Breton Slivka

d'aw thanks.

Yeah the problem is that animated gifs don't open as animations anymore, so I wasn't able to just open it up and crop it, while preserving the animation. Photoshop used to be able to do this simple thing, but now it can't.

edit:  but while writing that out I thought of another way around the problem. Animated now.

Because the new version of photoshop sucks ass.

@Arabes: Welcome to pixel joint!

To be clear that wasn't meant to be a criticism of you, really. You can't argue with success. I'm just reacting to the people who think this artwork is awesome *because* it was made in MS Paint, and not really taking notice of things like color, composition, figure ground relationship, balance, line, tone structure or anything else that actually matters to whether something is aesthetically pleasing or not.  You could have built the image up using punch cards for all I care. What bothers me is people impressed by the process rather than result. 

That's not to say that process can't be interesting, but I can't see the sense in congratulating someone for using the tools that they happen to like, or happen to have.

fc08.deviantart.com/fs13/f/2007/095/5/1/Facial_Proportions_Worksheet_by_lantairvlea.jpg

It's a great peice, there's no doubt of that. But I've always wondered what kind of person is impressed by the use of mspaint with a shitty laptop mouse. What kind of personality do they have outside of the pixel art world?

It strikes me as a little bit like being impressed that someone cleaned the bathroom at the local YMCA using nothing but a toothbrush and spit. It's not like you get a cleaner bathroom that way. It just takes longer, and it is more frustrating. Likewise, it's not as if mspaint adds a little something special to the artwork. The finished product is not better by virtue of the fact that the tools that were used were of poor quality.

The only conclusion that I can draw is that these commentators believe that suffering is virtuous, and that being clever (by using better tools for instance) is cheating. So I wonder what kind of relationships these people have? what kind of jobs do they have? what are their parents like? 

Now perhaps the original artist is poor, and  can't afford any special software, and only has a crappy handmedown laptop and can't afford the $20 to buy a decent mouse. This isn't in itself praiseworthy. Perhaps it's the contrast between the poor quality of the tools, and the quality of the work that is striking. Perhaps this is about a thrilling narrative of a down on his luck guy overcoming adversity and producing great art anyway.

That's okay, but I don't think the conclusion to draw is that we should all use MSPaint and squander hundreds of hours on a single peice that could be used to make dozens of peices. Or animated peices. Or going out and experiencing life and all its glories, outside the insulated worlds of collossi and katamari. Original inspiration! Creating things that are not derivative! If you're to finally get a job making art, where time is money, I don't think your boss is going to crucify you for taking a shortcut that results in the same quality of work, but takes much less time. (no dammit, I want you to use only MSPAINT with your hand tied behind your back, and I want this project to be 2 years behind schedule!)

Maybe the only thing you have to clean the bathroom is a toothbrush and your own spit, and nobody has told you about things like floor cleaner, disinfectant spray or mops. You really couldn't be blamed for doing it that way. But what should I  think about someone that uses a toothbrush because they simply insist on it? All the better things are available, but they just really insist that there's something better about the toothbrush, and using a mop is cheating.

Anyways. Just a simple question, really. Just always been curious.

I think this really just needs another revision. It has potential, but as it stands, well..

the main problem with it is that the background has more detail and care applied to it than the subject. This is backward. The background should be kind of blurry and half assed, if you're going to half ass anything, and the foreground should be exquisitely detailed. Otherwise you get a bit crosseyed looking at it, like an escher print where the foreground and background keep reversing.

@lollige thanks for the critique. I think you're right about the tear, but at this point I'm going to have to call it a night for now. I don't suppose the rules allow for me to mess around with the artwork during the voting period. (but I haven't checked), and well, I'm all out of time. Perhaps  after the contest I can fix that. (O wait, nevermind, I've fixed it)

I hadn't really thought of it as being shiny, as I was kind of just mimmicking the tones of my reference- But the extremes of the palette I suppose make it shiny. If the highlight were a little dimmer perhaps it would be less so. Instead, I was looking at it as sort of a false color rendering, a bit like a warhol, or a beatles poster, but somewhat more naturalistic in luminance structure, which is why I liked it enough to animate it. I wanted to see how such a thing would move, I suppose. But this new way of seeing it is quite interesting as well, though one might wonder why the other statues are not as shiny. Our main character is quite special indeed, and as fleeting as a teardrop, gone just as soon as you've noticed it's there.

It's a nitpick but even though it's NES resolution, and uses NES colors, you'd never be able to display this on an actual NES. The reasons why are complicated and technical though, so I'll leave it at that.

hei guys. try here instead. Whoever built that site put a completely retarded bit of a Javascript on the front page that is *really* going to hurt them and whatever their silly little project is. But it's simple enough to bypass by.. disabling Javascript and  going direct to the link.

http://mugenexus.mgbr.net/JuntaFram.html

@adriprints thanks for the comment. I understand what you're saying. However, personally, I'm happy with the background, it's pretty close to what I imagined. I meant it to be simple, so there's not much further I could take it without ruining the effect I was going for. I fully expect some people will disagree with this though, and that's okay. This isn't a popularity contest.

...Oh wait..

@Redshrike that's a brilliant idea. I'll see if I have time to add that. Tears from a stone,  I'm pretty sure that's some kind of saying, isn't it?

Eh? are you sure? That's a very strange opinion. Pixel art strikes me as one of the less precise mediums for art. Just have a look at the Amstrad CPC compo recently, so few colors, extra big pixels. What's the appeal of that? It's certainly not precision. It couldn't be. Have a look at the artwork on an atari- extreme examples sure. But then even look at the artwork on an SNES, Designed for ~36 dpi, and typically less! not exactly sharp!

AA started to become common in game art as soon as there were enough colors, because people HATED the look of pixels! They're so jaggy, and imprecise! If you soften them up a bit with some intermediate colors, then it's not so harsh. the impreciseness of the pixels is not so bad with AA. But then, what you're really trying to do with AA is make pixel art look like it's not pixel art. Whatever distinctiveness the pixel has, AA is an attempt at erasing it. Because after all, if you just wanted AA'd artwork, you could just use a regular softbrush and not sweat this pixel to pixel stuff.

Sorry, but I must respectfully disagree with your assertion that it's AA and precision that appeals in pixel art. It just doesn't make any sense to me.