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*

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Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

I've always avoided pixel/retro style art because I find it really frustrating, so I've been limiting myself to portrait type stuff and some static enemy sprites for a game I'm programming. Actually having a lot of fun with it, and pushing really hard to maintain my regular drawing style in pixel form. I know the line-work is kind of shoddy, but I sort of like it. Do you guys think the thicker lines work in this style, or would it be better to thin it out and work with some anti aliasing?

# ¿ Mar 24, 2014 05:23

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 16:45

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

the chaos engine posted:

Nah, I think it needs the screenshake. That gif has like 5 weapons stacked on top of each other, the screenshake comes from the 2 explosive weapon types. It just feels less powerful without it.

If you dig it and you can keep the visuals consistent throughout the game, it works. You know what you're doing, the colours are awesome, I'd say just keep going with it.

I've noticed that when it comes to pixel art, it's really only other pixel artists who give a gently caress about details and "rules".

Thanks. Good points. I have a very "sketchy" style since I almost exclusively do concept art, and I worry that it doesn't work very well as a finished product.
One more quick one:

# ¿ Mar 24, 2014 15:59

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Spent way to much time on this background -- my eyes are shot. Really happy with the outcome though, and its probably the best "finished" work I've done. This is a static 'event' screen for my mostly text-based game that will have dialogue and semi-detailed environments.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2014 03:30

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Good points thanks. The ui elements will definitely get borders and the text will have a window for backdrop. As for the background, I wasn't even aiming for such low saturation colors, this is just how all of my stuff comes out. I really need to push myself to use bright colors or it won't happen.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2014 10:28

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

the chaos engine posted:

Did some more pieces for this thing today, getting more and more sloppy but I'm on a deadline here.

The levels and character animations look great! Just by looking at the gifs, everything looks very snappy and responsive.
That intro screen version of the bunny strikes me as painfully symmetrical though. Circle head, oval chest shading, perfectly straight-line ears etc...

# ¿ Mar 27, 2014 02:53

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Exclamation Marx posted:

I like the raw style, but you could keep it and make things less jagged with very little effort:

Not a load of AA by any means, but it helps in areas like the moustache I think.

Thank you for the demo, that actually does soften it up a bit without losing the style. I will be sure to take a second pass and work out some of the rough edges. Fortunately I'm just starting assets and just starting to venture into pixel stuff so starting over with my methodology doesn't set me back far.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2014 04:16

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Took another pass at the portraits and cleaned them up some. Plus I did a major rework on the girl and pig guy. I could definitely add some more AA and smooth things out, but I'm pretty happy where it's at now.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2014 00:50

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Experimenting with a full body character.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2014 01:37

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Scut posted:

I'd love to see this sprite in a screen mock up.

I just spent so long trying to make a blacksmith shop to put the smith in, and ended up saying "eff it!" and just put him in a little mini scene. Turns out I'm drat terrible at structuring some kind of environment. I really like doing simple portraits, icons, and characters -- but gawt-dang is doing bigger stuff a struggle.

Baldbeard fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Apr 3, 2014

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 03:30

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Scut posted:

That's a ton of work, looks excellent!

Don't knock this, it's quite good looking. I'd suggest trying to make the character stand out more from the scene by either adjusting the palette or even adding an outline if that will suit the aesthetic.

Thanks, yeah that's a good idea.
I'm still trying to figure out how everything works. Seems like the "retro" looking pixel style has some major pros and cons. Great thing is I can generate content pretty quickly, but depending on the level of detail I want something to have, I obviously have to completely re-draw it since I can't just scale it up. Still wrapping my head around it.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 19:58

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Chipp Zanuff posted:

Apologies if im posting this piece too much, just want to make sure i get it correct.

I tried two different versions of shading, although im worried they are essentially pillow-shading. I changed the Shape slightly, to make it look more shield-like. I also changed the colours, using some of DawnBringer's colours from his 32 colour palette. I decided to explore the second one more culminating in 6 further edits below the palette, some with minor differences. I personally prefer 4, not sure if it's correct however.

(Bottom ones for comparison)

I think #3 holds up the best, although it slightly implies a more triangular shape to the shield. Otherwise #1 maintains the Scutum and also gets rid of the soda can shading.

Baldbeard fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Apr 11, 2014

# ¿ Apr 11, 2014 01:54

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Chipp Zanuff posted:

Another update:

Thanks so much by the way for all the critique and for showing me that there were problems with it, especially in regards to the shape, colour and look of the shields/

Rock on man. They look bueno.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2014 15:54

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Another quick portrait.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2014 23:17

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Assassin concept and portrait. (edit: and character!)

Baldbeard fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Apr 23, 2014

# ¿ Apr 22, 2014 23:10

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Starting to toy around with some UI mockups. Not even sure which direction I want to take this anymore, but I'm thinking a lite RPG that's based off of an action bar.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2014 22:52

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Here's the result of my exhaustive attempt at making a 3-frame attack animation. I'm not sure about the animation itself, but I'm quite happy with the frames.

]

[Edit] I know there's some artifacts with the transparency. I still need to do a polish pass.

