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Arbor posted:A wild urge to pixel something appeared - as it does just about once a year. Get the urge more often. This is excellent. I love the sense of weight and mass.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:06
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Scut posted:Get the urge more often. This is excellent. I love the sense of weight and mass. Thank you! I'd love to - every time this happens I think "alright. THIS TIME I'll stick with it," right up until I fizzle out disappointingly because I got distracted with something else. (But maybe this time...) I noticed how awkwardly straight the line of darker colour was on the neck of that when looking at your reply, so a wee bit of an edit. 
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Sep 5, 2014 04:27
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Arbor posted:Thank you! I'd love to - every time this happens I think "alright. THIS TIME I'll stick with it," right up until I fizzle out disappointingly because I got distracted with something else. (But maybe this time...) Loving the colours on this! I personally find it difficult to get a good shade of red or at least a reddish colour. Tried my hand at animating an idle stance for the base, more of a practice and getting used to animating larger sprites than anything i'd probably end up using.  I'm finding the jump from animating sprites with 1 pixel limbs to animating sprites where limbs consist of many pixels to be quite jarring at the moment, hopefully it won't always be like that. Edit: Just an example of what could be done with it:  Quite rough atm, hopefully it'll get smoother as time goes on. Ash Crimson fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Sep 7, 2014 |
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Sep 6, 2014 21:56
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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: 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. 
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Sep 7, 2014 23:08
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_jink posted: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. Thanks for the advice Jink. I've been reading and studying about anatomy for a few months(2-3?) at this point, but i know i could do more. I sometimes find it difficult to translate what i see into pixel art, despite that, i feel i've made some gains since i've started. My current attempts aren't actually at trying to make a fighting game sprite, as much as it is making bigger, more detailed versions of previous sprites (such as the attack animations), but you are correct i really like fighting games, especially the older stuff (MVC2, KOF98, KOF2002UM, SF3: Third Strike etc), which is where i got my interest from sprites from. Ideally, i would love to make a fighting game sprite one day, but i know that at the moment i simply don't have the anatomical understand nor the artistic skill to do such. Your advice to study old capcom sprites is appreciated, i am also looking at stuff like SNK sprites, since there seems to be a lot of them as well. Also just a clarification, by "Trying to learn anatomy at such a tiny scale is really hindering." do you mean my previous attempts? I've currently got three sizes of "bases" that i use: Small: 11x26-30 (Different range of heights because there's 4 body types), Medium: 23x66 (thinking of trying more body types, but thats the only i got at the moment) and large: 41x114 (Sort of based on an Ash Crimson Sprite). I realise that the latter size is more appropiate for making such detailed sprites, especially fighting game ones, but i find the jump from a small to a large sprite a bit daunting, so i guess i tried a compromise where i work on medium sized sprites until i can get a better hand on animating and making them, if that makes any sense? Apologies for rambling!
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Sep 8, 2014 12:09
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_jink posted:
 Thats the full stand sheet. Theres 6 of each one because Im using a script for more frames in the walk animations which requires the standing sheet to match it. Curious what a strange set of eyes can do with this. Chipp I think he means that pixel art in general is a really small scale to learn anatomy with. You need to pick up some charcoal and draw a person.
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Sep 8, 2014 12:58
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Travis343 posted:
Oh! My uh, drawing ability is much worse than my ability to pixel-art. I don't really draw at all, be it with a pen, pencil or piece of charcoal, so that might be a problem :/
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Sep 8, 2014 13:06
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Chipp Zanuff posted:Oh! My uh, drawing ability is much worse than my ability to pixel-art. I don't really draw at all, be it with a pen, pencil or piece of charcoal, so that might be a problem :/ Look at how much you've advanced when only studying pixel art. Your drawing ability might be bad at the start (although if you keep in mind everything you know from pixel art, it'll get much easier once you get used to the tools), but it'll improve rapidly, and eventually you'll learn things about both drawing physically and in pixel art. To be honest, I figured you already were sketching things on paper before-hand.
