Pixel Art Details

Title:	Stigmata X
Pixel Artist:	Selca (Level 1 Private :: 20 points)
Posted:	4/13/2012 22:37
Statistics:	6 comments 0 faves 0 avatars

Discussion

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Hapiel (Level 11 Bonsai) @ 8/18/2012 22:23

Great monster design, but the pixel work can use a lot of refining! I bet Jelly already said most, but maybe go a size smaller next time so focussing on pixel per pixel drawing is not as energy taking, and you will learn how much better something can look when it is clean!

Selca (Level 1 Private) @ 4/15/2012 14:59

@ jellybeanfish: No need to apologize for your 'wall of text,' I actually found it very helpful and refreshing. It makes me happy to know that someone actually took the time to comment and point out stuff about my art. Thank you! I wish I could say it was a WIP, unfortunately, I'm still very new to all this and I have much to learn. (As you can tell from my attempt at "dithering"..) I have taken all your comments into consideration and will try to incorporate some of those concepts into my next piece. I actually really liked your comment about the 'movement' of the hands. I'll try to edit this in the future to have a more 'dynamic' piece! Cheers!

@ Benjiro: No comprendo senor

@ imCharles: I know what you mean, my lines aren't the best :P Will work on that in the future! Thanks!

jellybeanfish (Level 4 Button Man) @ 4/15/2012 12:20

Finally, the first thing I noticed was the shading on the face - I am assuming that the character in question is a round sphere, kind of like a moon, right? Well, there's plenty of ways to shade spheres, but the way you've chosen to shade it (mostly a medium color over the entire thing with a little lighting at the rim and a little darkness at the other rim) makes it look a little flat (like a disc). I whipped up this example to try and illustrate it:

Here

The left looks more natural and sphere-like than the right. Why? Spheres are spheres, round objects, and catch light as such. Do you have any metal balls laying around, maybe marbles? Try looking at them, and see how the light changes in different circumstances, or use Google for terms like 'sphere' or 'metal ball' etc. Obviously things like texture and a given material change that, but some of the principles are the same. You can look at materials similar to what you picture your guy's skin to be like, maybe look at how smooth sections of rock catch light, or how skin catches light. Rounded, smooth surfaces catch light very differently, and while they may vary from texture or material, the constant is that they catch light in dynamic ways.

The right looks more like a flat surface, maybe a ball of clay, because the middle is catching most of the light, with some highlighting the edge. This gives it the appearance of being flat, like a box or piece of paper.

I'm in no way saying your piece is bad! I just ended up coming up with a lot of words out of nowhere, but my goal was never to assault you, but to help you. This is constructive criticism designed to hopefully help you see things that could look better if corrected, or perhaps take the advice for future pieces. Your piece is good, and very ambitious, but it could be even better, you know? :) And take everything I say with a grain of salt, considering I'm just an amateur.

Good luck, sorry for the wall of text.

jellybeanfish (Level 4 Button Man) @ 4/15/2012 12:18

This is an interesting piece - I like the crystals, though some of the lines are a little uneven. Is it a work in progress? I noticed that some of the piece has dithering but there's none to be found elsewhere. The contrast is also very high in some spots (see the top right crystal where the light blue meets the deep blue?), which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it creates a jarring effect that could use an intermediate shade, and you happen to have one present in the piece. In general the crystals are sort of inconsistently shaded, but I don't know much about crystals and their refraction of light so I can't help you there (maybe reference pictures of crystals?).

I also like the cracks on the face, and the appearance of the red crystal being embedded in its forehead. It's a very 'boss monster' feeling piece, but it also feels a little static - have you considered animating just the hands moving around? Not that I'm saying you have to make the fingers move or anything (though that'd be cool), just try making the existing hands float in a circle. You wouldn't have to pixel anything extra, just move the hand around a few pixels and even make the 'head' float up and down. It would definitely beef up the piece.

As someone else said, antialiasing may help you here with smoothing out the sharp transitions between colors - it's not necessary in every piece but could help here!

Here's a tutorial on it.

You might want to consider picking colors with less sharp contrast between them. While it's good to have contrast between colors, TOO much makes the piece look bright and hard to focus on. You can see this prominently on the hands - the shade of light purple that's highlighting them is too bright. You're also picking colors almost entirely from the same hue to shade certain things. What do I mean? The best way I could think of was to make a GIF of some of the colors used on your crystals:

Example A

compared to the colors used on this piece by Fool, specifically the greenish-looking scales in the last panel:

Example B

(Sorry for the poor compression!)

The difference is that he uses a bunch of different colors to shade one green color; this gives the feeling of more natural lighting. Despite representing green, some of his colors are yellow, and one of the darkest shades is close to teal. Nothing is ever shades of the same blue or grey or green. This is also part of something called color temperature, which is how dark colors are often colder (more inclined to be bluish) and light colors are often warmer, often saturated (think shades of red, orange, yellow). Of course, there are always exceptions to any rule, but these are good things to keep in mind!

This tutorial sums it up quite well - while it isn't pixel art specifically, its principles can be easily applied to pixel art and other forms of art.

(cont)

Benjiro (Level 8 Shodan) @ 4/14/2012 20:59

bastante bueno. yo agregaria unas sombras en la palma izquierda

gran trabajo

imCharles (Level 1 Rookie) @ 4/14/2012 19:04

AA. Learn it. It will help you a lot

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