Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Count Uvula
Dec 20, 2011

---
Aww snap, I hate pixel art.
The Shadow of the Katamari is by Snake, who's working on an indie game called Owlboy now.
The 4 color spartan is by Helm, who's an admin of Pixelation. He's mostly been making political cartoons for Greek papers/magazines for the past couple years, but is currently on vacation.


Some stuff of my own:




Here's a WIP version of the game the ghoul is from (controls are Z, X, and the arrow keys):
[link]
I abandoned it because it's not very fun, but I think the art I made for it is pretty good :toot:

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

The Golden Gael
Nov 12, 2011



Screenshots from the sequel to my first game, Larry Goose's Tank and Warfare. I like everything in them except for the tank (note how it's totally top-down as opposed to the 3/4 view of everything else), but I like the tank sprite on its own. I suppose it could really use some dimension to it though - it looks awfully flat even with the shading. Any pointers to help it out?

The Golden Gael fucked around with this message at 15:39 on May 1, 2012

powerofrecall
Jun 26, 2009

by R. Guyovich
I personally really like mtpaint and it's available for Windows and Linux. It has built in patterns and patterns specifically for dithering.

I'm kind of a beginner, and I'm really only getting into it because of well, "programmer art" for a homebrew Sega Genesis game I'm working on. Nothing exciting, just a tetris clone. You're basically limited to 15 colors for sprites, or it can be upped to 16 colors on the background layers if you don't need transparency (I think).

A tetris background:


edit: one notable thing about this is it's optimized to be trimmed down into a minimal number of tiles to save video RAM (the Sega doesn't have a ton of it).

powerofrecall fucked around with this message at 02:11 on May 2, 2012

Internet Janitor
May 17, 2008

"That isn't the appropriate trash receptacle."
powerofrecall: Nice. Looks like... 90 unique tiles?

Main thing I'd suggest is playing with the text some more- I like the shapes of the characters, but I don't think they stand out well against the background.

powerofrecall
Jun 26, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Internet Janitor posted:

powerofrecall: Nice. Looks like... 90 unique tiles?

If you actually eyeballed that I'm impressed! I can't check it right now but Mappy's tile map culling seemed like it was fewer than that. I'll check again sometime though.

I actually stole that 8x8 font. You're right, at 1x size it looks kind of crappy. It does seem to look better on a CRT than on an LCD monitor though, but I do have to keep in mind that more people will probably play it on an emulator. You got any ideas about color to make it pop a little more?

punchdaily
Nov 8, 2010
I am finally, after almost two decades of trying, getting a somewhat firm hold on pixel graphics. but I made some GameBoy RPG mock-ups a month or so ago as a lark. I like working within the Gameboy palate because it stops me from going apeshit on the sprites. I was inspired by the sprites of the Japanese version of Ghostbusters 2 for the NES, which has some super-adorable sprite work, and is made by the team that made Kirby's Adventure! It's really worth a try if you can get a hold of it. Warning: For some reason Winston is blue.

(THERE WERE A BUNCH OF SHADY LOOKING BROKEN IMAGE LINKS HERE, CONTACT SOUNDMONKEY FOR DETAILS, ACTUALLY PLEASE DON'T)

Part of me really wants to make this game, but I've got a lot to learn about programming and/or GameMaker 8.1 before I can really do anything with it, and I've got other projects I want to do first. I have about 100 monster sprites for the game, seven main characters, six generics and a handful of town tiles.

Also: I like "aseprite" for tile making. It's good for testing out repeating tiles, at least. I haven't used it to animate anything.

Somebody fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Feb 4, 2016

powerofrecall
Jun 26, 2009

by R. Guyovich

punchdaily posted:

I like working within the Gameboy palate because it stops me from going apeshit on the sprites.

Are these actually within gameboy specs? If so they look pretty great

edit: aseprite looks pretty good too; how about adding this and mtpaint and other suggestions to the OP?

AntiPseudonym
Apr 1, 2007
I EAT BABIES

:dukedog:

powerofrecall posted:

edit: aseprite looks pretty good too; how about adding this and mtpaint and other suggestions to the OP?

Sure thing, done. If anyone's experienced in either of them (Or Pixen), would you mind doing a short write up of the merits/problems so I can put them in the OP?

