Hi Pixel freaks! I just discovered this site today and thought I would enter a challenge.



This is Zaphod Beeblebrox whipping some ass! (with a towel)

This is just an early mockup. I'm going to go to town on his movement, with a breath/ bounce cycle and some secondary animation of the hair and back arm.

Thanks Jalonso! Very helpful of you.

Zaphod version 2.0. I'm just mucking about trying to find a pleasing colour scheme. Knocking the hue of his right head back a bit to his main head forwards. I Added a 1.5px stroke of dark brown then painted in his inner outlines in photoshop.

Nice. Clever idea :)

- No need to enlarge it. Doing so only complicates things for people who want to help you with an edit.
- I would like to see both the phone booth and the doctor a bit closer to the center, with more air around them.

Looks cleaner than most of your work. And if we're to go by your reasoning, then maybe we should remove your entire gallery?

Oh, boy, stop judging. There is nothing in that picture that would suggest that the artist didn't have control about what he is doing. It just looks a bit unusual because it is anti aliasing against a implied white background which most people don't do, but that's hardly reprehensible.

Hey guys.

Glad that you are discussing my piece. I am learning new many new things such as oeakai.

As for the definition of what qualifies as “pixel art” I will leave that to others. My understanding is that if it has been worked on down on the pixel level then its pixel art, which I have done on his inner outlines such as under his middle arm, and will do more of this "pixel pushing" for his face and hair.

Currently I am working in Illustrator down at 128px size, I plan to output vectors to animate them in flash, then output as PNGs to touch up areas for each frame up in photoshop. That’s my workflow at the moment, I would love to learn more about yours.

Now Limes asks an interesting question over weather applying an outer stroke is “uncontrolled” and therefore not pixel art. I could paint in the outlines by hand and achieve the same effect only I would probably spend an extra half hour per frame. This is not how people work in the commercial world, where a client on a whim will often say: “That’s great, but could we make the outlines thicker/ thinner please?” There goes another half hour per frame with no guarantees that it will be correct. Right now the same task would take me about two minutes total to create a photoshop automation to handle how ever many frames.

From my perspective any tool you use which increases your output whilst creating the look you envisaged is valid. I encourage you to work smarter, not harder...

The question is not what the tools do, but what the result is, for example the "Cloud" filter, it creates tons of uncontrolled pixels.

Now what happens if you use a "Threshold" filter afterwards? It reduces all the colors created by the Cloud filter to 2 again, which is quite controllable.

Thanks, everyone! I'll work on it after school! You guys have inspired me! (That doesn't sound cheesy or anything):P

Alrighty, Spent about 75 minutes on this. Still needs work (a lot of work) but I took your guys's advice about centering the point of interest. I also added some more detail, and I added a palm tree because palm tress.

*Edit
Trees.

Also this piece currently has the max of 25 colors

Edited by JaredOnYT - 28 May 2014 at 12:17pm

Very new to pixel art but wanted to try anyway, also all these entries look fantastic! :D

Yes, multiple entries are fine.
Just remember that quality is better than quantity, k.


Edited by jalonso - 29 May 2014 at 6:02pm

Mine's a bit dark... both literally and figuratively.



I'm going to continue to refine it, and work on the bathtub area a lot more, but is there anything that stands out as needing to be fixed?

It's been a really long time since I last did a pixel, but I've been meaning to get back into pixelling and this challenge really appealed to me (love Hitchiker's guide) not 100% done but mostly there. I've mostly done this on my lunch breaks using my phone (note 3, stylus is really handy for this. Unfortunately the contrast and colours are slightly off on my laptop compared to my phone, so will be doing a bit of tweaking before submitting.

criticism please

Whisper Heart: Nice composition indeed! Maybe you could add some shading to the white parts of the towel as well and show some hints of the table leg? Making the candle of different colour than the flame would be great too. Though I really like that flame itself, it looks lively!

Meanwhile an update

I am trying to make the body look less static before moving onto her right arm, but not sure how could I do that without spending endless boring hours on it.. I think I will try to do something with the shoulders and shoulder blades.

JaredOnYT: Yes, with a towel was difficult, it is the only option that I accept. Glad you liked it, thank you!
SoraAkihiru: Thanks, I tried to make a blackout, but I was not satisfied:(

Jackbread: Since you have already uploaded a finished piece I guess a critique is pointless. Still, the movement is amazingly fluid! And thank you for pointing out the arm issue :)

Sprayah: The final result looks great :) I hope that you will be able to post it afterall, would be a shame not to join after working so much on it!

I am almost done myself, all thats left is the arm and endless small edits animation-wise... Sigh, animation is my weakest point, such a tedious work.