Pixel-Art Megathread: It's not programmer art it's *retro*

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > Pixel-Art Megathread: It's not programmer art it's *retro*

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

stegoceras posted:

I literally just started making pixel art, trying to find a good program on the mac for animating. I've got aseprite but I'm having a lot of trouble figuring it out because I'm computer illiterate.
I made these in Photoshop, just to try it out... I'm not super happy with them. I'd love to try making a game one day.

these are cute!

Happy sun Jewel convinced me to stick with pixel art for a game I'm working on! So hello pixel thread

Currently its 320x240 and 4 colors in an effort to keep artistic demands to a minimum & focus on the programming/writing as much as possible. Here are some portraits:

as they go right >>>> they get more recent, and the bottom is an example of my progression. Its really proving difficult to make them more serious (the games tone is quite somber) while trying to keep the charm

wip background:

AND PUT IT ALL TOGETHER (carefully cropped in front of code so you know its some serious poo poo):

.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2012 05:16

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 17:37

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

Jewel posted:

Ghosts: 10

So are you gonna try 'n stick with 4 colors through the entire game? Seems like a good idea. Also, have you tried shifting the colors in the forest? Could look neat with it fading into darkness at the back. Also re:Portraits, the first three on the top can't help but remind me of Skullgirls' artstyle somehow, even though it's not really similar to any of the characters? Skullgirls is one of my favorite games visually so that's a good sign though!

Ya, sticking to 4 colors in the increasingly nebulous belief that fewer colors means less work.

Like this?

Had to dither since the trees in silhouette looked lighter next to all that black.

~tbh~ it looks like a night shot of the same picture to me & not clearly superior. And I'm hesitant to start getting too much into dithering as that path leads to some very ~~dark~~ time consuming places.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2012 09:30

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

Triangle posted:

8 colors + mandatory bobbing

that handhair is cool as gently caress, but it would be better off without the zero-effort idle animation bob.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2013 08:25

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

Good Lord Fisher! posted:

This was supposed to be some sort of exercise in animating perspective for me, but I'm, uh, not sure how successful it was. Perspective is hard!! Whatever, I had fun at least. Also, it was my first (extremely) tentative foray into hue-shifting

bonus round:

The perspective shift looks successful to me. You should make the lens light up + exclamation mark appear on the last frame of the turn.

-

I made the smallest font I could!

also this

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 17:58

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

Chipp Zanuff posted:

I might be going for realism or anatomical correctness a bit too much, but i didn't want to skimp on important details.

Not wanting to skimp is a good mindset, but I'd agree with your first point. Those sprites are so small and abstracted that tiny shifts in anatomy are barely noticeable. Of much greater importance is getting the exaggeration and movement right.

they look out of proportion because they are (which isn't a bad thing; exaggeration almost always looks better, especially at small sizes). You can't line things up using realistic proportions as a guide when your characters arms are as big as its legs and its head as its torso

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 21:46

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

Jewel posted:

doesn't work on my monitor

(but rad)

I found a website that lets you make a little pixel font right in the browser! Which is double cool because (from what I saw) it looks like making an actual font is a staggering amount of work

# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 17:05

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

Chipp Zanuff posted:

Yeah, i feel like i've kind of screwed myself over by choosing that perspective. I don't really know if i should radically change it or just leave it as it is.

Hopefully this deals with the arm issuel:

you can't animate body parts separately then weld them to a torso. Walking is a full body motion; torso leaning, legs running interference with the ground, shoulders shift, arms swing counter-balance, etc. Everything works in tandem.

a much better approach is what shoehead just demonstrated -- rough out the full animation using colored chunks. Once you have the motions down, you start the long process of cleaning up, adding linework, details, etc

# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 19:00

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

Tales From My Imgur Folder: here's some scraps from a little game-jam game that went so fast off the deep end into cobbled-together mess that I lost heart:

generated buildings that parallaxed past during travel. After making this gif I added little ships that flew past in the distance, smog, and clouds _{(which I'm almost tempted to re-gif as they made it much more atmospheric)}

start of a character panel. The game was about smuggling an AI to the center of the city using vaguely Oregon Trail style resource/risk management -- though it was never super fleshed out.

oh yeah I changed it to a light-cycle at some point :v:

# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 19:57

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

The scene has interesting composition, but using computer-generated brush stroke blending means it's not really pixel art. Here's the go-to definition<

my further advice would be to work from a pre-defined color palette until you get a better handle on colors, and reference some examples of how people do pixel-art water (yours needs love).

# ¿ Aug 9, 2014 22:10

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

reading posted:

This looks amazing and that premise sounds :kickin rad:. I hope you pursue it someday!

thank you!

