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[Strelok]

So, I'm starting at pixelart, I know the basics of basics like theories and things, but I need practice.

I would like to know good ways to practice, things like exercises that I would repeat or improve. And what tools are best for working, also for animations as I use Windows XP. Is there a good tutorial that I could use to learn, because the tutorials I have found untill now just showed me the theories about isometric pixelart, pixelart and basics of basics. I want to go deeper into it, so I can take my ideas of games from my mind and put them on the pixels.

Thank you guys. 

[Ashkin]

Go to a site like Colourlovers, pick a random palette, and ask a friend what to pixel. Do a quick and dirty pixel of it, rinse, and repeat. You could even set up a topic in the Workshop subforum to ask people to suggest things.

[Bones]

Pixel art is a process of line art or color clumping, basically you generally want to work from darker to light much like painting.


Also, I suggest you start doodling more on paper because an understanding of drawing is very important, you can't just go straight into pixel art if you've never drawn on a piece of paper, I mean it's possible. But my advice is start doodling, like now.

- Pixel art tutorials can only help so much, you are much better off making something and then posting it in the correct forum.
I'd suggest, www.pixeljoint.com or http://www.wayofthepixel.net
TIG source is only going to help you so much with pixels, so I'd suggest going to a community based on them.
(no offense to TIGsource, just that these forums focus on pixel art and have some great members)
The reason tutorials don't work is because you end up just copying them and not learning anything much.

- I still use a lot of msPaint... BUT I do use other programs for animation.
Graphics Gale
Promotion 6

- When researching animation, don't look for pixel art tutorials look for animation tutorials.
It's also handy to have a basic understanding of physics for your weight timing.
Also I'd suggest buying the book - The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams
As pixel artists we work with frame by frame animation so we are practically using traditional methods which are still very relevant to this day.

(most all of the animations below are property of baccaman21 aka Pete Ranson)





Anyways... When dealing with a lot of animation mainly when working with running animations or moving limbs, you want the limbs to ease into their motion.
The amount of frames you use can help you do this.
Basically whenever you think of an arm, or a leg think of a pendulum.






Now with animation there is also stretch and squashing.
Use of stretch and squash is good for multiple things when animating.




Now when you add a bit of anticipation to that same animation it gives the ball more believable weight.

That is then when you can get into adding your secondary movement.

Remember when your animating you want to keep things simple, you don't want to have to be animating shadows and fixing your sprite with touchup's until the actual animation is fully made with solid colors.

Stretch and squash leads you up to dis-jointed animation

Which allows for much more character in some sprites more in a cartoon style.




Timing is everything in animation, it's what makes or breaks the believability of weight in your actions.




Sub-pixel animation
This is going to be very hard to explain myself so I'm just going to steal someone else's explanation as to how it works.

it's not that complicated, basically you use antialias to move an element in the picture seemingly by less than a pixel at a time.

Made a quick picture to show it. Top: one pixel at a time, bottom: sub pixel movement so smoothen it out.

For actual pixelart this can be used for small idle wobbles of stuff like motors or for subtle breathing animations on smaller sprites where you can tween between 2 frames like this.

Here are some examples of some minor sub-pixel animation.
Hopefully now that you know what it is you can see it in animations.



Walk cycles are the best thing to practice, either by practicing making one leg, or even just one arm move. Practice makes perfect. (well almost)

It's best to start with your most extreme positions, we call these keyframes.
Each animation is made of frames, but the keyframes are the ones that do the most extreme amount of motion.



Plus, once you have one leg working it's not hard to add the other one.






Explosions and effects
Effects are some of the easiest things to animate since they are usually so quickly displayed.


In order to animate explosions you will have to first understand how they actually work.
Check out this explosion animation tutorial.

The funny thing is, this may seem like a lot.
But I'm only scratching at the surface.
There is still such terms as

AA (anti-aliasing)

Selout (Selective Outlining)

Half Toning/Dithering
(if you want to know how to dither go look up the pixel art demo-scene and check out pixeljoint, it's a great gallery of pixel art to reference)

Also pixeljoint has a GREAT collection of tutorials if there is anything I missed.

[Ashkin]

Bones, that's amazing. I wish I had gotten that kind of info dump when I was starting out.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

off topic, but strelok, are you named after the famous starcraft player by the same name?

[Hangedman]

off topic, but strelok, are you named after the famous starcraft player by the same name?

...who is named after the character from Stalker: SoC?

[C.D Buckmaster]

One important tip about shading, when making your sprite, choose a direction for the light source and shade based on it's position.  Also, don't do pillow shading, where you make it appear that the light is coming from the viewer's perspective, by making it light on the inside and darker close to edges, it doesn't look good.

[Bones]

A link to a shading tutorial may explain it a bit more visually.
It's hard to explain shading without examples of the terms your using.

