Pixel artists

Square King · Post by **Square King** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 5:12 pm

Funny that it's taken me so long to really get into pixel art. I was an arcade/NES kid, so I've had the pixels around for most of my life. I've been messing around with a few things in MSPaint to get a feel for it and checking out tutorials, but I've seen some truly amazing stuff.

Any pixel artists here?

Pixel_Outlaw · Post by **Pixel_Outlaw** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 5:26 pm

I dabble a bit. Isometric circles should have a 2:1 width ratio however. If people are going to draw in the pixel art notion of isometric they need to learn that.

Castle is looking pretty good. Go ahead and use the ellipse tool I say.

I'm a member of Pixel Joint but that place is currently filled with loudmouth 15 year olds who don't understand how to critique art.

Square King · Post by **Square King** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 5:29 pm

I probably wasn't clear in the first post. That castle sure as hell ain't mine.

Post some stuff, Outlaw.

Necronopticous · Post by **Necronopticous** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 5:34 pm

I love pixel art. I have been too busy to make any, recently, but it is certainly a hobby of mine.

Here's a sample:

Pixel_Outlaw · Post by **Pixel_Outlaw** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 5:37 pm

My gallery. Pretty old stuff.

http://www.pixeljoint.com/p/2109.htm?pg=1&sec=icons

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 7:31 pm

Pixel art is way too hard for me. I always spend too much time trying to make shading look "acceptable" and never get it quite right.
Exhibit 1: random popcorn enemy:

Pixel_Outlaw · Post by **Pixel_Outlaw** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 7:37 pm

Looks pretty good actually.

Necronopticous · Post by **Necronopticous** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 7:40 pm

worstplayer wrote:Pixel art is way too hard for me. I always spend too much time trying to make shading look "acceptable" and never get it quite right.
Exhibit 1: random popcorn enemy:

Looks nice, but he's facing the wrong direction, unless he's one of those popcorn enemies that likes to come up from behind and kamikaze into you, in which case, fuck you.

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 7:52 pm

Also, wow, amount of work that had to go into that castle is unbelievable. Square King, any idea how long did that take?

Pixel_Outlaw · Post by **Pixel_Outlaw** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 7:56 pm

The Pixel Joint Hall of Fame has some nice large and detailed work:

The whole point of pixel art style is to work within limitation. Low color detailed work.

http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixels/new_ic ... ?ob=rating

Square King · Post by **Square King** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 7:56 pm

worstplayer wrote:Also, wow, amount of work that had to go into that castle is unbelievable. Square King, any idea how long did that take?

40 hours, 36 colors. More info and art here: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/05 ... pixel-art/

Pixel_Outlaw wrote:The Pixel Joint Hall of Fame has some nice large and detailed work:

http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixels/new_ic ... ?ob=rating

Yeah, I just signed up a few days ago. I think the Trioculi is my favorite piece so far.

Miyazaki'd

kozo · Post by **kozo** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 8:19 pm

Wow.

This is why 2D will never die.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 9:29 pm

kozo wrote:Wow.

This is why 2D will never die.

Exactly.

kozo · Post by **kozo** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 9:33 pm

Hey, I'm signed up already.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 9:43 pm

Yes, I noticed. Glad you did

Frederik · Post by **Frederik** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 1:08 am

Holy shit, the castle alone looked very stunning, but the water...man, the water is pure masterclass

320x240 · Post by **320x240** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 9:50 am

Pixel_Outlaw wrote:The whole point of pixel art style is to work within limitation. Low color detailed work.

Setting an artificial limit on what you do have nothing to do with art though and in the case of pixel graphics, for all the greatness of individual works, this has lead to a certain staleness.

I'd like to see pixel graphics move into the 21 century. Right now it's too much about 'retro' and preserving something that is long gone. There are certain things that you can only achieve using carefully plotted pixels, no matter the resolution and colors available. Why not use what's available?

Herr Schatten · Post by **Herr Schatten** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 10:06 am

I've been doing pixel art for cellphone games a few years back, so I was more into the practical side of pixel art as opposed to the actually artsy one.

These screens are from a Columns clone. The girl in the lower right corner acts differently dependent on your performance. I can post some animations later, if anyone's interested.

These are backgrounds for story sequences inbetween levels, from the same game:

The graphics always had to be ported to a truckload of different screen sizes. This was quite a challenge for a pixel artist. Here's the smallest screen size the game was ported to (96x65):

These pictures are from a Maya-themed trading card game for cellphones:

Finally, this is a chibi Exelica I did as an avatar for a forum member. He never used it, though:

zap · Post by **zap** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 10:25 am

Excelica looks awesome, got more like that?

And the castle is just amazing!

Elixir · Post by **Elixir** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 11:19 am

I don't make pixel art personally but I have much respect for pixel artists. It's time consuming and I really don't have the patience for it, though.

Above all, this is my favourite.

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 6:13 pm

Herr Schatten wrote:I've been doing pixel art for cellphone games a few years back, so I was more into the practical side of pixel art as opposed to the actually artsy one.

These screens are from a Columns clone. The girl in the lower right corner acts differently dependent on your performance. I can post some animations later, if anyone's interested.

Nice work Herr Schatten. And I'd be interested in seeing some animations.

320x240 · Post by **320x240** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 7:21 pm

That's some very nice work Herr Shatten.

What Elixir posted makes me a little bit ashamed over my own current efforts...

