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[cynicalsandel]

I had a previous workshop topic, but I wanted to keep this separate from that. This is a new project of sorts. I was inspired by Gabriel Verdon in a way. He posts to his devlog everyday, and that is an impressive feat. It seems like a good way to keep track of your progress and to keep yourself accountable.

Essentially I'm going to make some sort of pixel art everyday. The title of the thread says "sprite a day," but I'll probably end up making tiles and such also. I just thought the title sounded better as is. Most of them won't be very good, but that's the point. Hopefully, as this topic goes on, it will show my progress. I'm going to start with simpler pixel art, and if I feeling brave, I'll amp it up a bit. It might also depend on how much time I have each day.

Day 1:



Just a simple 16x16 sprite using 3 colors scaled up to 32x32. The thought in my head was the big, bald thug in action movies. Just a plain white t-shirt and jeans. I don't know how I feel about mouths on smaller sprites yet, and I hate making feet.

I'm not expecting any posts, as this is mainly for myself, but if you have any constructive criticism for me as this thread goes on, feel free to post it.

SPRITES TO DATE: (Idea courtesy of Derek Yu)

[cynicalsandel]

Day 2:

I feel embarrassed about Day 1. The sprite I made was 4 colors, but I said 3. I forgot about black. So, today, I make an actual 16x16 sprite using only 3 colors.



I'm still having trouble with finding a way to make feet. I was just trying something different with this one. It's based on Elvis. I hadn't planned on that originally, but as I was working on it, some of my hair scribbles reminded me of Elvis. The ears were a lot more defined in this one. I tried being fancy and adding white to sort of resemble shiny hair, but I'm not sure if it worked very well.

Ball hands totally stolen from Pokemon.

[eigenbom]

Keep it up, dont get embarassed just keep going. I'll come back in a few months to see how you've progressed.

[cynicalsandel]

Day 3:



I was busy. I was originally just going to do Finn and Jake, but then I kept going. However, once I got to Princess Bubblegum and LSP, I started struggling and gave up. I managed to keep Jake only 3 colors, but I wasn't happy with any of the others with limited colors, so I just went all out. I struggled with Jake's eyes and jowels a lot, as with this little pixels, it was difficult to get the look I wanted.

Additionally, here are some other versions of Finn and the Ice King that I ended up deciding I didn't like as much.



I didn't feel that there was enough contrast between Finn's face and hood, so I ended up putting a black outline in the version above. I also felt the feet were too big. I didn't like it when Ice King's eye were really beady either.

[Kramlack]

"Shut your face! I came back for the music."

I couldn't resist trying to edit it but I got carried away and basically redid the whole thing. My advice is, don't worry about getting the colours like the show. Colour based on shading. With such a limited amount of colours, you can't be worried about getting it right, as long as it's readable and nice, that's all you need. I like to start by just using 3 reds (light, med, dark) to draw my sprites, and add colours after, like so;



Another thing is don't be afraid to use a lot of black, it's not demonstrated here because Jake really doesn't have a lot of linework, but in most cases, black replaces a lot of things. Finally, pixel clustering, I'm not to great at this myself, but it's a key stepping stone to doing great low-res work. I don't have time to look and grab a link, but I'm sure if you punched "pixel clusters" into PJ's search bar, you'd get some good examples.

One last thing is you'll notice I used 4 colours on my Jake. It's possible to use 3 on mine as well, but I used the old "sprites over sprites" Megaman trick for the white eyes, it's not a big deal in a case like this, but I try to make sure my low res stuff will work with only 3, and then worry about adding more after.

[Daid]

I like your 2nd Finn better, the one you didn't like. Maybe if you took a darker skin color it would make the difference between face and hood better visible?

[jotapeh]

"Shut your face! I came back for the music."

Oh Oh Oh My 

[SolarLune]

I like your 2nd Finn better, the one you didn't like. Maybe if you took a darker skin color it would make the difference between face and hood better visible?

Agreed. His skin's too close to the color of white. I think that you should try a darker or orange-r skin tone.

"Shut your face! I came back for the music."

Oh Oh Oh My 

Indeed. Looks pretty accurate.

[cynicalsandel]

"Shut your face! I came back for the music."

I couldn't resist trying to edit it but I got carried away and basically redid the whole thing. My advice is, don't worry about getting the colours like the show. Colour based on shading. With such a limited amount of colours, you can't be worried about getting it right, as long as it's readable and nice, that's all you need. I like to start by just using 3 reds (light, med, dark) to draw my sprites, and add colours after, like so;



Another thing is don't be afraid to use a lot of black, it's not demonstrated here because Jake really doesn't have a lot of linework, but in most cases, black replaces a lot of things. Finally, pixel clustering, I'm not to great at this myself, but it's a key stepping stone to doing great low-res work. I don't have time to look and grab a link, but I'm sure if you punched "pixel clusters" into PJ's search bar, you'd get some good examples.

One last thing is you'll notice I used 4 colours on my Jake. It's possible to use 3 on mine as well, but I used the old "sprites over sprites" Megaman trick for the white eyes, it's not a big deal in a case like this, but I try to make sure my low res stuff will work with only 3, and then worry about adding more after.

