Graphics Pixel Art ?

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TonyCold

Guest
Is that somehow an acceptable attempt to create some pixel art?
P.S: This is my very first time to try.
P.S: This is an animation of 2 Frames (Don't laugh.)

 
G

Guest User

Guest
- outlines are usually a kind of either-or thing. either the entire sprite has an outline, or none of it does.
- you can also make the outlines colored if black ain't yo thang.
- if you're going for a sort of LEGO-man style, you're on the right track. if not, then take some time to study human anatomy as well as 'various techniques and stylizations' 'used by other pixel artists' 'to represent' 'the human form'.
- the hat probably shouldn't be the only thing with highlights.
- google 'color theory' or something and try to be mindful of how your colors complement each other instead of just randomly picking ones that are in the vague category of "yellow", "red", and "blue" or whatever other color you need.
 
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Is that somehow an acceptable attempt to create some pixel art?
Well that depends...what do you find "acceptable"? As long as it can blend in well with the other sprites you draw, then it'll look fine! Nobody is going to expect you to pull off a Squaresoft picaso on your first attempt; you're still learning so it's okay to make sprites that might not appeal to the big audience. It all comes with practice. Overall though and with all honesty, the sprite could use some work here and there, but I definitely wouldn't trash it being your first try. The hat and the head looks fine, but everything below that I think could use some more detail. Also, one thing I'd like to point out is try to keep your art consistent. If you're going to outline the head, then you may as well outline everything else, or just get rid of the outline altogether, whatever you think looks best. Your sprites should reflect your design and what you believe looks best. Remember that!
 
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acceptable is kinda relative.

Acceptable as your first tries in pixel art? well that's certainly respectable. It's also acceptable for a hobby project you share with friends. For a game to publish however it's not acceptable in my opinion.

I took your picture and took a few minutes to show how this could be improved. of course the style is not necessarily what you're going for, but some still applies :)
pixelart-02.png pixelart-01.png

Like painting, pixel art is alot about shape and shading.

Shape:
take a look at photos of people and drawings. Try to see the shapes, compare curves and measures. Your work is either too blocky or not exaggerated enough - depending on style and thus it looks a bit crude or simple. In my version I smoothed hat, head, shoulders. Others might go for a more comic stylized look with sharper edges.

Shading:
again take a look at photos and drawings. You used a semi saturated yellow (it's not close to any skin color but that might be intentional), a semi saturated blue and strongly saturated red and blue. Especially top and pants clash with their high saturation and hurt the eye. So I changed the base color of face and top in my example. Shading also is about light and shadow. Again depending on style you can go with very few colors but I think it's very difficult to use only 1 color for the top and the pants. I know I couldn't pull it off but I'm sure an artist could. So to make it easier for me I usually pick 3-5 colors per part.
If you're going for an 8-bit look that's fine. But then I wouldn't use a 64px sprite and rather go for 32 px or 16 even. Like so:

pixelart-03.png
Notice: because there's not enough space to place the outline on top of the figure as above, this time I outlined around the figure.

Important rule: NEVER have a white background when shading. pick a medium grey or a color that wont conflict with the colors of the figure. In my example I picked green because of that.

When shading in light and shadow always think about where the light comes from and what blocks the light and casts shadows. In my example you see the hat casting shadow on the face and the head casting shadow on the neck. The light on the chest and belly on one side and the shadow on the other side makes the figure look more 3-dimensional. And the nose is not actually drawn. Just a little light on the tip and then its shadow on the right side of the face.

Outlines:
1. Either outline all or nothing
2. 2 basic color choices: either a black outline as you did or a colored outline as I did.
3. Never draw the outline into the figure as you did between hat & head and chin & neck. That will always look wrong in pixel art. Especially if you got a black outline. The dark line on the chin and the collar in my example are an exception of that rule: outlines can emphasize shadows. But on the collar I might have overdone it.

Now there's much more to improve this picture like adding shadow of the collar, working more on the 3d shape of the hat aso. But I didn't want to spend more than 10min :)

If you really want to learn pixel art in a few days only, Check out Marco Vale's Tutorial on Udemy. Doesn't cost much but is awesome. My first pixel art before that course was not much different than yours :)
 
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Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
I'd also recommend using a smaller size if you're learning pixel art, if you do stuff in 16x16 instead of 64x64 you have to do a staggering 0.25x0.25 = 6.25% of the work, which means the imagination of the player does the remaining 93% of the work.
 
I'd also recommend using a smaller size.
It is sooooo much faster. The 16px figure I showed as an example above only took like 3min. 1min drawing and 2min deciding on where to emphasize the outline corners with extra pixels to influence the perception of the shape. And it already looks kinda finished. The 64px version I did took about 10min, is only half of the figure and even that half is nowhere close to be finished.

I actually like that 16px tiny figure and am thinking on trying that style myself in a game :)
 

Nux

GameMaker Staff
GameMaker Dev.
As a first time drawing, it looks about average. I'm not sure having all three primary colours present in large quantities like that looks very nice imo, but You should try and use different shades: compare the colours on the left with those on the right. I think the right hand side colours look a lot nicer.

Also, too many styles at once; like others say: either outline everything or don't, add shade to everything or don't, etc.
 
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teamrocketboyz

Guest
im currently working on my first ever project and i havent used pixel art at all. im fnding it much easier creating my assets in gimp and much easier to develop my own style using this.

Its not bad for your first pixel art. not bad at all, but like the other guys have said its all about shading and lighting. for example the hat on your character has a gleam of light on the top left showing that the sun or lightsource would be aiming down on your character from the top left. but your characters nose shows the sun coming from the right.

As a tip, and i learnt this in art l, when drawing always place an object on the paper that you will envision as your light source. place that anywhere you think the light would be coming from and always use that object as a guide to shading in light and shadows
 
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inkBot

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To add to what's already been said/talked about:
Without seeing anything other than the piece at the start of the thread it's difficult to say for sure, but it looks to me like you're just starting out with art in general. I would advice to not only do pixel art, but also practice with pencil sketching. When making pixel art, there's an additional layer of problem solving involved. Not only do you have to figure out how to visualize the shapes you want, but you also have to work out how to translate that into pixels. Sketching will let you train your brain to do the former without the additional problem solving of the latter, and eventually you can merge them. (Somewhat paradoxically, I've always been of the mindset that pixel art will make you learn color theory more efficiently. Also form to an extent, but that's reliant upon at least cursory knowledge on it already).
 
"Acceptable" is whatever you want it to be. Look at other games. Does yours look as good as those? Do you need or want it to? Everything is relative.

That said, you're a brand new artist doing your first drawing. Most artists take a decade of hard practice to master drawing. What can we really say to you? Just keep practicing!
 
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