 |
| ||||||||||
Hey-sorry it took me awhile to respond.
I've been busy doing art for a challenge I'm working on over at deviantart, so I haven't been able to try out the banding search yet. I will reply when I have done so(which I intend to eventually).
Thanks for all your help, hope to get back to you at some point!
:3
Banding is the most complex pitfall that I think is essential for even beginners to understand. It's complex for a couple reasons: it's hard to explain the actual problem comprehensively, it's even harder to explain why it's bad in simple terms (even the PJ tutorial has to use the words "apparent resolution" in the description), and banding can easily be the result of otherwise good practices like antialiasing. Banding sits in the cross-point between antialiasing, pillow shading, and gradients.
I'll note that while I like cure's pixel art tutorial here on PixelJoint, I personally prefer the Pixelation tutorial - I find it does a better job of explaining and showing what to look for to catch banding, and explaining why exactly banding is an issue. Both tutorials are worth fully understanding.
If you feel like you don't yet have a complete understanding of banding, try this exercise: take this piece up again. I know you're probably sick of it, but it won't be for long. Just scan through and see if you can notice patches of banding and circle them. I did the same, though not comprehensively. Compare them and see if you missed any (or found some I missed).
HERE'S MY TAKE. Don't look until you try! On the right is a breakdown of a particularly banded section, where multiple different shading areas all band together (with a bit of skip-one banding near the end). By doing that sort of little search-and-remove exercise periodically you can try to keep banding to a minimum.
Looking forward to what you get up to next! I'll keep my eye out ;)
Thank you so much! The visual guide is super helpful. I just spent a good while simply staring at the process(after reading, of course), and it makes sense.
I just read through the pixel joint guide to banding. I vaguely understand it(at least, conceptually), but help is always appreciated.
All your information is really encouraging! Maybe I'll do another pixel this weekend. Keep an eye on the WIP forum, I would love your feedback. I know that reading won't automatically improve my art, and that getting better is a LONG process.
I'm definitely going to read through this again before I start another pixel. You made a lot of good points.
Thanks again!
[IMAGE 5]
* I go back to the colorful wing but keep a copy of the three-tone one on the page. I take one row of feathers from the colorful wing, starting at the top, and fill them in with the tone I chose for them on the grey wing - the bright color for the top row. I then add touches of shading around the edge of the feather where the one underneath it will have a shadow cast upon it. I add in the next row of colorful feathers and repeat, working my way down the wing. I don't immediately start using the darkest color, I slowly phase in using it in the darkest shadows as I move down the wing. Similarly, by the end of the wing I'm only barely using the highlight color.
* Once you're all the way through, clean it up and do any antialiasing you feel is necessary. If it was me I'd be trashing the outline pretty thoroughly, but I'll keep it here. A couple notes about antialiasing: keep in mind that antialiasing is basically buffering the outline itself, and as such is essentially a modification of whatever curve you had before. Keep in mind that your curves should be fairly smooth. Be careful of banding - you had a lot of banding on the original piece. If you don't know what that is let me know. The biggest overlap between antialiasing (good) and banding (bad) is that you should almost never antialias a 45-degree angle.
[IMAGE 6]
* Alright, pretty darn balanced now. I stuck it back on the original piece.
The basic procedure here, removed from the context of wings and feathers, is simple. Give yourself a general outline shape, define your details with color blocking, apply your final palette and light source to the color blocks, and refine the details with shading to add depth. It's a pretty intensive process, but produces consistent results. I could apply the same concepts to the head, or the legs, or the tail, or anything. Now, the final result here looks a lot like my work because of my own tendencies in it. But hopefully this provides an insight as to how you can try to make wings with form without meticulously picking out each bit.
I think, having gone through the process now, that the biggest problem with the original wings is that they're TOO consistent. There's no variance of the highlights and shadows as you move along, and elements don't seem to obey the lightource. Put those things, your shape and light, above detailing each little thing.
And yeah, this is a tonnnnn of work. You made a big piece, 200x100 and largely filling the canvas. I rarely work that big, and even more rarely have the dedication to really detail it all in full. I know that tiredness with a piece all too well. I mean, hey, I took two days to follow up on this because of that edit - it's not easy or quick. So don't worry about running out of steam here :) And a font signature is a decent idea, though it's better if it doesn't do automatic antialiasing since that's not really pixel art (even though it's just a signature so no one would care really).
I'm looking forward to what you pull up next! (and thank you again for being so receptive to my ramblings :D)
Since you're wondering, let's see if we can't figure out how to get those wings to work, shall we?
For ease, we'll skip Step 1, which is figuring out how they connect to the body. Stick to pixel stuff for now.
[IMAGE 2]
Here I've torn out everything but the outlines on the front wing (the one I'll be working with). I've also changed the fur colors a bit to make things a bit easier to work around. My purpose is to show that, even before you started shading your weren't going in fully equipped. Shading is a powerful tool, but if your foundation is wonky, which I'm sure you can see in some of the curves, then you'll have trouble compensating for that later.
From here, the exact approach is really subject to your personal preference. Pull up a small pile of wing references if that's important to you, but I say feel free to deviate slightly if it feels better aesthetically. For example, one thing I learned is that wing feathers rarely have pointed ends, but to heck with that.
