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[cynicalsandel]

Day 26:



I didn't have enough patience to work on pixel art for more than an hour, so here is my unfinished mockup of a snowy place. I wanted to try something other than characters and animals, though I did include a Snowman. I was going to add a character walking (hence the footprints), but once I finished the tree, I didn't feel like doing much else.

The landscape is sparce, the way I like it. I hate cluttered tiles, but I don't really think it looks good though. My little piles kind of suck. Additionally, I don't think the style of the tree and of the snowman match, so that kinda sucks.

[SolarLune]

I like it. It's simple, but pretty effective. Some shading would really help, as everything's kind of flat (the piles aren't that visible, and the scenery's drawn from a top-down angle, but without shading, it's difficult to really see the scenery.

[Kramlack]

Needs more skifree yeti.

[Inanimate]

Wow, this is a gem of a thread. Keep up the amazing work. You're getting better even more each day!

[cynicalsandel]

A couple minutes late, but...

Day 27:



It's a WIP. This was over an hour of work. I'll work on it some more tomorrow. I'm counting this as yesterdays even though I'm 7 minutes late. I'll do another one for later today. It's going to be Magus from Chrono Trigger. Hopefully, it will resemble him more tomorrow.

[cynicalsandel]

I like it. It's simple, but pretty effective. Some shading would really help, as everything's kind of flat (the piles aren't that visible, and the scenery's drawn from a top-down angle, but without shading, it's difficult to really see the scenery.

Thanks. I definitely need to improve on my shading. It's really difficult for my to imagine shading. The only time I shade somewhat decently is with a reference. I'm going to practice more mockups and such soon, so hopefully I'll get a bit better at showing what I meant to.

Needs more skifree yeti.

I had to look that up on google. 

Wow, this is a gem of a thread. Keep up the amazing work. You're getting better even more each day!

Thanks! I wouldn't consider it a gem. At least, not yet.

Day 28:



Here is my finished Magus. There are a few problems with it. The hair and face are a little lacking. I struggled a lot with the face at such a small size. Other than that, I struggled with colors a bit. I notice especially that the gloves are hard to see. It took over 2 hours to do this.

I have a few worries going forward. I feel like I take a long time to pixel something, even when it is small. How much time do you guys usually spend? Compared to hand drawn stuff, it takes me a lot longer, so I was just wondering.

Also, do you guys sort of draw out the basic outlines first and then clean up, or do you do it pixel by pixel?

Finally, I'm worried that I'm not creating game-y enough pixel art. This whole thread is mainly to up my abilities so that I can make decent art for games, but I don't feel like the stuff I'm doing pertains to that. You guys told me to do larger sized pixel art, so I'm not really sure where to go, or what to do next. I'm thinking that I'm going to try to do some mockups like that thread in the art section that's full of them. I don't feel very confident in my ability to do so though.

[SolarLune]

It depends on what it is (a picture takes longer than a sprite), but I don't usually spend that much time pixelling things. I usually block things out with colors, using shading or separate colors for sections of characters, then add shading, and outlines last, if necessary. I think that the reason that the hair and face are lacking is because you use a lot of the pixels on the color black - it just kind of muddies up the colors. I did a little video tutorial on color separation, though I don't know much about the subject. Basically, as far as I understand it, you don't need outlines to separate areas if you color them differently. This way, you can get more detail in a smaller space.

The picture's fine for a game's title screen. If you mean in-game sprites, you generally want things to be as readable (and easy to animate) as possible. It also depends on what style you're going for - NES and GBC graphics are usually smaller and simpler than SNES or PS1-level 2D graphics.

[Kramlack]

You might want to look into another technique that people use to do pixel art (larger stuff like what you're doing with Magus), and that's where they draw in rough first with either a tablet or mouse, and clean up after, then rinse and repeat. I've never got it down myself and I think it's part laziness and part not learning it early on.

Green, Delicious, Pietepiet, and many others do it, and there's probably a few video tutorials on what I'm talking about, but it's a very good skill to start working on, early on.

[Veo]

Yeah, as SolarLune says it all depends on many different things. Like, the size, style, and what I am doing can all affect how long it takes. Sometimes it takes me a quite long time like the last Pixel I posted in "show us some of your pixel art"(which I'm still not happy with) Because I don't usually do stuff like that much and sometimes I can bust them out pretty fast with things I am more comfortable with.

I generally block out all the important things and then I outline and then add detail after that I just shade and then refine it until I am happy with it.

I scrounged up an example of how I would block things out out of my sprite folder

This is how it started



And this is how it ended up



Well, that all really depends on what kind of game you want to make and what you want it to look like.

[keo]

I pretend I'm massaging my lover with paint on my hands, in a circle motion each stoke with  tender love

In a painting program we were taught to block out areas, starting with the darkest color in the region of the object and working your way up to the highlights.  same carried over.  I still kind of build shapes with circular motions of the mouse, in combination with outlines and sketching.

[Derek]

Here is my finished Magus. There are a few problems with it. The hair and face are a little lacking. I struggled a lot with the face at such a small size. Other than that, I struggled with colors a bit. I notice especially that the gloves are hard to see. It took over 2 hours to do this.

Don't worry about how much time it takes you. It's not really that relevant until you're working on something with a deadline.

I think it's time for you to start using colors other than black for your outlines. I'd say start by coloring the inside lines that don't define the edge of something.

For example:

Outline of legs/pants: black
Pant color: purple
Pant shading: darker purple
Wrinkles of pants: even darker purple

The bolded line is what you'd need to change from your drawing.

You can apply this to clothing, hair, weapons (that line going down the length of his scythe would be a dark grey rather than black).

[cynicalsandel]

Day 29:



Was trying to create an RPG battle scene of sorts. Sort of influenced by Earthbound, but with only one character, and that's why I put all the attacks at the bottom. I pixelled every letter one pixel at a time.  Basically, my idea was of a JRPG in which you play as a hipster, fighting enemies with stupid stuff, and your HP was your smug level. Dum idea, but I just wanted to attempt something. I didn't feel like pixelling an enemy though. Mainly because I didn't have any good ideas for an enemy. Maybe an uncool parent or something.

Thanks for all the advice. I would reply to it all, but I don't really know what to say other than I'll attempt to put it to good use, and that I appreciate that you have taken time to respond and help me. It means a lot to have the support I receive in this thread. I can't give anything in return really, so I'm just hoping to improve to show that your time helping me wasn't wasted.

[cynicalsandel]

Day 30:





Not a good day.

[Derek]

Haha, sorry... the pairing of that space man and your text struck me as a little bit funny.

Not to worry, though - any day you put some pixels down is a good day. But it's an especially good day if it started out a bad day and you still put some pixels down. Yaknowhatimean?

[cynicalsandel]

Day 31:

Today, I had a life. Usually, I sit around alone, but today I hung out with people for 11 hours, and I just got home now. I could try to make some crappy pixel art in 15 minutes, but I feel that wouldn't really count, and yesterday was bad enough. So, I'm just going to leave today blank. I made it a month doing pixel art everyday. It had to happen eventually.

I'm not going to give up on this though. Sometimes, I just don't have good days. Sometimes, I lack motivation. Sometimes, I have no clue what to pixel. It is just part of being human.

I'll be back tomorrow with something hopefully decent.