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Sep 8, 2014 13:51
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Red Mike posted:Look at how much you've advanced when only studying pixel art. Your drawing ability might be bad at the start (although if you keep in mind everything you know from pixel art, it'll get much easier once you get used to the tools), but it'll improve rapidly, and eventually you'll learn things about both drawing physically and in pixel art. To be honest, I figured you already were sketching things on paper before-hand. I usually just go straight to the pixel-art program i am using (in this case graphics gale). Could that be why i am having issues with anatomy? Or at least translating what i read/learn into pixel art? For me, it's the handling of the pen/pencil as well as the use of it, as i unfortunately have poor motor skills which also affected my writing, making it illegible (which forced me to use a laptop for high school and college). For my pixel art i usually use a mouse or touch-pad, i haven't even bothered with a stylus because i fear I'd have the same issues as i would with a pen or pencil. Sorry if i am making excuses, art was something i never really considered doing or trying until pixel art, primarily because of the issue mentioned above. Ash Crimson fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Sep 8, 2014 |
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Sep 8, 2014 15:13
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Chipp Zanuff posted:I usually just go straight to the pixel-art program i am using (in this case graphics gale). Could that be why i am having issues with anatomy? Or at least translating what i read/learn into pixel art? Oh, almost certainly. Most pixel art programs will let you place a high-res guide-image behind the transparent pixel layer to work from and that's a very common procedure for drawing things that involve anatomy.
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Sep 8, 2014 16:08
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MikeJF posted:Oh, almost certainly. Most pixel art programs will let you place a high-res guide-image behind the transparent pixel layer to work from and that's a very common procedure for drawing things that involve anatomy. Oh, i didn't know that! I've just been doing things by hand or copying the general shape from other sprites.
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Sep 8, 2014 16:30
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I hate drawing and anatomy and I will never bother learning it. str8 pixelz 4 lyfe. (probably don't be me)
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Sep 8, 2014 16:50
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Chipp Zanuff posted:For me, it's the handling of the pen/pencil as well as the use of it, as i unfortunately have poor motor skills which also affected my writing, making it illegible (which forced me to use a laptop for high school and college). For my pixel art i usually use a mouse or touch-pad, i haven't even bothered with a stylus because i fear I'd have the same issues as i would with a pen or pencil. While it'd take longer than traditional, you might try studying art by using a mouse/touchpad to draw. There's no law saying you HAVE to use a particular tool to study, especially if you have issues with it. Real life art study is always helpful at any level.
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Sep 9, 2014 00:16
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The most efficient thing you can do is take a life drawing class where there is a nude model right there. You will have a huge canvas and a chunk of charcoal, and they will encourage you to draw using your entire arm, so it's not really a lot of "fine motor control" initially. There is a lot of emphasis on feeling the motion, weight, balance, etc. of the model and trying to get that into your drawing. All of this will really help you with animations and make your pixel art a lot better. I did a class that was three hours every Saturday, and after only a few weeks everyone improved a lot.
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Sep 9, 2014 18:36
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Thanks for the advice guys! I'll probably try a combination of working on pixel art, but doing it on a larger scale, hopefully giving me a better chance of improving my anatomy, whilst also tracing over images and comparing them to previous attempts to see where i have gone wrong. As such, i decided to try to trace over a drawing and then to make it look like a silhouette although in the "end" product i did end up putting some shading, purely just to show where the armpit and arm separate. Also included the two different sized bases for comparison (I probably won't end up using this one, but i do feel it helped me show what i need to do with the smaller ones)  I realised: The shoulders should be a tad bigger or at the very least more defined, they slope in an unnatural way (at least it looks that way) in comparison to the biggest base. The Calves should be actually defined, in both previous bases they aren't, I'm currently trying to work on this although im worried they'll stick out and look weird, given the lack of pixels i have to work with. Legs should be less "straight"; they should have some curve, if only to suggest they're not sticks. Same applies to arms, i need to try to show the elbow as well, even if the arm isn't bent (like in the original picture i traced over). Knees are still something i have difficulty showing, even in silhouette form. And finally a question; Not so much related to anatomy as much as it is about the AAing i am using; is it too excessive? I find it easy to shape the body with AA, soften sudden spikes (like the legs, forearms and shoulders)and to show curves (like in the calves and shoulders) but i don't want to use it too much, for it then be detrimental to the finished product. I realise on bigger pictures there can be more AA and less on small ones, but is there a general rule about how much AA you should use?
