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[primitive]

Hello everyone.

I've been trying to get decent at pixel art for a while now, but I still feel like I'm stuck right at the beginning. I've read through the popular tutorials, but I just can't put the concepts into practice, it seems.
so I'm hoping that some of the talented bunch of people here will be kind enough to help me out with feedback.

inspired by this this thread from a while back, my plan is to make a new sprite/tile/whatever as often as I can (hopefully every day, but I'll see how I go).
any feedback whatsoever, constructive or otherwise, is very much appreciated.

so here goes:
   
I tried making an apple, but it ended up looking more like a cherry, I think.
I did the dithering initially, but I wasn't sure if it added much, so tried without. is one way or the other conclusively 'better'?
also, is the palette OK? I tried to do a bit of hue-shifting, but I can't really tell if it worked.

Many thanks!

[thedaemon]

For once I like the dithered version better. Yes it looks like a cherry. I see no hue shifting, all looks red to me. Even the steam is red. The dithered version has more colors, why did you remove the darker shade from the non-dithered? Add it back and it should look better. Also, some anti-aliasing would do wonders for your cherry. 

[primitive]

Thanks for the tips!
The darker bit is a little bit bluer, and the highlight is a little bit yellow. I guess it's too subtle, but when I tried differentiating the colours further, the sections looked a bit disconnected.

The fourth colour in the non-dithered version is the outline colour. is it 'acceptable' to use the outline colour for shading? I wasn't sure.

Do you mean anti-aliasing the borders between shading regions, or just the outline of the cherry? It seems impossible  to anti-alias the shading regions without adding new colours, is that right?
And is A-A still applicable to dithered borders?

Thanks again.


Here's number two, a 16x16 top-down character sprite. I'm never sure how much shading to do for characters this size (sometimes they look really cluttered), but I think I got an OK balance for this one.

I suspect it might be difficult to critique things this small, so I'll try bigger sprites for the next few.

[Keops]

Hey there.

I made a very quick edit of your apple.

I basically changed the hues of the palette to make it more eye catchy, added some AA and added some highlights, you know, apples are quite shiny.



Hope this helps.

[primitive]

Thanks very much, Keops! Helped a lot.
How did you pick those eye-catchy colours?
Is there a method, or are you just much better at this than I am?



Today I attempted a tree. I have zero traditional art experience, and I'm pretty rubbish at establishing forms (if this is even the right terminology). I did better than usual with this tree, but it still doesn't look very voluminous. I also tried adding AA and it seemed to work out OK as far as I can tell.
Not sure about the colours, though. Putting blue in the shadow makes it look like night-time, which I didn't want, but the colours look a bit flat without it. Is there an easy solution?

[Keops]

Hey there primitive.

Give me a few minutes and I'll make a small tutorial-like post to show you how I pick colors. By the way, the tree seems quite decent, much better than the apple/cherry art. You just keep practicing and you'll keep improving!

(I'll edit this post with the info!)

--- EDIT ---



Take these example sprites. One is a small bush and the other is a little rock.

Look below the sprites, you'll see the color ramps I used. I didn't only use lighter shades of the same hue, I did something called Hue Shifting, which is a fancy name for moving across the chromatic spectrum to pick adjacent colors. In the bush, darker shades tend to be cooler/bluish, while lighter shades are trending towards yellow green/yellow.

The rock is similar, from a darker, more reddish gray they move toward a light pink for the highlights.



Also another tip, try to experiment a lot with color palettes, look at this art example. I first created the lineart and then the color blocks in a very light pastel palette. But I experimented a lot with hue variations, contrast variations, etc. This allows you to have a wider selection of possible palettes.

Hope this helps!

K

[primitive]

Wow, thanks for all the help.
I really appreciate it.
I'll try to implement some hue-shifting in my next few sprites.

Unfortunately didn't have time to finish anything today. I made a start, but it's not going so well. Should be finished by tomorrow though.

In the meantime, I remembered some pixel art I did a while ago.
it's a tileset and sprites for a top-down pseudo-RPG.
I don't have a spritesheet or tilesheets conveniently available, so I'll just post a couple of screens.


Feedback welcomed, please.

[Keops]

I don't really have much to say about the lo-fi RPG pixel art. It's great. It looks almost straight out of an early 90s Game Boy game.

Reminds me a lot of Pokémon Red/Blue.

Looking forward to seeing your new pixel art pieces. If you keep at it you'll become very good.

[primitive]

yeah, I took a lot of inspiration from (i.e., ripped off) the 1st-gen Pokémon graphics.

this was today's effort:



I traced the original (I don't know if this is considered bad form or something), but I also tried to apply the shading techniques I've been picking up. As usual, any feedback will be appreciated.

I was hoping to do a front on view as well, but this one took a lot longer than I thought it might. So maybe tomorrow.

Cheers

[primitive]

as mentioned yesterday:


I don't think it looks that great, but I don't have any ideas on how to improve it.

[Keops]

The sprite is not bad, it looks a bit cluttered but I don't think it's a problem, especially taking into consideration the source (Braid, right? That game had a very busy/cluttered visual style)

I think that you should also work some other related skills that will help you improve your pixel artwork.

Traditional art: Don't neglect what you can create with just a pencil and some paper. This will translate to better pixel art even if it seems a bit unrelated. Sketching, shading, coloring, etc. Practice this on a daily basis if possible. Sketching is extremely important. If you come up with an interesting design, scan it and try to come up with a sprite based on it.