AntiPseudonym fucked around with this message at 14:49 on May 2, 2012

powerofrecall
Jun 26, 2009

by R. Guyovich
mtPaint is a lot like MS Paint, but with a couple of features that make it a cut above. It's focused on pixel art and as such has various pattern brushes to help with things like dithering and shading. It also has a much more in-depth palette editor and palette management, and things like the ability to create gradients between an arbitrary number of palette entries. If you need it, it also has many options to dither down a high-color image to any palette size and it does generally a good job with the right options. It also has basic layering. As far as cons, the layering is weird to use and you'll have to read up on it and not everything you can do in mtPaint is 100% instinctive.

SSH IT ZOMBIE
Apr 19, 2003
No more blinkies! Yay!
College Slice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNg2KivFNCE
Work in progress, here's what all that poo poo was for.

Democratic Pirate
Feb 17, 2010

Jesus, I remember hardcore lurking on Pixeljoint/Pixelation a few years back after being inspired by pixel "sigs" on Runescape, of all things, forums. It still amazes me what people can make in this medium.

SubNat
Nov 27, 2008

Well, thanks to the thread, I've just downloaded Mtpaint, here's to hoping I'll use that instead of MSpaint in the future. :toot:

Anyhow, I've been working a bit on my first sprite project, the entire class is working on a game, and I'm one of the artists on it.

I'm really having a lot of fun with it now, especially since I'm slowly getting the hang of animating characters now.



e: too bad I'm having a hell of a time trying to adjust to Graphicgale or mtpaint, tho'

SubNat fucked around with this message at 19:29 on May 7, 2012

Kunzelman
Dec 26, 2007

Lord Shaper
Can anyone point to any good tutorials on how to make animation smooth/good/etc. The diagram of running animations was awesome--is there anything like that for, well, every other motion?

mutata
Mar 1, 2003

Kunzelman posted:

Can anyone point to any good tutorials on how to make animation smooth/good/etc. The diagram of running animations was awesome--is there anything like that for, well, every other motion?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Animators-Survival-Expanded-Edition/dp/0571238343/ref=cm_lmf_tit_2

Laser Cow
Feb 22, 2006

Just like real cows!

Only with lasers.
I've tried to get into pixel art a couple of times but I've always been too ambitious at the start then horribly dissapointed when things didn't turn out how I wanted.

So I'm going to try again but start a lot smaller.



It's far from perfect and miles from the little dudes you guys have running around and poo poo but for the first thing I've done in years I quite like that. I think I'm just going to draw the things I have around me for a bit.

.TakaM
Oct 30, 2007

Count Uvula posted:

Aww snap, I hate pixel art.
The Shadow of the Katamari is by Snake, who's working on an indie game called Owlboy now.
The 4 color spartan is by Helm, who's an admin of Pixelation. He's mostly been making political cartoons for Greek papers/magazines for the past couple years, but is currently on vacation.


Some stuff of my own:




Here's a WIP version of the game the ghoul is from (controls are Z, X, and the arrow keys):
[link]
I abandoned it because it's not very fun, but I think the art I made for it is pretty good :toot:
You just reminded me I'm supposed to be a beta tester for Owlboy, I should send those guys an email...

Helm's four colour spartan was my bootup screen on winXP and I never got sick of it, expert colour management and a clear understanding of how pixels physically work, it's really one of my favourite pixel art examples.
Cool little game btw, you have a nice style.


I finally went back and did the leaves for this tree and it's pretty much finished. I'm sure I'll make countless tweaks here and there, but you get the idea.

Jewel
May 2, 2009

.TakaM posted:

You just reminded me I'm supposed to be a beta tester for Owlboy, I should send those guys an email...

Helm's four colour spartan was my bootup screen on winXP and I never got sick of it, expert colour management and a clear understanding of how pixels physically work, it's really one of my favourite pixel art examples.
Cool little game btw, you have a nice style.


I finally went back and did the leaves for this tree and it's pretty much finished. I'm sure I'll make countless tweaks here and there, but you get the idea.

The leaves need.. more contrast I think, I can't put my finger on it, but wow, that bark. Wow. You have a real talent there.

.TakaM
Oct 30, 2007

Thanks, contrast is something I think I might be having problems with now that I'm on a laptop, it's hard to always have the screen at the right angle. But at the same time this is a background object and I tend to give them less contrast than the rest of the environment.