Baldbeard fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Apr 29, 2014

# ¿ Apr 29, 2014 02:00

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

the chaos engine posted:

Baldbeard I sincerely love the hell out of your whole style / vibe / atmosphere. Never stop.

Haha thanks so much!

Re: smears. I'll have to google it after work. Is that like a blurry frame between 2 frames? I just tried have the frames fade out of each other a little so it wasn't so chunky.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2014 13:55

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

GirlBones posted:

I did this in statistics class a few years ago. Came across the picture today and thought you guys might like it.

thumbnailed for NSFW

Haha awesome.

I think I'm going to stick to 3 frames max and just toy around with timing/effects to get the look I want. I added a "got hit" animation to my hero, and threw in a mob and place holder slash effect just for reference. I'm figuring my hero(s) will probably get a lot more love in the animation department than enemies. I will probably cheese enemy got hit animations by just having them flash white and/or scoot back.

Edit: I should be studying for an exam right now. I think that's why I'm so motivated to goof around with this stuff. Blacksmith rework:

Baldbeard fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Apr 30, 2014

# ¿ Apr 30, 2014 00:34

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Heeyah!

Did some smear frames to add speed to his jabs. Mostly experimenting at this point and kind of going off track, but having fun.

# ¿ May 5, 2014 17:17

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Scut posted:

The illustrative quality to your work has me imagining these characters in an interactive fiction type of game. Like King of Dragon Pass.

I was actually thinking about having the story/dialogue be an important part of my mini-game, but wasn't sure how to incorporate it. I'll have to take a look at those kinds of games.

I've never been so in the mood for art as these last few days. Sorry for the image dump here -- I'm sure I will burn out real soon.
Round 2 for environments.

Also, a few mobs.

Baldbeard fucked around with this message at 04:46 on May 7, 2014

# ¿ May 5, 2014 23:57

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Chipp Zanuff posted:

So i tried 4 variations; first row has the chest pixeled in, 2nd doesn't, first column has the shading based around the curvature of the body, the second doesn't:

Maybe the heads and hands should be different depending on the body type. For example, I like the pudgy guy in blue. He has big hands and a big round head, and I feel like the overall proportions line up really well. (although you may want to bring his legs up at the crotch, because there's quite a lot of torso under the belt) The thinner/taller guys to the left are really lengthy and actually have a more realistic 'human' proportion', but still have rather large heads.
I'd really like to see these guys swinging a sword or thrusting a spear. Cool stuff.

the chaos engine posted:

...Also this thread is the nicest pixel art thread on the entire internet. Pixel artists can be snobbish arrogant purists fucks, everyone here is chill

Seriously. Everybody's chill and has really interesting projects/styles. I always look forward to new stuff.

Baldbeard fucked around with this message at 17:02 on May 7, 2014

# ¿ May 7, 2014 16:43

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Chipp Zanuff posted:

Decided to stop making bigger characters until i have a better understanding of anatomy and human form.

With that said, i also decided to make the previous base slightly bigger and applied what i learnt to it:

Trying to go down the Shining Force Route, so may eventually make a behind version.

The more dynamic poses look a lot better. Especially the sword and staff guys. Nice work.
I'd just say the thumb is toward the body when the palms are outfacing. Unless I'm looking at it wrong, it looks like the hands are backwards.

# ¿ May 9, 2014 01:52

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Not really comfortable going small, so I got a little practice in.

# ¿ May 9, 2014 22:59

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Those look great Shoe. Please make him flap around like a fish out of water before being still when he dies! Hah

Made a portrait for the young version of my hero.

Baldbeard fucked around with this message at 01:03 on May 10, 2014

# ¿ May 10, 2014 00:56

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Ohhh man. 2 hours on this.

But I got a separate running, ducking, and "come'ere'puppy!" animation out of it. Pretty pleased.

# ¿ May 11, 2014 01:38

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Have any of you guys had success using GameMaker? I'm installing it now and thinking about using it for game mockups, since I only have just a little Flash/Actionscript experience and it's still a lot of raw coding to get something going in flash.

# ¿ May 13, 2014 00:59

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Guess I will have to read up on my game maker tutorials then and get comfortable with it.

Another quick question for you programmers. When it comes to animations, say "running" "walking" whatever... how do you organize the frames? Do you do everything on a sprite sheet and then chop it from there? Do you make the animation as a Gif and then import it into whatever software you are using to make the game? -- or do you actually do the animation work in the game code? I'm trying to figure out how to organize all of this, before knowing how I'm going to use it.

Baldbeard fucked around with this message at 02:41 on May 13, 2014

# ¿ May 13, 2014 02:21

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Onion Knight posted:

I was using GameMaker up until just recently, when I switched everything to Unity (I didn't want to buy $600 worth of licenses so I could play my game on Android AND iOS) and I like it so much better. You could probably learn C# in as much time as it'd take you to learn GML anyway.
That said I feel like GameMaker is an incredible game jam/mockup tool with the drag and drop stuff and I don't regret buying it. You can get something playable and fun out within a day if you have a clear goal in mind.
I think if you're serious about making a real game your best bet is with Unity - not so say that you can't do it in GM, but I think for more serious projects you're going to hamstring yourself just so you don't have to learn C# or whatever.