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 8:00 pm

That fake crosshatched light bloom thing in the middle of what Elixir posted nearly ruins it.

moonblood · Post by **moonblood** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 11:18 pm

worstplayer wrote:Pixel art is way too hard for me. I always spend too much time trying to make shading look "acceptable" and never get it quite right.
Exhibit 1: random popcorn enemy:

That's really nice, much better than anything I've ever managed.. looks kinda like the Aliens dropship

Also, no pixel art thread is complete without mentioning Henk Nieborg

http://www.henknieborg.nl/

The Coop · Post by **The Coop** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 12:02 am

I've done some pixel work over the years. Nothing too drastic, but stuff like the backgrounds in my various JT/Smiley sigs, some small characters, as well as sprite edits. Here are a few...

BTW, nice hovership worstplayer.

innerpattern · Post by **innerpattern** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 2:07 am

pixel art is great

Frederik · Post by **Frederik** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 3:27 am

Schatten and Coop, you both are very talented. I´m an illustration student myself, but still can´t wrap my head around how stuff like this is achieved, especially with things like isometric perspective and such (I usually do very flat, graphic stuff for this reason), and especially the huge amount of hours something like this must eat up. I would lose concentration all the time if I had to apply pixels in a orderly fashion like this.

One thing I want to know: Do you always start in the end resolution, or can you maybe use a sketch and scale it down? I would guess the former. Are there any tricks for shading and such (like in Photoshop) or do you just simply draw by hand like you would in MSPaint?

Square King · Post by **Square King** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 3:44 am

Frederik wrote:Schatten and Coop, you both are very talented. I´m an illustration student myself, but still can´t wrap my head around how stuff like this is achieved, especially with things like isometric perspective and such (I usually do very flat, graphic stuff for this reason), and especially the huge amount of hours something like this must eat up. I would lose concentration all the time if I had to apply pixels in a orderly fashion like this.

One thing I want to know: Do you always start in the end resolution, or can you maybe use a sketch and scale it down? I would guess the former. Are there any tricks for shading and such (like in Photoshop) or do you just simply draw by hand like you would in MSPaint?

Some good tuts here:

http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_p ... p?TID=5692

The Coop · Post by **The Coop** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 4:08 am

Frederik wrote:One thing I want to know: Do you always start in the end resolution, or can you maybe use a sketch and scale it down? I would guess the former. Are there any tricks for shading and such (like in Photoshop) or do you just simply draw by hand like you would in MSPaint?

It depends. If you're going to actually sketch/draw an image out by hand, then draw it up at whatever size paper you wish to use, and scale that sketch down to the needed resolution after you scan it in. Once it's been shrunk, then you can start working on drawing it out in pixels. This works for images you've colored as well. A few things to keep in mind though...

- If you're going to make a sketch, try to draw your image on paper at the same ratio as what you want the finished pixel work to be at (4:3, 16:9, etc.). It'll make your life a lot easier later, and result in fewer compositional sacrifices.
- Don't do the pixel work at a bigger size than what you need. If you know the finished pixel art is going to be, say, 360x125, don't draw your pixel work at 500x174. When you shrink it down, you'll loose a lot of details (using "Nearest Neighbor"), or have to make it all crisp again (using "Bicubic"). Either way, that's a lot of unnecessary redrawing. However...
- If your work is going to be finalized at multiple resolution sizes, try to do your pixel work at the largest size you need. Detail will be lost when you shrink it down to the smaller sizes, and you'll have to clean it up, but it's better than trying to draw in all the detail because you blew up a smaller image.

As for the shading, I do it all by hand. I used to use semi-transparent layers in Photoshop, but the after a few times, I wasn't happy with the way it all worked out. So I started selecting the needed colors from a pallet I'd create, and shading things myself that way. It helps keep your color pallet under control more.

And thanks for the compliment.

Herr Schatten- Those are some nice backgrounds and character works. Kudos dude

Herr Schatten · Post by **Herr Schatten** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 11:17 am

Thanks for all the kind words. As requested by captain ahar, here are some animations.

These explosions are from an upcoming caravan shmup I've been working on with another forum member. It's been in the works for quite some time now, but since we both could work on it only sporadically, it didn't proceed very quickly. However, the graphics are all done now, and I do hope the programming will follow suit in the near future.
I could post some enemies, bosses and backgrounds, but I don't want to spoil it.

Frederik wrote:One thing I want to know: Do you always start in the end resolution, or can you maybe use a sketch and scale it down? I would guess the former. Are there any tricks for shading and such (like in Photoshop) or do you just simply draw by hand like you would in MSPaint?

Since this very question came up in the development forum, I'll repost my answer here.

Herr Schatten wrote:
A_Civilian wrote:1) Can you get more detail out of a small sprite (50*50 pixels) by starting the drawing as a large image (say 500*500 pixels) and then shrinking it down to the desired size? Or is it better to just start the drawing out with the small size and detail as much as possible?
It depends. In any case you'll have to touch up the final image, often resulting in redrawing it completely and using the downscaled image only as a rough guideline. I've used this method to great effect, but it needs some experience. You also tend to make the final image too detailed, because you see all those little bits and leftovers from the larger image and feel the urge to include them all, making your sprite look gritty.
Mostly it's better to just draw sprites in their original size. Downscaling larger images without retouching them later looks like ass in any case.

Bonus round: These are some trees and a statue I did for an RPG project:

TheCoop: I really like your animations. Which tools do you use to create them?