The lighting might be throwing you off too, it doesn't really make sense, it shouldn't be a big deal when it's in the game because the whole thing can't fit on screen. :p

Jewel
May 2, 2009

.TakaM posted:

Thanks, contrast is something I think I might be having problems with now that I'm on a laptop, it's hard to always have the screen at the right angle. But at the same time this is a background object and I tend to give them less contrast than the rest of the environment.

The lighting might be throwing you off too, it doesn't really make sense, it shouldn't be a big deal when it's in the game because the whole thing can't fit on screen. :p

Nah, the bark has nice contrast, the leaves just need to change the levels a bit. They have 3 shades, all of which are in the high range of colors, with the darker color being used way too sparingly. You should just up the contrast up there with a tool and see what happens.

Edit: Did a quick edit in photoshop and dang, the leaves look nicer with more contrast (maybe a little less is needed, but the point remains):



Edit2: Don't take me wrong, I do like your style with the lowered contrast, and it fits with the other stuff you've made, but contrast is still something y'should play with more~

Edit3: vvv That looks nice, yeah.

Jewel fucked around with this message at 11:54 on May 8, 2012

a boxing teahorse
May 17, 2010

.TakaM posted:

Thanks, contrast is something I think I might be having problems with now that I'm on a laptop, it's hard to always have the screen at the right angle. But at the same time this is a background object and I tend to give them less contrast than the rest of the environment.
You could also just hue-shift the more extreme shades of green, but I don't know if that would stick out too much. Also the original color you had for the lightest shade seemed a little over-saturated compared to the tree bark. My color choice isn't the greatest because it makes some of the details look weird, but I'm sure you understand what I'm getting at.

Also I'm going to throw in and say that the tree bark is really lovely looking. I'm not quite sure what the swirly bit on that middle root is supposed to be, but I kinda like it anyway.

I'm glad I came across this thread. I'm no good at pixel art, but I always thought the nuances of its limitations are really neat and I always love seeing really awesome stuff crop up.

a boxing teahorse fucked around with this message at 11:55 on May 8, 2012

.TakaM
Oct 30, 2007

Yeah, I'm seeing the imbalance with the contrast now.. Thanks guys, this is why fresh eyes always help. I'll come back to this tree tomorrow. I don't think I'll go quite as far as your edit Jewel, since I have a kinda pastel colour thing going, but your version definitely makes mine look dull.

Thanks about the tree bark, it was the fun part. The swirly root is exactly that simple. :p

SSH IT ZOMBIE
Apr 19, 2003
No more blinkies! Yay!
College Slice

.TakaM
Oct 30, 2007


Alright how's this look? Did some extra work on the bark too

SSH IT ZOMBIE posted:


This is a nice little enemy, only thing that could use some work are the wings- they look a bit too floppy, I think the spots need to move a bit more.

exmarx
Feb 18, 2012


The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

.TakaM posted:

Alright how's this look?

Possibly too green now. Perhaps you could push contrast rather than saturation -

Any reason for the "hole" at the bottom right? Kinda looks odd.

mutata
Mar 1, 2003

.TakaM posted:


Alright how's this look? Did some extra work on the bark too
This is a nice little enemy, only thing that could use some work are the wings- they look a bit too floppy, I think the spots need to move a bit more.

It looks very flat, to be honest. I think this is maybe a good first pass, but you could push the shapes of the leaf bunches much more and make them feel much more voluminous if you had a 2nd go at it.

Scut
Aug 26, 2008

Please remind me to draw more often.
Soiled Meat

Count Uvula posted:

Aww snap, I hate pixel art.


Hey! I recognize these from the TIG Forums! (I think?) Love your work!


Some of my recent pixeling to contribute to the thread:

Internet Janitor
May 17, 2008

"That isn't the appropriate trash receptacle."
Very rough initial work on a run cycle:


I think I need more frames, or possibly to add some flex along the body's vertical axis so that the upper thighs parallax against one another. Thoughts?

Scut
Aug 26, 2008

Please remind me to draw more often.
Soiled Meat
The arm nearest the viewer seems to be swinging in time with the leg nearest, the limbs should oppose each other when running.

Also you can often squeeze a lot of life out of anims by tweaking the timing of each frame, so play with that too.

