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*

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Lovely work in the thread. Sort of inspires me to do some pixel stuff too.
:bandwagon:

# ¿ Jun 19, 2012 20:38

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 02:47

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Had an avatar certificate lying around so I made one for myself. Using pixels!

# ¿ Jul 12, 2012 21:40

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

RizieN posted:

Could I commission one of you to make a pixel-art version of my Avatar? I don't know if I'll use it, but I'll pay for it. I have PM if you want to work the money out that way (As not to derail).

Sounds like you should visit the old Avatar Market thread!
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3336755

# ¿ Aug 1, 2012 16:14

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Xposting from the avatar thread.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2012 21:25

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Working on a prototype for a game dev nursery.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2012 14:37

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Scut posted:

Cool! How are you keeping your perspective and rotation angles consistent? Are you using any kind of guides?

Thanks!
Heh heh. That's the secret, isn't it?
I actually made a 3D model, surrounded it with cameras in 45 degree increments and while rotating the light sources rendered out each frame. Then I "rotoscoped" it in pixel art style and then enlarged it by 2.

Simple, right?

Can't wait for when I'll do animations. ;_;

Edit:

Slightly improved:

Hellbeard fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Sep 1, 2012

# ¿ Sep 1, 2012 15:26

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

concerned mom posted:

I think you should rotate the model, not have multiple cameras or you'll get that little wobble by his feet where the perspective keeps changing slightly. Looking really nice though.

Thanks. I think you're right.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2012 17:32

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Well. That took a while.

A good lesson here is to have a "method" for rotoscoping each part so it doesn't become so psychedelic. I'll need to go over and fit the frames better.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2012 14:39

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

A shooting target.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2012 12:10

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

A couple of pixel-art style stuff from my illustration thread in SA Mart:

(for steam)

(for SA Forums)

# ¿ Sep 18, 2012 07:10

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Made for Redbubble and Society6.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2012 16:10

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

I'll just leave this wizard here.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2012 01:03

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Scut posted:

Hellbeard, I can't quite explain how but your work reminds me of old PC Zone shareware disks in a good way.

Here's a robot that I spent way too much time on:

Thanks! That's quite a compliment. I'm a PC man so I definitely draw inspiration from there.

I love that robot. Very good looking.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2012 15:13

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Zackarotto posted:

Hey, Hellbeard, this is great. What software are you using? Is it much easier to do timing/positioning in 3D? I know nothing about this stuff, and CG seems so immensely daunting and technical. But I lurked into this thread precisely because I wanted to improve my process, and I had thought about making animations in 3D first, and then pixel-painting the real sprite work overtop.

When I animate from scratch I have to do endless trial-and-error work to make anything that isn't all janky-looking. I often paint flat silhouettes over video-camera footage, but that's extremely limiting, both logistically and in terms of reference quality. If I could create a 3D animation where I could adjust size, speed, angle, etc. whenever I want and assess that so-called "jankiness" on the fly, that'd be great. I don't like having to throw out 5 frames I spent an hour on because my character bent his back too much, or too slowly.

As an example of my current process, I guess I'll post this aerial-cartwheel thing, which is still in the "silhouetting phase", and is actually made from shaky cell-phone camera footage of two different people, one of whom was actually rolling on the grass at one point.

It's fun to look at the footage and see how I got from A to B, but it's a bit absurd. I've been winging it for too long, and I'm willing to throw out a lot of work if it improves my process�I want my work to be consistent, and while I can film a cartwheel, I can't film a midair-dragon-uppercut, or whatever.

So how do other people do lengthy sprite animations? Teach me how to make pretty things, so I can make pretty things for you.

Hi, thanks. I used 3D studio and Photoshop. 3D can really help with maintaining proportions, volumes and angles. On the other hand it limits the expressiveness of the animation or the exaggeration aspect of it. If you don't need to maintain a complicated fixed perspective you can always do simpler line animations in a program like Flash and go over them later with your program of choice. It depends on the kind of effect you're trying to achieve.

If what you want is a real rotoscoped realistic animation thing I think 3D can help you but I recommend still using video references.

On the other hand, 3D is incredibly daunting and technical and takes a long time to learn how to use. At least, what I've been using. Maybe there's some simpler program out there you can use that doesn't require modelling and rigging and stuff.

P.S. Nice work Scut!

# ¿ Oct 18, 2012 06:58

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Zackarotto posted:

Thank you. Yes, I want to keep using video reference because it's helped to personalize the movements of characters--there are three main playable characters, who each have a different "actor" assigned to them. I just don't want to be so dependent on that reference, or have a huge leap in animation quality from the secondary characters.

The perspective is very simple on my main project, but I have a silly isometric thing on the side that I'd like to take further someday, so I don't think it would be a waste to learn a more complicated method.

