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[PogueSquadron]

Hey everyone.  Please bear with me, as I'm still new to this whole world.

So, I'm very well versed in Photoshop and Illustrator.  I have no problem using the pen tool to make smooth lines for illustrations.

However, in the many sprite tutorials I've seen, they always recommend using the pencil tool in Photoshop.  While I understand that the pencil will paint pixel by pixel, it undoubtedly creates lines that I'll have to go back and touch up.

Is there a way to use the pen tool to accomplish this same task?  That is, could I alter any options so that the pen tool will create lines that are 1 pixel wide, with no anti-aliasing?  I feel like that would save me a lot of time and frustration, especially since I'm kind of a perfectionist.  Thanks!

[ink.inc]

I don't know if this is what you mean, but when you hold the shift key in Photoshop, you can draw straight lines. 

[PogueSquadron]

Ok, well from what I'm reading (and anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), it is possible to turn off AA with the pen tool...in Adobe Illustrator, but not in Photoshop.  I think I'll try that out and see how it works.

Edit: Well what I've found out I can do is turn off anti-aliasing in Illustrator, period, and turn on "pixel preview" in the View menu.  The results don't seem to be spectacular.  It looks like any way you do it, you'll wind up in Photoshop cleaning up curves and what have you.

[BlueSweatshirt]

Personally, I've found Paint.NET to be superior to Photoshop for spriting.
It doesn't have any vector tools, I don't think, but it you can manipulate lines very well.

Might be worth it to give it a try

[Xion]

I'm not sure I understand the question...you want to use vectors to make pixel-art? I can't imagine there's any sane way to go about that without needing cleanup afterwards, unless your standards for the finished product are very loose.

[Sean A.]

I know how, once you make the line with the pen tool go to the paths tab on the right (in CS4) then right click on the path and choose stroke path, then choose pencil or whatever you want and your done. A bit convoluted but it's the only way I know how.

[Geti]

Making pixel art with vectors is a bad idea, simply because pixel art is about having control over specific pixels and vectors are about having no set resolution. People suggest using the pencil tool in photoshop because in pixel art you usually want to have a set number of colours and to be able to place specific pixels without disturbing the neighbouring pixels as you would using a soft brush.

Essentially, ignore the pencil tool thing if you want to make vector art assets using illustrator or else learn to do pixel art in photoshop if you're looking for the retro result that a lot of indie developers are. Places like pixelation can help you.

[PogueSquadron]

Yeah I don't know why I always thought that the art was done at really high resolutions using traditional means, and then scaled down and cleaned up for a sprite.  Making a pixel sprite is a lot tougher than I would've thought!

[Geti]

Quite a lot of "conventional" artists do that, I know Arne for one does that unless he's working under very tight colour restrictions (most of the art for Cortex Command is scaled down and cleaned up). If you're working under time constraints starting large and scaling down can be a great idea, however learning to do "proper" pixel art can increase the quality of your sprites quite a lot, and means you don't have to fiddle around scaling it at different subpixel offsets to get the eyes of a face in the right place or whatever.

[Nugsy]

Couldn't you draw in a vector drawing app (InkScape for example) without AA on, and then screenshot the result? 

[PogueSquadron]

Yeah I'm thinking of trying something along those lines with Illustrator.  I was fooling around with some old work, but it wasn't working well because the shapes and lines were all a combination of brushes and shapes.  I wasn't worrying about consistency at all, since all I really cared about was the final image.

I was curious about possibly using vector art as the basis for a sprite mostly from the game Wario Land: Shake It.  I don't know how they did the process for those sprites, but they're just so high quality and perfect...were they all done simply using Photoshop?  They look like high quality vector images that were just scaled down and cleaned up.

[gimymblert]

Nop they are hand animated with cel animation painting. Then they scale it down, production IG made the animation I think, so it's entirely traditional anim with very good artist. This have been use with aladin and earthworm jim.

[PogueSquadron]

Ah ok.  I really love that look.  I'd love to see more companies do things like that.  I imagine that indie game makers usually don't go this route for financial reasons?  Does it make things like hit detection more difficult or anything?  Or is it basically "a sprite is a sprite is a sprite"?



I took my character and was kinda just playing with him.  The tricky thing is that I can't just scale down my high res art.  Scaling down the picture in my avatar, for instance, just causes awkwardness.  I wound up just tracing over I had with a thin stroke, shrinking it down, and tweaking some things as need be.

His head is about the same size as Wario's from Shake It (found a sprite rip by someone named Girrrtacos).  I had trouble exporting it the way I was seeing it on screen, so I had to take small screen caps.

Just experimenting with some different things (haha, as if you couldn't tell I was new around here).