Holy carp. That is amazing. Your version is crazy good. Thanks for the advice. I'll be sure to look up pixel clusters and hopefully learn a little bit from it. I don't know much about sprites over sprites and console restrictions, so I'm probably just going to stick with 3 (or 4 including transparency) colors per sprite. Is there a particular reason you use red, or would shades of any color suffice? Color based on shading. I'll have to remember that too. I'm not so good with the whole art thing, so sometimes I struggle with shading. Thanks again!

I like your 2nd Finn better, the one you didn't like. Maybe if you took a darker skin color it would make the difference between face and hood better visible?

Here is my attempt at an updated version of Finn based on what you said. Sorry about how small it is, I didn't feel like scaling it up. I also got rid of the 2 green pixels for the backpack, as they weren't really noticeable. Plus, I removed the line between the bottom of the hood and his shirt, as it wasn't really needed.

[cynicalsandel]

Day 4:



First off, I'd like to start off by asking whether people prefer if I post the sprites at their actual size like in this post or scaled up like in the first few? I personally don't care. It only takes a minute. The sprites above are Batman, Robin, Nightwing, and the Joker. I kept it to 3 colors in all except for Robin. His I ended up using 4. I personally feel as though their heads are all too wide, but maybe Batman's is just too thin. Details are really tough in a 16x16 space. I felt I did okay with the masks, but I'm struggling with hair mainly, but also feet and hands. I'm not a big fan of the ball hands, but I can't find anything else that I like. My next sprites will probably utilize different arms/hands.

Woo.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

you can do both (normal size and 4x or something), just put the different sizes next to each other, that'd be the most preferable

[Kramlack]

In regards to the sprites over sprites thing, it's a trick that (I believe) was coined in the original Megaman games to get around the NES' limit of 3 colours per sprite. It's really just the effect of putting a sprite over top of another sprite, so in Megaman's case, I believe it was the whites on his eyes. It's not really important unless you're doing actual low-res stuff or if you're just crazy like me, heheh.

EDIT: Derp, missed your second point. I don't have a reason for using red other than it has three nice default shades when I open Paint, so it's just the easiest to use. Any colour will do.

EDIT2: Don't worry about being meh with art. When I joined TIGs way back in '09, I was pretty bad myself.

I could argue that I'm still terrible but a lot of people try to say otherwise so I guess it's just the curse of the artist to always hate your own work.

[cynicalsandel]

Day 5:





I made Cubone for this thread. I feel pretty good about this sprite. Cubone really wasn't that difficult. It helped that he doesn't use that many colors, so it was easy to only use 3 colors. I'm a little meh about the arm that isn't holding the bone, but I didn't want to do a ball hand, so I'm stuck with it.

[SolarLune]

Day 5:

Awesome Cubone. I'm not a huge fan of the right arm - I think that maybe you could add a pixel where its knuckle would be, and possibly lengthen the arm a pixel (I'm not too sure about that). Also, perhaps you should put a skin colored pixel somewhere on the bone to make it look like he's actually holding it. Other than that, it's pretty good.

[jotapeh]

I could argue that I'm still terrible but a lot of people try to say otherwise so I guess it's just the curse of the artist to always hate your own work.

You're still terrible.

JK I love this guy. He sprites like a king. AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT.

@cynicalsandel: that Cubone is super cute. Glad to see you moving away from the pokemon ball hands.

[cynicalsandel]

Day 5:

Awesome Cubone. I'm not a huge fan of the right arm - I think that maybe you could add a pixel where its knuckle would be, and possibly lengthen the arm a pixel (I'm not too sure about that). Also, perhaps you should put a skin colored pixel somewhere on the bone to make it look like he's actually holding it. Other than that, it's pretty good.

Here is my attempt to take your advice. I guess I sort of blanked on the fact that Cubone needs to hold the bone. I was so worried about everything else. I'm a bit indifferent on the whole arm situation. Personally, I don't care for either, but I don't know what else to do. Thanks!

@cynicalsandel: that Cubone is super cute. Glad to see you moving away from the pokemon ball hands.

Thanks! I don't like the ball hands much myself, but I didn't know what else to do. They at least got me started though.

[cynicalsandel]

Day 6:





Had a few real life things to do today, so I didn't have as much time to pixel as days past. Here is my first attempt at a grass tile. The first picture is the actual tile, and the second represents 4 tiles of it to show how it looks tiled. It's weird getting used to the idea that the sides have to line up with each other well.

[cynicalsandel]

Day 7:





I've been experimenting with character size. I prefer the one on the right, and I think most other people will too. It's supposed to be Spock, by the way. The The think is, having the left sprite's head one pixel higher than on the right leaves less room for hair detail, but more room for body detail, including longer arms. However, having the head a pixel lower as on the right, it does the opposite, but I think looks better in general. It just doesn't leave much room, especially for the legs.

[Kramlack]

Despain has some good tuts which I thought of when I saw your grass, might be worth looking into.

[cynicalsandel]

Day 8:





I didn't have much time today. I didn't get home until about 10 PM, so I didn't have much time. I just decided to draw a simple balding man. I wanted to use a grey color for the hair, but I preferred how it looked with black, and so I felt no need to do anything about the shirt.