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Sep 10, 2014 17:53
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Chipp Zanuff posted:Thanks for the advice guys! I'll probably try a combination of working on pixel art, but doing it on a larger scale, hopefully giving me a better chance of improving my anatomy, whilst also tracing over images and comparing them to previous attempts to see where i have gone wrong. I think it's lol how you have dominated this thread acting like you like and want criticism, but actually don't, and how you're never going to be better, because you hate the idea of learning.
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Sep 10, 2014 18:47
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Trunchbox Plus posted:I think it's lol how you have dominated this thread acting like you like and want criticism, but actually don't, and how you're never going to be better, because you hate the idea of learning. No need to be a dick about it, he's made a ton of improvement already. I'm not much of an artist, but the distribution of weight on his legs looks off. He kinda looks like a manikin that's just about to tip over- his back leg isn't holding the weight that it should. With his shoulders that far back his back leg needs to compensate, or his upper body needs to come forward.
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Sep 10, 2014 20:14
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DeathBySpoon posted:No need to be a dick about it, he's made a ton of improvement already. I'm not much of an artist, but the distribution of weight on his legs looks off. He kinda looks like a manikin that's just about to tip over- his back leg isn't holding the weight that it should. With his shoulders that far back his back leg needs to compensate, or his upper body needs to come forward. He's been told a bunch that he should 1) study and 2) draw and he keeps circuitously saying no to both so actually ya being a dick is more or less the only thing that might wake him up to the idea that he's constantly asking people to hold his hand through changing three pixels in every almost identical sprite he posts instead of just learning what a body looks like either in motion or standing still and then drawing one.
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Sep 10, 2014 20:24
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Is this a drawing that you did, or someone else's drawing? Either way, it looks drunk, like the person's wobbling on their feet. Really, I'd be remiss not to repeat the recommendation that you set down the pixel art for a while and focus on drawing from life. Getting better at pencil-and-paper drawing will help you move forward immensely in ways that worrying about finicky pixel-positioning details won't. Creative Convention has a very good Self-Taught thread, and if you can't get to a life-drawing session in person, there are many sites online that offer posed models similar to what you'll find at a life-drawing class. You won't be able to walk around them and get a feel for their three-dimensionality and weight, but it's at least a start. If you absolutely must continue right this second with pixel art, I have two suggestions: first, work at least twice as large as this image (in both dimensions); you're currently working so small that the details you want to incorporate are getting lost in the pixelation. Work larger and then figure out how to reduce your work to the size you want it to be; that will give you a better understanding of how to work details into your smaller work. (If this makes you uncomfortable, good: you will not get anywhere by staying where you're comfortable.) Second, don't trace over drawings, unless they're done by masters of the craft. In fact, what I'm going to recommend you do is start out with copying photographs of marble statues - again, from the masters. An excellent marble statue is still going to be a guide to the human form, and you'll get two advantages from using them instead of photographs of real people: they're usually in interesting poses, and since the marble is grey and white, you'll have what's essentially a monochrome source, meaning that you can focus a lot more on light, shadow, and gradation across a single color range.
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Sep 10, 2014 21:32
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Chipp Zanuff posted:I've been reading and studying about anatomy for a few months(2-3?) at this point, but i know i could do more. I sometimes find it difficult to translate what i see into pixel art, despite that, i feel i've made some gains since i've started. Trunchbox Plus posted:I think it's lol how you have dominated this thread acting like you like and want criticism, but actually don't, and how you're never going to be better, because you hate the idea of learning. Here's a pixel L85. 
Fridtjof Nansen fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Jun 26, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2014 21:50
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Yo what happened to this being the NICE place for pixel art?
