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*

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

McKilligan posted:

Was fooling around with a few ideas and whipped this up tonight - Pretty well pleased with the results - I've got a decent system in place to quickly whip up basic environments and such. We'll see if I can turn this into something more interesting later.

Actually it's faux-3D, I have a pixel wireframe box setup that I can create the basic shapes of the environment with, then I can stretch and distort existing textures straight down behind them to give them a 3D appearance. It's a quick way to make a pretty convincing 3D environment.

Starring at it I think I can see what you mean, is there a good tutorial for isomorphicism like that or would it be possible for you to give an overview on how you did it step by step /w which programs? :shobon:

# ¿ May 21, 2013 17:31

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 22:12

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

McKilligan posted:

Alright, I did everything here in GIMP, I'll try and give you a basic rundown of my process. Here's how I go about it - I created a very basic tileset like so - These are just black objects on an empty layer. I'm just using the pen tool for this - Once I established the basic dimensions for a single grid, I just copy-pasted to make a few tile sets in different dimensions.

By simple cutting and pasting these basic bits, I can create the framework for an environment, like so:
I also lowered the opacity on the tiles so they didn't look so harsh.

Next, I just did a GIS for a cement texture - I'm pretty sure that this is the one I used - I don't have step by step pictures here, but it's very easy to do - All you do is scale the texture down to roughly the size you need on a new layer beneath your grid, then use the SHEAR tool to angle it along the surface of your plane. All of the textures, the walls and floor, are from the same texture, I simply adjust the brightness and contrast of each to make them distinct - making one wall darker, another lighter, etc. I also switched to a black background, just because. You can pretty much get any texture to fit your frame almost exactly just alternating between the SCALE and SHEAR tools, or simply cropping anything that goes over the edges when necessary.

From there, I did the exact same thing to get some doors - just GIS for door, scale it down, and shear it to fit the perspective. If you want one of the opposite wall, just copy and flip it horizontally, maybe change the hue, one red, one blue. I also added in the characters on a new layer.

Finally, on a final layer, I just use some gradients to add some shadow around the edges, and a yellow gradient in a cone shape to illuminate the room. Honestly the yellow lighting is kinda lovely, and if you were concerned with realism it could be done alot better, but it gets the point across.

You could do this with pretty much any kind of room, provided you can find appropriate textures. Of course, if you wanted to you could just whip them all up from scratch, but that's alot more time intensive.

That's awesome! I love Isomorphic views and this helps a lot with my own plans.

My only concern though is that I think my eyes are broken, about every 2 seconds the view switches from being a empty room and projecting a cube at me :haw:

....

# ¿ May 22, 2013 17:19

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

If those bright and colorful pixels at the bottom of the font post are supposed to be legible letters I am totally blind.

DicktheCat posted:

I finally have something to post here!

He's not entirely done yet (no details), just roughing out this little fella's run cycle.

What do you guys think? Critique is really, really welcomed, as I want to get better.

Very Animaniacs-esque!

# ¿ May 30, 2013 02:21

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

rinski posted:

I think he's rolling out of the way of an arrow projectile that's moving super fast.

The talent in this thread is kind of intimidating, but I figured I'd post a thing I'm working on anyway.

I just started teaching myself Unity with a 2D platformer, so I've also been learning pixel art out of necessity and latent interest. I don't really have much experience with pixel art, so I've basically been brute-forcing images by slowly changing pixels until things started to look ok. I was originally going to go with a really limited palette to mimic NES games, but I had a lot of trouble trying to make something decent-looking with a four-color palette.

So the game's art style initially looked like this:

But then after another pass at it I wound up at this:

Honestly, I'm not sure which looks better. I kinda like the original, because it has that weird, flat-looking, NES-style abstraction with lots of repeated tiles and nothing really looks like what it's supposed to, but that might just be me rationalizing my artistic limitations. Also, I think I went overboard hue-shifting the monster's shadows in the second image, so maybe that's why I don't really like it.

Edit: a few more images here in the old style, if anyone's interested.

Isn't that the boss from Broken Age?

That's really cool though.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2014 04:23

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

Alright here's my first attempt at Pixel Art.

I first sketched something in SAI, brought it over to Paint.net, scaled it down, and then traced over it.

I'm going to try to make some animations too.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 10:34

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

So I've been trying to practice with pixel art and so far my work flow involves doodling in SAI and then downsizing it in Paint.net than tracing over it pixel by pixel, but I lose so much detail (and things get so blurry) with my reference image that it's hard to keep track of what I'm working on.

Has anyone figured out how to have a high resolution image layer underneath a very low resolution layer?

Additionally and I presume this is more of an issue with working with pixel art at small resolutions but is it basically impossible to rotate a selection your working on? I assume it's trying to interpolate pixels.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 15:39

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

Old Man Mozz posted:

I think Aesprite just added that feature actually!
https://www.aseprite.org/

edit : perhaps it's coming in a future update? there's also paint of persia
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/tools/paint-persia-new-free-tool-rotoscoping-pixel-art-141093.html

Nice, and it's only 15$ too, I'll have to get it once I'm back home.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 18:21

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

I made an idle animation for her as well, not happy with her right arm or the shadows, the movements are just kinda there to have movement.

fake edit: and her blink goes too fast! Introduced trying to figure out and make that sudden jump somewhere between the last and second frames; her hand goes from her head and out a little sudden probably because I put the blink frame in between.

edit: I didn't like it, so I fixed it I think, tearing should be better.

I feel either her cowl needs to also subtly move (hard at 64x64), and/or her right arm needs to move left not right.

How do you do a breathing animation at this size without it seeming like a fighting game?

Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Jun 25, 2017

# ¿ Jun 25, 2017 04:12

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

I got a android drawing tablet and loaded up Pixel Studio.

I have no idea what I'm doing!!!

# ¿ Dec 26, 2023 20:01

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 22:12

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

Ash Crimson posted:

Bit reluctant to ask for feedback because i've burnt you all in the past with not taking your advice until much later, but I've got myself a tablet to do pixel art and trying to translate my experience with drawing into pixel art, but struggling with higher resolution sprites/bodies I know most aren't defined, but are the silhouettes and clusters decent enough to at least make the limbs and body identifiable?

Original tiles are 96x96m but it's been increased by x3

I'll be honest, drawing has really improved my art and how i view it but im not sure if i can do larger sprites

I can't give good constructive feedback but these look fantastic. :haw:

Going from left to right numbered 1,2,3,4 and from bottom up A,B,C,D:

I like C3, C4, and I think maybe B2 and B4?

Special mention to B3 as something that looks from a pixel art version of bloodborne.

A3 seems like a good base for a furry lupin/lycan sort of character.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2024 16:52

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