SSH IT ZOMBIE
Apr 19, 2003
No more blinkies! Yay!
College Slice

.TakaM posted:


Alright how's this look? Did some extra work on the bark too
This is a nice little enemy, only thing that could use some work are the wings- they look a bit too floppy, I think the spots need to move a bit more.

It's pretty good. To bring out the depth, try shifting some of the shaded areas a darker blue instead of just the same darker color!
You should be able to pallete swap those darker colors pretty easy? Try messing with shades of blue.


How did you do the leaves, anyway? There's so many, was there any copy\paste work, or all pushing pixel by pixel?

I really have a tough time with bigger pieces like that.

SSH IT ZOMBIE
Apr 19, 2003
No more blinkies! Yay!
College Slice
Ie, for example,


And the same applies to the bark, I think. Shift the shaded areas a touch blue to make it pop.



Or maybe I'm crazy? :P

SSH IT ZOMBIE fucked around with this message at 03:59 on May 10, 2012

a boxing teahorse
May 17, 2010

SSH IT ZOMBIE posted:

Or maybe I'm crazy? :P
The way you're doing an extreme hue-shift on the darkest shade without really any other palette/shading/detail adjustments to compensate doesn't really work on its own. I also doubt he's going to go nuts and hue-shift everything when the bark really looks fine on its own, considering it's a background object. I doubt it'll match his other assets either.

Again, though, messing around with subtle hue-shifting on the darkest and lightest bits of the leaves is a really neat way to show that they're catching sunlight and to show depth/create contrast. That only goes so far, though, since it's a very stylized tree where the leaves register as more of a single, shaped mass than thousands of individuals.

Edit: Plus, looking at an actual color wheel, it would be a much smoother shift to bring the darker brown to reddish-purplish. Sliding it all the way to blue doesn't make a whole let of sense.

Edit edit: Here's a GIF of my take at some minor changes. Up to you to decide whether it fits the style/looks better or not.

a boxing teahorse fucked around with this message at 04:59 on May 10, 2012

SSH IT ZOMBIE
Apr 19, 2003
No more blinkies! Yay!
College Slice

.TakaM posted:

This is a nice little enemy, only thing that could use some work are the wings- they look a bit too floppy, I think the spots need to move a bit more.

I'll try to fix it, good catch. Should I change the body's color at all? Since everything is a shade of purple it looks kind of odd.

Rupert Buttermilk
Apr 15, 2007

🚣RowboatMan: ❄️Freezing time🕰️ is an old P.I. 🥧trick...

Scut posted:

Hey! I recognize these from the TIG Forums! (I think?) Love your work!


Some of my recent pixeling to contribute to the thread:



:swoon: I absolutely love these, especially what looks to be a mecha-baby.

Scut
Aug 26, 2008

Please remind me to draw more often.
Soiled Meat
It was a piece of fan art I made for Pineapple Smash Crew, by Rich Make Game!
http://www.richmakegame.com/?page_id=399

Rich even blogged my pixel art :)

Jewel
May 2, 2009

I'm gonna post it here since it's not really "work", but moreso I want to talk with one of you (if you accept!) and we can work out stuff together. Less of a job and more of a "let's make a game together".

I’m applying to a gamedev college soon, which is entirely portfolio based, but to ensure a position, I want to have completed at least one game to display. I usually work on sideprojects but I’ve never really finished something entirely, due to lack of artists or musicians. I’ve been programming for 7 years now, but I mostly like to stick to engines or little simulations instead of fullblown games.

Anywho I just want someone (I don’t want this to be too professional, just something where we chill out and make a game!) to work with on this. The idea I had in mind is a shmup for android (or a roguelike if you feel you could do art for that better (Or we could do both!)), since the screen res is small, and it’s a lot less work and time needed than a PC or XBLA release like I plan to do with larger projects. If you’re interested at all, feel free to PM me or reply here! If you prefer, I plan to even let you choose the theme and design the art for the game with no real limitations too, I’m pretty open about that (such as a space themed vertical shmup, or an underwater themed horizontal bullet hell, or whatever you prefer), but I do have someone who can design the game if you don't feel you're up to that task.