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Sep 10, 2014 23:35
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I think frustrations aside, Trunchbox sort of has a point, in that even though Chipp has developed a lot over time, I don't feel he's learning in a way that'll really stick with him. As it is now, he'll post a barely-altered sprite and ask what he did wrong, try to fix it, and come back with the next iteration. While knowing what you're messing up on is important, having an eye for what's wrong to begin with is probably more important - even as a hobbyist with a supportive community, he can't have someone giving him slaps on the wrist every step of the way, and after a certain point as an artist you have to know why what you're doing is wrong or off or otherwise not what you are trying to convey, and as has been stated over and over again, drawing from life is absolutely the way to do this rather than having the thread guide him every step of the way. What I'm trying to get at is that telling someone "oh, the shading is wrong here, change these pixels," means effectively nothing to someone who doesn't know what to correct it to in the first place, and the solution to this is absolutely going out and drawing from life. Grab one of the little six dollar wooden posable guys from art store or Ikea and start playing around with a lamp, shine a flashlight on an exercise ball, turn on different lights in your room and draw your desk and observe how the shadows change, etc etc. I think that the advice to go not pixel is sound, but is missing the greater point of the fact that Chipp is stuck in the mindset of "sprite work and pixel art is different" as opposed to understanding that all drawn art in this way is effectively trying to replicate a 3D object in a 2D space, and to do that properly you have to understand the behavior of how those objects take up space to begin with, and without doing that, it's effectively trying to learn backwards. Believe me, this is where I was not that long ago (and still have a really hard time getting out of sometimes), but it's absolutely something that can only be solved through looking critically at your own work rather than having more topical stylistic critiques that will fall on dead ears. I think that Trunch has a point, but it's less that Chipp has no desire to learn and more that he hasn't yet learned how to continue learning. His development has kind of been the thread's pet project for the past few months, and while he's definitely made a lot of progress, it's all been in accordance to suggestions we've made rather than an artistic growth rooted in Looking At Real Things. Compare this to Shoehead: honestly his earlier work (the sprites with a single base with the huge head and face) repulses the heck out of me, but his recent animation work has made me incredibly jealous and inspired me to step up my own game in how fluent and expressive you can make sprites as small as his, and his sense of color and landscape has also been taking leaps and bounds. That being said, he's barely ever gotten critique on the level of Chipp, and has presumably been off on his own, learning independently and applying techniques from all over - and it shows. In short, sorry if any of this has come off as presumptuous, but I just think that the thread as a whole has been coddling Chipp way too much. He has a lot of potential, definitely has the persistence and passion for it, and I think that choosing pixel art as a way of overcoming what sounds like some unfortunate motor stuff is a really clever and inspired way of doing art, but at this point it just really cannot be said enough times that we are absolutely not giving him the fundamentals that he needs to continue to improve, and that our advice at this point can only be superficial at best.
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Sep 11, 2014 00:52
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Fridtjof Nansen posted:What an rear end in a top hat. Somehow I missed all your pixel contributions to the thread... I've actually learned some things from reading the discussions Chipp has been a part of. You on the other hand are an off-putting prick that makes me not want to come back to the thread. "Study anatomy" -- a lot easier said than done and at least Chipp is working to improve. I know when I get excited about art it's because of the potential for hours of boring model study! That other guy is a dick, but you're being reactionary and silly. The other guy also has a point, and you don't.
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Sep 11, 2014 02:11
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mutata posted:That other guy is a dick, but you're being reactionary and silly. The other guy also has a point, and you don't. My point is I don't like assholes. I can get behind "coddling too much," and even the "holding his hand through changing three pixels" business. But not "you're never going to get better" and "you hate the idea of learning," which is ridiculous. Heavy Lobster's post was a useful way of saying the same thing. Apologies for the derail, then.
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Sep 11, 2014 02:40
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Trunchbox Plus posted:He's been told a bunch that he should 1) study and 2) draw and he keeps circuitously saying no to both so actually ya being a dick is more or less the only thing that might wake him up to the idea that he's constantly asking people to hold his hand through changing three pixels in every almost identical sprite he posts instead of just learning what a body looks like either in motion or standing still and then drawing one. I basically agree with this. Improving your art isn't just constantly asking others for corrections. Chip should go practice anatomy and shading on his own (hopefully in a non-pixel art context) for a while and post less tiny, incremental updates.