MONKET posted:

Sorry to interrupt Chipp Zanuff's awesome progression but I just have some sprites that I was hoping I could get some feedback on.

My main concerns are that the head around the first bald dude has too strong of a border and that the dude on the far right has too much noise going on.

I think the far-right monster looks fine, the bigger problem is that bald dude doesn't mesh.

here's an edit:

� detail+ on face, he looked like emoticon in comparison to the level of detail on the monsters.
� (same with clothes)
� dropped saturation on his jeans. Everything else is in warm red/green tones -- in that lighting blue would appear grey
� I subconsciously made him slightly isometric, oops
� I just learned alt-0149 makes bullet points

# ¿ Aug 13, 2014 07:18

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

after making that tiny rear end font the other day I said 'what better way to try it out then make a video game to put it in'

unsurprisingly it's slightly terrible. :v:

Oh well! It was fun to make, and I might finish off the game anyway just to finish something.

Lanth posted:

Maybe one day I can get over myself and actually seek out a programmer to work on these things, but so far I keep banging my head against the wall until I lose interest and move on to other things.

that top-down view + case file stuff is interesting!

I was in a similar situation, and unless you're completely opposed to programming you should try out Gamemaker. Here's the youtube channel I used to get off the ground. Even with no programming experience, if you start really, really simply you can frankenstein a game together fairly quickly.

the one artistic piece of advice I'd give is to avoid mixing resolutions (ie using big obvious pixels for the legs, blowing them up, then adding a smaller row of pixels for the feet). You blithely called it 'not following conventions', but its a convention because mixed resolution looks like rear end

# ¿ Aug 14, 2014 07:07

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

Lanth posted:

Contrary to how most people probably do games, I start by making assets or pieces like the above first, so I can try to get the feel of the game right. I tried going the route of using placeholder/programmer art at first, but that makes me give up even faster for some reason.

I guess I should just keep powering through and hopefully break through the wall some day. The reason I insist on finishing a proper game by myself is so I don't fall into "Ideas guy" syndrome.

nah I'm the exact same way. Though less efficient, its way more engaging to work on a game that looks like something early on. If you're making a game with complex enough systems that it requires prototyping you've almost left the hobbyist zone already.

Supernorn posted:

More pirate game

really pretty! Not sure I'm feeling the light rays though. I thought they were mist at first glance, and only figured out what they were when I saw it thumbnailed. Did you try them as solid pixel blocks with transparency cranked first?

# ¿ Aug 14, 2014 16:12

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

DeathBySpoon posted:

Decided I should actually learn to art, tried to make a spaceman with dawnbringer's 32 color palette. Critique welcome.

it's pretty good! here are some crits

(*resized it incorrectly & I didn't notice, oh well)

top row: Your lighting is a little wonky. Left is the shadows using the helmet's shading as a guide; right is using the chest as a guide (which I think is more what you were going for). The specular on the helmet should be in the center of the object (surface closest to the camera) unless you were trying to show a groove on the top of the glass or something

middle row: As you can see with the saturation zeroed, the colors you picked for light and shadow are a little too close in value. I nudged a slider in photoshop to adjust it, which doesn't exactly make for a spectacular end result, but hopefully illustrates how much of a difference it makes

e; a 32 color palette is actually pretty massive for such a simple sprite. I grabbed the one you were using, and got about this far

before realizing I have basically no idea what I'm doing, and could probably spend 10 hours fiddling with it. So instead I made a little 8 color palette and had much more success:

tighter constraints tend to make things easier at this scale. I have no idea if any of this is helpful, but it was fun to mess with :coffeepal:

_jink fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Aug 15, 2014

# ¿ Aug 15, 2014 18:44

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

Scut posted:

Dev log / teaser image featuring unit types and portrait art:

these are sick! CRITIQUE: the controller's straight skinny neck looks goofy, and generic space marine is out of place amid those other rad designs

# ¿ Aug 26, 2014 07:41

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

that's kawaii dogg. Couple things: I don't know if it was intentional, but having the pupil not touching the top or bottom of an eye makes their expression look shocked/stunned(emphasized further by the dark line under the eye). I'd also try bringing the nose back a pixel closer to the head, making the hair shine one unbroken line, and smoothing the transition to the top of the head 1 pixel so the top isn't quite so flat (if that makes any sense).

beyond that you should experiment making the shadows darker/different hues. They're really close to the light values atm and you can go crazy with that poo poo in pixel art. The animation itself is really good!

# ¿ Sep 1, 2014 03:19

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

chipp you need to bite the bullet and study more traditional art. Pixel art is essentially an abstraction layer; you can get away with a lot, but if you don't know how to draw an anatomically correct body then you can't make a fighting game sprite. Trying to learn anatomy at such a tiny scale is really hindering.

my highly acute deductive abilities tell me you like fighting games. Study old capcom stuff, its basically a masterclass in moving, exaggerated anatomy.