I don't want to be shackled to realism, and limiting expressiveness is definitely a problem, but once I get the basic framework down, I can elaborate away from the 3D model my drawing had overlapped. Or that's what I'm hoping, anyway.

I also want to try lowering my frame counts and experimenting with some of the tricks Street Fighter 3 used.

If you want to get some more animation know how I recommend the book "animators survival kit". I'm not an animator per se, though I do a lot of animation and I'm learning more as I go, but the book really opened my eyes on some important aspects of animation; weight, anticipation, exaggeration. How to think about the animation time-line in terms of extremes, passing positions, highs and lows. If you have a library you can find it in I recommend checking it out for a bit.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2012 22:44

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Amaya posted:

I'm working on a little pet project with my fiance and started on our protagonist tonight. I used to do pixel art all the time when I was younger but it was limited to making new pokemon trainer sprites (from scratch at least!) so I'm a newbie. Can I get some critique?

For improving your walk cycle have the body bob up and down being lowest when the feet are stretched out(extreme position) and highest when they pass across each other(passing position).

# ¿ Dec 31, 2012 10:03

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Amaya posted:

Like this?

Here's another also:

More. Have the entire body move up and down.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2013 07:31

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Zvezda posted:

Arg, thanks guys!

I'd LOVE to do a point and click adventure game sometime. It's the programming side of things that really intimidates me - I'd need a partner in crime! Thanks for the critique, I will keep the palette in mind

I really liked your sprites. They're awesome. Do some more like that.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2013 16:48

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Scut posted:

Hey Plank, scale up your images once or twice for posting. It really helps show off pixel art in the best light but also helps us critique your work. Those firing animations look fun, you could probably squeeze some more life out from adjusting the time of each frame a little more.

Here's the latest piece I did. It's for my brother who does computer repair.

Cool as hell. The color palette gives me a strong mid 90's vibe.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2013 08:33

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Made this for a goon's avatar but he didn't want it (I'm making him a different one now).

# ¿ Apr 2, 2013 12:15

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Sub-Actuality posted:

He's a fool! This is great.

Thanks! Not everyone appreciates the same things. V :downs:

V
What's cool about pixel-art avatars is because of the low color count you can cram in a lot of frames and have variety.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2013 21:30

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Scut posted:

Update! I replaced a bunch of the head rotations to make it looks more natural.

Looks great! I like the timing and palette of *whatever that is.

* a bear hat wearing wild gun man, I'm pretty sure.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2013 21:31

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

McKilligan posted:

Thanks! I never ended up using them for anything - they're still sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to figure out what to do with them. They do make for some nice props though. I think I posted these pics a while ago, but what the hell -

Lovely work there. Looks ready for gameplay. If you have a portfolio put those in it.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2013 12:19

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

That's rad as hell, Shoehead! Very nice for three frames.

Skiant posted:

I really like the other ones you posted, but I feel like that one is too "linear". There's little acceleration/deceleration in the movement and it makes it feel wrong somehow.

How about some "anticipation" before he gets going: a movement in the opposite direction to prepare for moving forward. Maybe a "bounce" in the end - going over the extreme position and returning back a little.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2013 16:56

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Was inspired by the thread to make this self portrait:

# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 23:45

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Scut posted:

Hey that's pretty good! Love the popping background. If I could offer some constructive advice, make your darks darker on the figure, try shifting them into a slightly more saturated cooler tones as well. It will make the shading work better in my opinion.

Thanks I'll try to put an emphasis on it. It seems I habitually don't push the contrast enough. Also, I'm colorblind/red-weak and my screens aren't calibrated well so it's difficult for me to tell how the image carries over.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2014 12:35

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

poemdexter posted:

The sprite sheets are still a work in progress but it's a priority that things are very readable especially the punches. We'll probably have some effects a little later to help punch it up (pun intended).

I recommend making the movement much more dramatic than one pixel back and forth. Especially for a pixel-art graphic you need actions to be very exaggerated. Keep in mind the principles as per the Animator's Survival Kit: weight, anticipation, exaggeration, contrast. So, for the turtle to stab maybe have him pull back the sword to the point of turning around backwards and then whip forward changing overall shape/silhouette from contracted to extended.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2014 11:17

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 02:47

Hellbeard: Apr 8, 2002; Please report me if you see me post in GBS so a moderator may bulldoze my account like a palestinian school.

Professor Shark posted:

I was thinking something like this:

With this things head:

Sitting at a computer postin'

Excuse my shameless self promotion.
I've been following this thread and posting here and there, mostly lurking. However, I do have a SA Mart thread where I do avatars and stuff so you can check it out if you want. Some folks here exceed my skill I'm sure but if no one picks up the glove I'll be happy to do the work.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2014 20:40

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