(Actual size, size including white space is 68x56)


(a little bigger)


{next to a Wario sprite I was looking at just to check out line width)

[gimymblert]

A sprite is a sprite is a sprite (Look a Donkey Kong country and Mortal Kombat, Guilty gear or even street fighter 4 -> the collision is still 2D ) There is some indie with that level of quality too but nothing come to mind right now, indie is pretty diverse when it come to style and quality, even if TIG seem to favor pixel cute or retro look.

[PogueSquadron]

Yeah that's definitely true.  There are so many different sprites...but in the end they're all just image files.  I would love to be able to retain my style in any of my sprite designs.  It always irks me when I see awesome official art for a professional game, and then the sprites don't reflect that art at all.  I understand this is often due to practical reasons, but since this is just a hobby (well, something I'd like to become a hobby), it's something I'd like to try and do.

[Kramlack]

This thread confuses me, it sounds like PogueSquadron is mixing up his terms.

You say you want to make sprites, but then you talk about having pixel control. As GILBERT Timmy said, sprites and pixel art are vastly different. Using his reference again, Donkey Kong Country uses sprites, but I don't think anyone here would call them pixel art. More like 3D Models in low resolution.

If you're planning to do hi-res sprites like those of Wario Shake It, then yes, stick to vectors. If you're looking for a pixel style, lets say Drill Dozer for example, stick to working in high zoom and doing things pixel by pixel. Of course, there are also techniques to speed up the pixel process, such as drawing with a tablet, so take 'doing things pixel by pixel' with a grain of salt.

[PogueSquadron]

Yeah I actually realized that well into the post.  Sorry for any confusion.

I suppose I was confused as to how a game like Wario Land obtained its high quality sprites (so I assumed it was considered pixel art).  I guess I should've brought up that example sooner!

[gimymblert]

Well there is pixel art and pixelated art.

Pixel art can be as hirez as you want, it's the technic of going to pixel (and subpixel) level of control. It's always pixel by pixel. Even if you used a tablet or vector art, as long you correct them pixel by pixel, it's pixel art. It's about having that perfect control over shape, crispness, color, down to the simplest graphical element possible.

The reason sprite like DK or wario are not considered pixel art, is that they are not treat with this technics, they are rendered target of different artistic practice downscale by different process. You can say pixel art is the artistic technic construction of an image.

There is also the style pixel art which derive from the technic and is generally featured by big blocky pixel and retro look.

Sprite is more precisely the technic of using an image in the context of game and define by it's re-usability in many context in contrast to one use image like in animation or one context image like title illustration.

[Jetrel]

The reason sprite like DK or wario are not considered pixel art, is that they are not treat with this technics, they are rendered target of different artistic practice downscale by different process. You can say pixel art is the artistic technic construction of an image.

There is also the style pixel art which derive from the technic and is generally featured by big blocky pixel and retro look.

Sprite is more precisely the technic of using an image in the context of game and define by it's re-usability in many context in contrast to one use image like in animation or one context image like title illustration.

Yeah, sprites are any kind of source art, which is rasterized into premade 2d images of each frame, and animated by blitting those to the screen.  So if you had 3d art, if you're actually rendering the models in realtime, it's not sprites.  If you've pre-rendered them, it is sprites.  Ergo, diablo 1 and 2, pre-raytracing aside, are sprite-based games.  Diablo 3 is not.


Pixel art refers to creating an image where the fact that it has finite resolution is a fundamental part of the piece; that is, where the choice of specific placement of pixels matters.  Pixel art can be any size, but it's such that if you resize a piece, you're losing/adding meaningful choices in the construction.  Such as "I placed these pixels in this exact arrangement because this suggests a slightly crooked eyebrow".  If you double the resolution, you have to completely redo those choices.  If you half the resolution, you might have to decide not to even draw eyebrows.  That's what makes it pixel art - that choices like that were a fundamental part of the piece.  Cross stitching is pixel art; mosaics are pixel art.  Pixel means "picture element"; it means the same thing even for non-computer mediums that are constructed out of individual (usually uniform) chunks of color.

But stuff like cel-shading really likes to pretend it has infinite resolution.  This is why artists always upscale their working res to have the smoothest possible lines.  If you rescale a piece of cel-shaded art, you really don't have to rethink how you drew the details.  Even when it comes to organic stuff like "paint/chalk/charcoal" style lines/fills, artists doing those would prefer they always look that way at any size - that if you keep zooming in on the chalk lines, they remain looking like chalk lines.  That is, that their natural patterns would fractally repeat themselves up to any amount of detail.  (There are exceptions who want their work to pixelate, but by wanting that, they become sort of a hybrid of pixel and CG art.)