Also this site gives a decent rundown on pixel art.

Though he asked for tutorials that weren't "basic" and shading seemed like the most basic one of them all.
Even though it may be one of the most important.

Also colour count is important, less is more.
You can do a lot with just 6-8 colours for just about anything.
Try to ramp your colours when picking colours, try to avoid shading using purely saturation to pick your colours.

Here is some info on colour harmonies and colour theory.
When animating I tend to use complementary colours because they clash against each other so it's easy to tell things apart.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

off topic, but strelok, are you named after the famous starcraft player by the same name?

...who is named after the character from Stalker: SoC?

actually strelok, the progamer, has used the name 'strelok' since around 1999, and stalker: soc is from 2007. also strelok the progamer is more famous than that game is. but i suppose it could be from either

[moi]

strelok is probably a russian word to start with

[EDIT] it means something like shapshooter...

[Strelok]

Thanks for the tutorials, I'll study more, and try many things.
Just made it:


and I downloaded Pro Motion 6, that'll be usefull.

@Paul Eres:
I'm Strelok, the SC2 famous player and also the programer... just kidding Hangedman is right, I'm named after Strelok, the guy from Stalker game series, I never knew about the famous SC2 player, and this programer, but I'm a good SC2 player myself.  

@Bones:
That's freaking good, dude. I'll use this to learn how to make animations and sprites for my games... it'll take a while because I suck at arts, but I'll try to develop my own style.


Thanks guys.

EDIT: I'm having problems on how to make animations with Pro Motion 6. Can someone help me out? Is there a good tutorial? I just can't find one.

[Bones]

I don't really use Promotion to animate.
Did you just download the trial? If so I'm not sure it's able to animate as a trial.
Though I have animated with promotion once or twice before.

Promotion is more what I use for making tile sets using their tile map editor.
Since they have the option to be able to edit, view and organize your tile set within the same editor.
Allowing you to make a mockup using your tiles, and then edit one tile and every tile in that mockup is updated.

The only thing I can suggest is perhaps watching some people using Promotion on either youtube or this Recorded Pixel Project.

[Relix]

Promotion is more what I use for making tile sets using their tile map editor.
Since they have the option to be able to edit, view and organize your tile set within the same editor.
Allowing you to make a mockup using your tiles, and then edit one tile and every tile in that mockup is updated.

That sounds nice.
Is it easy to use for someone who's used to more mspaintish programs?

[tylerjhutchison]

snip snip snip
EVERYTHING AMAZING THE BONES JUST SAID

In addition to all of that good information:

Check out this book for how to squash and stretch:
http://www.amazon.com/Character-Animation-Crash-Course-Goldberg/dp/1879505975/

[Bones]

Promotion is more what I use for making tile sets using their tile map editor.
Since they have the option to be able to edit, view and organize your tile set within the same editor.
Allowing you to make a mockup using your tiles, and then edit one tile and every tile in that mockup is updated.

That sounds nice.
Is it easy to use for someone who's used to more mspaintish programs?

Watch this video and you'll see the power of the promotion 6 tile editor.

Also Tyler, that looks like a great book.

[neon]

basically, learn to paint and draw and pixel at the same time..each will help the other.

for instance.. learning to paint will help your grasp of form in drawing, learning to draw will help your grasp of gesture and motion in painting, and learning to pixel will teach you how to convey visual information economically and make things read well. 

of course they will all teach you a shit ton of other stuff too but that's an example.

[Strelok]

So... I gave a try at animation... did a stick figure and tried a idle/breathing animation... looks like I did it wrong. Can you tell me what's wrong here?



Also, I tried those programs, but for no effect, I just couldn't use them. So I searched and found a plugin for Paint.net that could make animations, but it sucked, so I downloaded a program made with Game Maker (Beneton Movie GIF), I drew all the frames on Paint.net and imported the files to this program. That's the result.

EDIT:
Made another one with the same stickman figure:

[Ashkin]

So... I gave a try at animation... did a stick figure and tried a idle/breathing animation... looks like I did it wrong. Can you tell me what's wrong here?

This is a pretty common problem, with trying to make idles on small sprites. Check out this tutorial:
http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/tsugumo/chapter10.htm

[Inanimate]

It's okay, but when you run, you don't hold your legs at a 90 degree angle at all times. You have to swing out your foot for it to meet the ground, and then lift off at the end; it folds when moving forward, then extends again.

Tips:

Add a line for the ground, so you can visualize where your characters touch it.

Use a frame-by-frame reference of someone running.

One such reference, another one, and a third one.

These were all quickly googled; I'm sure you can find better ones with better searches (I just did "running frames" and clicked the first few pictures)

Best of luck, man!

[Strelok]

Thanks, dude! This stickman figure gave me a idea for a project... not now, but in the future. I'll work on my pixelart skills first.  

So... Am I doing it right?