As for animations, GM and Unity both handle it in the same way and it's pretty easy:
Make a spritesheet with all of your frames in a grid, and the software can just pull frames from the grid. Just keep every grid square the same size and it's super easy.

Thanks for all the info.

Yeah, at this point I just really want to finish something even if it's tiny. I've started so many big projects and scrapped them because I got in over my head with features and code.

My next project is going to be super low res and focus a lot more on style and presentation rather than in-depth systems. GameMaker sounds pretty good for that.

I've done a bit of coding in ActionScript and am pretty comfortable with the basics, so I'm hoping learning GM and later C# for unity won't be so bad.

# ¿ May 13, 2014 16:03

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Got a couple more assets for my cutesy lil' minigame done and threw them on a sprite sheet.

Edit] And a new monster design Goddess Statuette

Baldbeard fucked around with this message at 16:05 on May 15, 2014

# ¿ May 15, 2014 02:42

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

*Oink*

# ¿ May 17, 2014 00:37

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

systran posted:

I had done some pixel art years ago, but the sprites were so big it was barely pixel art. I'm interested to try again...what is a good size to start practicing with? Just from messing around and lurking this thread, I notice there's a huge difference between different sizes in how you have to approach a sprite.

That's really up to your personal style and what you are going for. The less pixels you work with, the more of a 'puzzle' the creation process is. Larger stuff can feel a lot like regular drawing until you polish. Maybe figure out what kind of stuff you like and start at a similar size?

# ¿ May 19, 2014 22:11

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

In the library just trying to read my textbook, but it's super noisy in here today. So gently caress it, did some pixel art with a trackpad. A TRACK PAD..

Edit: Recolor

Baldbeard fucked around with this message at 02:46 on May 22, 2014

# ¿ May 21, 2014 22:00

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

the chaos engine posted:

We should start doing like weekly challenges or something, too much dang talent in this thread.

Yeah that would be great. It always helps the ole' motivation to have an idea already. Just pitch something with some flashy smilies to grab peoples' attention and I'm down.

Quick recolor -- my laptop monitor has some weird rear end color display.

Baldbeard fucked around with this message at 02:46 on May 22, 2014

# ¿ May 22, 2014 01:39

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

One more NPC. Big Joe

# ¿ May 22, 2014 04:33

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Chipp Zanuff posted:

Update on the Archer's firing frame:

Had some really helpful advice on TIGSource's Pixel-art thread specifically about the stance.

Also Another update:

I'm currently trying to make an attack animation, I have the first two frames down, but the "wind up"(3rd) and attack frame (fourth) i am having issues with, here they are (first column is wind-up, second attack):

Sorry if they look really rough, want to get the general body + animation down and then concentrate on refining it.

I think the way he is holding the shield is going to make any attack in that stance a bit awkward. He's holding the shield sideways, outreached towards the enemy -- and then attacking in the same direction. So the sword isn't even swinging farther then his shield arm.

Try having him "twist" by simply tucking the shield backwards just a bit behind him so the sword is the farthest thing out. Otherwise it looks like hes fighting while balancing on a cliff edge.

# ¿ May 22, 2014 19:15

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Chipp Zanuff posted:

Thanks for pointing that out, does this look any better?:

I appreciate you guys persevering with me!

Also, here's an gif of it in action so far:

Yeah the downswing looks a lot more natural.

# ¿ May 22, 2014 20:02

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

All 3 ages of my hero done with portraits. Phew!

Baldbeard fucked around with this message at 03:08 on May 24, 2014

# ¿ May 24, 2014 03:06

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Possible mockup. I don't know. :ohdear:

# ¿ May 25, 2014 00:27

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

soapydishwater posted:

I just want to say that I really love the way you draw the battlefield thing- like small islands of material. I feel like you need some kind of color other than white to make it look nice, though.

Thanks. Yeah my style is so soft that I have a hard time coming up with backgrounds that don't steal focus or blend in. Maybe I will try some pattern or some dithering or something.

# ¿ May 25, 2014 21:41

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 16:45

Baldbeard: Mar 26, 2011

Since it's basically a puzzler, I guess I just need a bunch of -stuff-. I mean, if you look at any puzzle game, it's like 4/5ths filigree and background. Which sucks because that stuff is like my weakest weak area. FML.

On the bright side though, I think I'm going to step back and just finish the mini game as a little stand-alone thing. I volunteer with young kids, and it would be cool to have a little game that they could play. The idea will revolve around picking one of 3 options ("Silly, Smile, & Heart" are the fill-ins for now) and there will be various modes like a rock/paper/scissors game, a simon says memory game, and a metronome timed thing.

If I can just manage to get the stupid background/general frame down, I can focus on just pumping out assets and I will be a happy camper.

VVVV That's a good idea Chaos

Baldbeard fucked around with this message at 01:16 on May 26, 2014

# ¿ May 26, 2014 00:44

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

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