The trick I think is to go symbolic with things, by which I mean don't bother trying to render as many feathers as an actual bird wing would have. Wings have tons of feathers; instead, focus on giving the impression of feathered wings. I chose to do this by using fewer large feathers, sized so each has its own form. Here's a quick rundown of my process, going with the idea that I'm keeping outlines. Remember - this is MY process, not THE process.
[IMAGE 3]
* Take the hollowed out wing and fix the curves and have a vague mental picture of where feathers might be.
* Moving from back to front, fill up the long end feathers. Remember that feathers overlapping is what really contributes to a wing-like appearance. How exactly you do this is up to you, but my strategy is to avoid any outlines but the ones around the outside of the wing. Fill in each feather with a different color, putting no hard outline barriers between feathers.
* Do the next row up, filling in the little gaps left between them with other feathers. Keep doing this until you're pretty near the top.
* Each feather I've done up until the top has been pointed. I'll round off the feathers near the top. I end up with this very colorful wingful of feathers!
[IMAGE 4]
* Now comes the hardest part: realizing that you're not going to actually do each of those feathers, and that some of them are going to just blend in. Set yourself a light source and pull up your wing palette. I'll be using the three wing colors you had before, and putting the light source toward the top right.
* For each feather, I pick which of the three colors will be dominant in that feather and fill it with that. That'll result in a wing with no concrete feather distinctions, but very clear delineation of where the light is focused. Frankly I think it looks pretty good!
*whew* It really makes me happy that you were able to understand and make use of some of the ideas. Scarin' people away with such information-dense posts is basically my number one fear. Let's follow up and clarify some of those things you mentioned! (this is gonna split into a few posts again, sorry)
I should note: I'm pretty sure I made up the phrase "bit color" but the idea is definitely out there. It's one of those products of the pixel art goal of reducing our color count, trying to either make the maximum use of the colors we have and eliminating colors that aren't really needed. While not a vital objective to good pixel art (there's some great high-color work, like by TheoVision), it's a sign of skilled craft to only use as many colors as you need to achieve your desired aesthetic.
Colored outlines and adjusting outline to the tone is a great step! If you feel the need to have outlines, that's a great way to go. Just using a color as an outline instead of solid black is beneficial; solid black is a really strong color and one of the hardest to work with, especially if your body colors are relatively desaturated.
I mean a few things when I talk about coming right up to the edge with the color, but I'll jump to the most extreme version of my explanation: why outlines? Like, why use them at all? They have very concrete effects on a piece; namely, they differentiate a section from the sections around it. This could separate a sprite from a background, or internal parts of a picture from other parts. They flatten a piece to the page it's on, and in general give a slightly cartoony look. Why not try working without any outlines at all?
Wondering what that'd look like here? Well, I was debating whether I should show this to you, but as I was writing the posts, to guide my thoughts I was making an edited version of the head to see if the advice I was giving was sound and actually made things better.
[IMAGE 1]
That's heavily modified. I messed around with the head's colors and anatomy and shading and slightly more than half as many colors as on the original head. To stay on the topic I was talking about though, I erased all the outlines! just look at it and think about what exactly that choice is doing for the picture. I still have darkness where it would fall (around the eyes, in the cheek under the cheekbone, in the mouth), but I didn't enforce the separation with actual lines except slightly around the far ear, which IS partially concealed by the rest of the head, taking advantage of the separating force of outlines.
Hopefully that gets across some understanding of what I mean when I say it's worth trying to limit or remove outlines. There will be pieces where outlines are to your advantage, but don't let them be the only way you define form - use your shading to do that.
My pleasure, I would consider anyone who gets your feedback to be very lucky and I hope they all appreciate it as much as they should :D
THANK YOU SO MUCH! It means a lot to me that you would write all this up about my piece.
I think you were solidly able to explain your points without making me feel bad(I feel honored, actually).
I really, really, appreciate your advice on color, composition, and the outlines. I will definitely reconsider some of the choices (using multiple shades for the teeth and eyes). The bit colors, I believe you called them. I hadn't known that term, so thank you for bringing it up!
You mentioned using the colors right up to the edge, which is something that I'm interested in trying for next time. Sometimes, I've seen people use lighter outlines for the lighter parts of the pixel. Not sure if you have any advice or opinions of whether that would/could've worked for this(or if that was what you meant, haha).
I understand what you're saying about the wings, I think, as in defining them more overall without getting caught up in details. Still, I wonder how to make them look voluminous without losing the detail.
I agree with your notes on the composition- now that you mention it, I should have made the leg more visible. I'll try to keep in mind readability for my next composition((pixel or not. Although for pixels I believe each piece holds more weight because of the small size)). I really like what you said about it-
" The takeaway lesson for future pieces: Watch your proportions and make sure that, in addition to being dynamic, your pose allows each part of the creature to read logically."
Also, what you said for shading:
BAsically, keep in midn that all your curves should be smooth and form-following, not just the outlines."
^ Always good to know that lack of effort shows. Truthfully, I knew this, but.. my effort did wane at some points.