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Sep 11, 2014 09:39
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Sorry guys, i didn't want this to be all about me, nor did i intend to be coddled or handheld through this, but i realise it comes across as that. I understand the basic point that Trunchbox is trying to make. I'll bow out for now and come back when I've eventually improved and learnt more.
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Sep 11, 2014 14:10
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Heavy Lobster posted:
Great summary. The fundamentals are a grind, but they are a grind that everyone has to deal with, from novices to experts.
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Sep 12, 2014 18:55
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Haven't posted anything in here recently, the thing I'm working on is p minimalist so not much to show off! But I kinda really dig how this logo came out so I thought I'd share:
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Sep 13, 2014 00:49
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I'm supposed to be finishing a game but Destiny has me.  
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Sep 13, 2014 15:23
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 This is a decorative piece for a title screen. It's going to have a bunch of animated mechanisms in the final, and the hands will rotate around. I'm using it a bit like a benchmark for when I'll be making bosses.
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Sep 18, 2014 21:05
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Compixellated challenge entry for this week, kinda rushed unfortunately but I like how it turned out. I made the monkey up on the spot but I decided it's name is "Pumpy". 
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Sep 21, 2014 08:54
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Humboldt Squid posted:Compixellated challenge entry for this week, kinda rushed unfortunately but I like how it turned out. I made the monkey up on the spot but I decided it's name is "Pumpy". Nice, like the atmosphere! What's the challenge theme this week? Scut posted:
The colour shifts in this are really lovely, green-into-blue especially. poo poo, thumbnailed that shows up even better!
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Sep 21, 2014 12:09
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This looks like it could be made into an adventure game. I like how the character is drawn loosely but is still deliberately colour blocked.
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Sep 21, 2014 13:45
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the chaos engine posted:Haven't posted anything in here recently, the thing I'm working on is p minimalist so not much to show off! But I kinda really dig how this logo came out so I thought I'd share: Ooh, I love arcade-style title fonts! These look nice!
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Sep 21, 2014 17:06
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DrMelon posted:Ooh, I love arcade-style title fonts! These look nice! Cheers, appreciate it! While I'm here, might as well crosspost from the Making Games thread: Added the second game mode this weekend.  (like I said before it's not the most interesting thing as far as pixel art goes, but ok. To be honest it's quite nice NOT having to spend hours and hours on sprites for a change! Also this gif fucks up how smooth the whole thing runs)
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Sep 22, 2014 13:50
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 I've been doing almost all client work the past week and wanted something unattached to any specific project to stretch my creative muscles a touch. Say hello to my fictional gang member. He's a video correspondent for the Waffle Conans, selling footage to network affiliates as his crew vies for control of the Mortuary Junction.
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Sep 26, 2014 02:42
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Since the last time i posted, i've immersed myself in tutorials and read as many of them as i can in regards to anatomy in an effort to improve my understanding, hopefully in shows in the picture below: I am not sure if i should have posted again until i have definitively improved, but i do feel the general "shape" of the character base has improved in comparison to my previous attempt, but it's the details such as bones and muscles, as well as their placement relative to the size of the character, that let it down.
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Sep 26, 2014 21:35
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Scut posted:
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Sep 26, 2014 21:47
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Orzo posted:Coming from someone who thinks your work is consistently amazing, I feel like something is off here with the shoulder/ice cream thing. It doesn't fit for some reason, but I'm not an artist and can't pinpoint the reason. Too bright?
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Sep 26, 2014 21:56
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It's definitely looking more sculpted, and the feet are an improvement though they should probably protrude forward a little more and have a bit less vertical bulk. I think a good exercise for you now would be to draw a figure as if it was a series of boxes, cones and spheres. Draw showing all the 'wireframe' of those volumes. Make sure the perspectives all make sense.
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Sep 26, 2014 22:18
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