It shouldn't be a long project, only a few weeks if all goes well, and it'd be cool to have a game you've made in collaboration with someone on the Android store (It's probably going to be free, however, this is purely for portfolio purposes, and I don't really want to make money off your art without giving you compensation back (Although if we get along really well and plan to make more stuff in the future, we can perhaps charge for it as a team))!

If you don't have PM's, contact me at twitchy137@gmail.com !

Edit: Oh also if a mod sees this and deems it inappropriate for here, please feel free to edit out this post or PM me or somesuch, I'd be happy to remove it!

Jewel fucked around with this message at 08:45 on May 11, 2012

Pfhreak
Jan 30, 2004

Frog Blast The Vent Core!

Jewel posted:

I'm gonna post it here since it's not really "work", but moreso I want to talk with one of you (if you accept!) and we can work out stuff together. Less of a job and more of a "let's make a game together".

I’m applying to a gamedev college soon, which is entirely portfolio based, but to ensure a position, I want to have completed at least one game to display. I usually work on sideprojects but I’ve never really finished something entirely, due to lack of artists or musicians. I’ve been programming for 7 years now, but I mostly like to stick to engines or little simulations instead of fullblown games.

Anywho I just want someone (I don’t want this to be too professional, just something where we chill out and make a game!) to work with on this. The idea I had in mind is a shmup for android (or a roguelike if you feel you could do art for that better (Or we could do both!)), since the screen res is small, and it’s a lot less work and time needed than a PC or XBLA release like I plan to do with larger projects. If you’re interested at all, feel free to PM me or reply here! If you prefer, I plan to even let you choose the theme and design the art for the game with no real limitations too, I’m pretty open about that (such as a space themed vertical shmup, or an underwater themed horizontal bullet hell, or whatever you prefer), but I do have someone who can design the game if you don't feel you're up to that task.

It shouldn't be a long project, only a few weeks if all goes well, and it'd be cool to have a game you've made in collaboration with someone on the Android store (It's probably going to be free, however, this is purely for portfolio purposes, and I don't really want to make money off your art without giving you compensation back (Although if we get along really well and plan to make more stuff in the future, we can perhaps charge for it as a team))!

If you don't have PM's, contact me at twitchy137@gmail.com !

Edit: Oh also if a mod sees this and deems it inappropriate for here, please feel free to edit out this post or PM me or somesuch, I'd be happy to remove it!

The game dev competition is coming up. Good opportunity to team up with folks and put together a game on a tight timeline.

Jewel
May 2, 2009

Pfhreak posted:

The game dev competition is coming up. Good opportunity to team up with folks and put together a game on a tight timeline.

Yeah, this is true! I forgot about this.

SSH IT ZOMBIE
Apr 19, 2003
No more blinkies! Yay!
College Slice

korusan posted:



Screenshots from the sequel to my first game, Larry Goose's Tank and Warfare. I like everything in them except for the tank (note how it's totally top-down as opposed to the 3/4 view of everything else), but I like the tank sprite on its own. I suppose it could really use some dimension to it though - it looks awfully flat even with the shading. Any pointers to help it out?

I like it. Maybe put a shadow under the tank(just like a black box w/ semi transparency, or a black image with every other pixel see through)

It's probably going to be hard to get a lot of depth on a small sprite like that
You could try darkening the outlines on the side facing away from the light source?
And maybe a touch of dithering?

Scut
Aug 26, 2008

Please remind me to draw more often.
Soiled Meat
Let's get some pixels rolling up in this thread!


Rough versions of a player's ship for a sidescrolling shmup I'm working on. I've gone through a bunch of variations on the tail rudders / thrust tabs etc. and it's still looking too busy in the back. I think the next step is to just try wiping them entirely and focus more on form over little greeble-type bits.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

AntiPseudonym
Apr 1, 2007
I EAT BABIES

:dukedog:

Scut posted:

Rough versions of a player's ship for a sidescrolling shmup I'm working on. I've gone through a bunch of variations on the tail rudders / thrust tabs etc. and it's still looking too busy in the back. I think the next step is to just try wiping them entirely and focus more on form over little greeble-type bits.

I really dig the depth that you've managed to get into that! Really good use of colors to get the shape in there. Although I feel the blue bounce could use a little more saturation and maybe be a little darker, it stands out a little too much at the moment.

Also yeah, I think it'd look way better without the rudders, and maybe without the aerials at the front, they look a little messy.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply