



It's easy to tell that the tiles are tiles. I read somewhere that it is better when it is less obvious.

[kaboom]

You are correct about the tiling my friend.


As you can see in my example, highlights will make your stuff much better/more readable.

Read this if you want to know more about about obliterating the grid.


edit: Oops I forgot the belt buckle, but I think you get the point. Poison green isn't the best color for a belt though.

[cynicalsandel]

I don't have any new pixel art, but I was wondering if anyone could explain how they pick colors. I am assuming that you all can just tell when you are using the sliders and such, but it would be nice to know if anyone was doing otherwise. I am colorblind, so I have a really difficult time. It's not like having colored pencils where you can look at the name of the color on the pencil.

[Kramlack]

I try to use equal intervals when going through the HUE/SAT/LUM numbers.

For example;
HUE  230  /  235  /  000  /  005
SAT  220  /  200  /  180  /  160
LUM  200  /  150  /  100  /  050

Would give you the following colours;


Short of that though, it's just colour theory. Knowing what colours go well with others, what types of hue shifts look nice, etc.

[cynicalsandel]

I really liked what green did with the arms and feet, and I feel they are much improved. However, I didn't like how the ears turned out, and I didn't like the addition of the mouth. I made a compromise of sorts on the ears and removed one of the black pixels on them, but kept the other. I feel it keeps the ear shape I'm looking for on this gnome. I removed the black border at the bottom of the hat, but replaced it with red instead.



Here, I removed the belt, but its a little odd for the back view. I also extended the beard and arms on the side view to match the front. I removed the shadows on the hat, but I'm a tad lost on the whole highlights thing. Maybe I'm crazy, but I like the look of the shadows better than highlights or lack of either. I'm also confused about how to approach the feet from the other angles.

Pixel art is so much more difficult than one would expect at first glance.

[cynicalsandel]

I had no idea where to post this, and I didn't really want to create a new topic. It sort of relates to how I want to progress as a pixel artist, so yeah..

updated + more stuff + blatant kramlack ripoff

That mockup is like the best pixel art ever. It is so simple and pleasant. (Top left) Other pixel art is just way too busy for my taste. How does one accomplish this? If someone could explain it like they would to an idiot, I would greatly appreciate it.

[agersant]

The western mockup uses very little pixel art knowledge actually. Shawny seems to have a great eye for color and solid art fundamentals.
I do not want to deter you from pixel art but I dont think the strongest qualities of this mockup (which you want to emulate) relate to pixel art.

[Derek]

I would say what is good about that desert mockup is that everything is very chunky and exaggerated in a nice way.

[Gabriel Verdon]

The thing about pixel art is that it's kind of a combination of graphic design and illustration. If you want to become a great pixeller, I would recommend practicing those things as well.

[cynicalsandel]

The western mockup uses very little pixel art knowledge actually. Shawny seems to have a great eye for color and solid art fundamentals.
I do not want to deter you from pixel art but I dont think the strongest qualities of this mockup (which you want to emulate) relate to pixel art.

I'm a horrible artist, and have had no training whatsoever, (I've only had my art classes in high school, and none of those taught anything. It was just all practice.) so would fundamentals be stuff like shading, color, and spacing things out so everything isn't just on one side? Like say all the cacti were bunched together just on the left side, and there weren't any in the rest of the mockup. That is something you'd probably want to avoid.

I would say what is good about that desert mockup is that everything is very chunky and exaggerated in a nice way.

Are you talking about the rocks and the cacti? Because my favorite part of the mockup is that there aren't highly detailed tiles like in some pixel art. The ground is just one color, and the shading on the rock wall is very simple. That's what I like. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear in my previous post.

The thing about pixel art is that it's kind of a combination of graphic design and illustration. If you want to become a great pixeller, I would recommend practicing those things as well.

Would graphic design be like web design, or magazines and stuff? Illustration as in like children's books?

Sorry, I'm not an artist.

[k0tn]

Not sure if anyone has said this yet but if you open the image in Gimp you can scale them by going to Image>Scale Image>then enter the size to resize too and set the interpolation to none, that way it wont blur at all.

[agersant]

The western mockup uses very little pixel art knowledge actually. Shawny seems to have a great eye for color and solid art fundamentals.
I do not want to deter you from pixel art but I dont think the strongest qualities of this mockup (which you want to emulate) relate to pixel art.

I'm a horrible artist, and have had no training whatsoever, (I've only had my art classes in high school, and none of those taught anything. It was just all practice.) so would fundamentals be stuff like shading, color, and spacing things out so everything isn't just on one side? Like say all the cacti were bunched together just on the left side, and there weren't any in the rest of the mockup. That is something you'd probably want to avoid.

Yup, that's the idea. The mockup shows a good understanding of light (shading) and color theory. Spacing thing is called composition and is also a "fundamental".
As you can see, none of this is exactly pixel art. Some techniques that are specific to pixel art are dithering, antialiasing, subpixel animation and palette management.

[kaboom]

I disagree on some parts, because this most definently IS pixelart. "dithering on the cacti, color reuse, and last but not least pixel by pixel placement". But they're right about everything else.

Just keep in mind that pixelart is just an artform. And knowing the basics of art can get you a long way.

[cynicalsandel]

Not sure if anyone has said this yet but if you open the image in Gimp you can scale them by going to Image>Scale Image>then enter the size to resize too and set the interpolation to none, that way it wont blur at all.

Sorry. I don't know how to use Graphics Gale very well. I'm still figuring everything out. I wanted to scale the images x2, but I didn't know how. I'll try to figure it out before I post anything of my own creation again.

Yup, that's the idea. The mockup shows a good understanding of light (shading) and color theory. Spacing thing is called composition and is also a "fundamental".
As you can see, none of this is exactly pixel art. Some techniques that are specific to pixel art are dithering, antialiasing, subpixel animation and palette management.

I guess I should just attempt to get better at art in general rather than just pixel art then. Then, maybe the skills will transfer over better to pixel art.

I disagree on some parts, because this most definently IS pixelart. "dithering on the cacti, color reuse, and last but not least pixel by pixel placement". But they're right about everything else.

Just keep in mind that pixelart is just an artform. And knowing the basics of art can get you a long way.

Would good books help with learning the basics of art? Or is it something you have to take a class for? I know some people that are completely self taught, so maybe it is just practice? Maybe I'm overcomplicating things by asking too many questions because there are multiple paths to the same goal.

Thanks to everyone who has posted in this topic. I wasn't sure how much attention it would get because it was in the Workshop subforum. I'll try to post some work here, whether it is pixel art or not, as every improvement in any aspect of art will be related to my "quest."