Travis343 posted:

And to respond to this as long as Im here, man you have no idea how many different ways I tried to do that eye. I deliberately didn't want to do the FF6-style top to bottom anime pupil but putting one or two pixels at literally any other position within the eye gives it some kind of emotion or makes it look sort of dumb or crosseyed or something. I think it comes off a little better from the front, at least:

As far as the colors I was trying to keep it pretty simple with this one. I'm considering how hard it would be to change the sprite to more dramatically colored versions depending on the lighting in the area.

toss me the original size, I'll try editing it. Unless someone knows of a good way of shrinking sprites? Even with hard edged interpolation things tend get a little hosed up when I try in photoshop.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2014 23:08

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

messed with pixel art last night & remembered this thread exists. Mad fun catching up on the thread after not posting in ages! >: - D

# ¿ Oct 16, 2015 23:54

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

Scut posted:

More please

haven't drawn any new portraits, but here's the old a little further along:

Noyemi K posted:

this is real cool! Her neck could use shortening by a couple inches though imo

# ¿ Oct 30, 2015 09:33

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

happ yhalloween :]

Besesoth posted:

This might sound weird, but your work reminds me of that of forums user Mja ulm - any connection?

# ¿ Nov 1, 2015 05:17

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

is there a nice + quick way to capture gifs? I tried gyazo's gif capture, and it's rad how quick it is, but produces an artifacty mess:

# ¿ Nov 4, 2015 21:16

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

Scut posted:

Try GoonCam?

What's this engine for? Looks like it would make for a good tactical game.

thankyou! gooncam works perfectly

it's not an engine, just my continued foray into the jungles of coding. I was learning how to use grids/build things from them/place isometric sprites.

DISCOVERY: there is something primally satisfying about a perfectly aligned slab of blocks.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2015 08:15

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

ya I would mess with the color/saturation/hue balance. Even if there weren't readability problems, using bright neon colors as background is a bad idea.

quick & turned out a bit darker then I intended (dark photoshop shell > white forum, alas) but hopefully this helps

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 23:25

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

Noyemi K posted:

First assessment was a simple kitchen map with a 4-colour palette and 8x8 or 16x16 tiles, maximum resolution of 160x144:

limits are good, but I have a hard time imaging how useful teaching a 4-color/sub-150-px environment would be? Crazy minimalism doesn't seem like a particularly good method for learning. :ghost:

Scut posted:

If I have the time, this looks like a good exercise to try. I like that you are willing to attempt the assignments you give a student. I had some extremely rusty professors in university who refused to participate in the kind of work they expected students to produce, they were cowards.

As weather gets colder I get more time to push pixels. These are some heavy combat robots I'm making for Temporus. I'll make a sample of how they are sliced up later, but the major limb components are separate sprites to allow for animating in the game engine.

super good! I was wondering when you'd post!

# ¿ Nov 21, 2015 20:36

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

experiments with a limited color range -- going for 'understated', but it ended up just looking kinda bland

and bonus studyboat, ft. metal slug: wherein I discover the satisfaction of drawing lots of chunky wooden planks.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2016 00:48

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

temp art -> real art comes with a heavy tonal shift - - -

too much to quote, but this threads real good still, good job goon :banjo:

_{( & hi jewel long time no see :] )}

# ¿ Apr 11, 2016 04:21

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

learning 3D! feat. 90s video game props

# ¿ Oct 23, 2016 19:51

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

Besesoth posted:

These look great! I can't wait to spend my zenny on them.

Out of curiosity, why is the one on the left reversed on the model?

thanks! and the flip was accidental, I didn't even notice till you pointed it out.

Ash Crimson posted:

I really like the low-poly (i think that's it's name?) that combines pixel art but with a 3d perspective! I'd like to try it some day but im not sure where to start.

What program do you use to make this and how difficult is it?

yup, blender. The hardest part is getting grips on it's labyrinthine ui, but there are loads of great tutorials out there. These were my favorite, because they're clean & he doesn't move glacially slow. I was making some woeful rear end critters the first day, and had never used 3D software before last week.

if you run into trouble I can make a quick guide, it's only about a ~10 step process.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2016 18:21

_jink: Jan 14, 2006

sure! ✧・ﾟ: *✧・ﾟ:* tutorial: simple pixel texture in blender✧・ﾟ: *✧・ﾟ imgur slaughtered my nice images with compression, but hopefully thats easy enough to follow.

also that guys art is super good, goddamn. Complex uv mapping and pixel art are finicky / time consuming individually, so combining them together is frankly nightmarish. :ghost:

(but pretty)

# ¿ Oct 25, 2016 01:51