I might just use a font for the sig next time (I have a cool pixel-looking font saved). Once again, good to know that certain lacks of effort show. I need to know this or I'll stay lazy!
Basically, wow, thank you~! I'll probably need to read this a few times again as it holds a lot of information, but really, thank YOU! I hope you'll keep an eye out for my next pixel. I look forward to hearing from you again.
Thank you very much! It really means a lot to hear that from people other than the one's I'm critiquing - makes me feel like I'm helping not just one person but the community. So it makes me really pleased to hear that :D
Dude, sorry if this is weird, but I have seen a couple of your comments on pieces, and you are like the best critter/advice giver I've seen in a long time :D That's some good, honest and and solid advice right there, cheers to you sir!
Okay, this is going to look terrifyingly dense - sorry about that. I'm really not trying to pry your piece apart, I'm just overly wordy. Just take it a piece at a time and don't feel any pressure to get things right immediately, just try and keep some of these things in mind the next time you're at the pixel canvas. This might split into two posts if I was accidentally too long - apologies. Hopefully this is all worthwhile to you!
I'll start with the palette. In general, your palette's fine, so this is more about refinement than repair.
I'll start with the easiest point: you have a couple loose colors, by which I mean there are a few scattered pixels of colors that obviously aren't supposed to be there. You have a single pixel of a slightly different purple on the neck, and a small patch of grays on the front-left leg. I suspect these are leftovers from a previous draft - not a big deal.
Another small thing is that I'm confused by the color ramp you selected for the fur. It's all over the place in terms of both hue and saturation, without a clear direction. It looks alright, but it makes the highlight colors look a bit out of place on the fur. The only color on the fur I feel needs a change would be the dark purple (but not the outline) - it's way too dark compared to the previous color in the ramp, it needs a touch less contrast.
Here's a third small thing: you have three separate colors that all read as a black outline color. Might as well just use one - even zoomed-in I can't tell the difference without some serious inspection.
The biggest trouble with the palette is that it's not very optimized. You have some bit colors, meaning colors that only appear for a couple of pixels in the piece without leaving much of an impact. Most notable are the eye and teeth colors. The yellow you use in the eyes is there for 4 pixels in the entire piece! Similarly, you have ten pixels of teeth total, with three different tooth colors, none of which is more than a single pixel per cluster. You could probably cut it down to a single tooth color and just the one eye color pretty easily. And beyond that, then try and see if your bit colors can be integrated elsewhere in the piece.
Anyway, I could talk for days about palette - it's my favorite subject and I feel like I have a good grasp of it. However, let's move away from it and talk about the other things in the piece.
For once, I'm not gonna talk about lightsource extensively! You seem to have that in hand here, although when it comes to the tail you kinda switch to a different light source.
Instead, let's talk composition. Y'know, pose and form. I looked through your process thread, and you definitely made great strides in pose as you progressed, both in the legs and in the form of the wings. One thing woul dbe the back foot that's obscured by the tail. Because the wing and the tail block almost the whole leg, and because the foot is very dark, it was hard to read what that dark spot was at first. You made the best of the pose you did, but a bit of moving things around might have made it easier to read. The easiest shift would have been to narrow the tail, exposing more of the concealed leg. The proportions on that tail are off - it's enormous, easily as thick as any of the legs.
Another form thing is to consider where the wings are coming from. I don't get a clear sense of how they connect to the panther - I would've imagined them to be out of the shoulder region, but they seem to come laterally out of the sides of the cat.
As for wing anatomy, once you got a reference it started looking much more natural. I really like this progress step:
http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/177/7/b/battle_darkwing_wingedit_by_cameronfedora-d7o30tz.png
Again, apologies about being really wordy and splitting the post. Read the previous one first.
In my opinion, you would have been best just cleaning up some of the lines on the wing and leaving it rather than trying to pick out and define each individual feather. Because of the way you did your edge highlights, not really following the lightsource, they look flat and unnatural.
The takeaway lesson for future pieces: Watch your proportions and make sure that, in addition to being dynamic, your pose allows each part of the creature to read logically. Use your highlights to define provide depth rather than to pick out and outline each feature - not every single separate element needs its own outline and highlight if the lightsource doesn't really call for it.
I feel like I didn't articulate myself very well here. If this makes no sense or you'd like clarification/expansion just say so and I can do that.
Usually when I write critique stuff I separate out linework and shading into two sections. In this case, it would be easier to talk about them both simultaneusly, as together they make up "form."
I'll put it bluntly: your outlines are hurting you. This is a really really common thing in pixel art is the urge to give everything its own outline. The different sections of the face, the feathers, the ridges on the body, etc. each have their own outlines here. This woldn't be a big deal except most of those outlines are black. Black is the darkest tone you have - and as a side note, it's recommended that you don't actually use pure #000000 black - and wherever you have it says "this is a dark shadow." The problem is that on edges of things, we usually don't have deep dark shadows like that. You look at your arm, and while it darkens toward the edges you can't actually define an outline. Use your colors right up to the edge. On a related note, having outlines inside the piece breaks it up, separating sections off from each other instead of allowing them to look like part of the same object. That's not to say don't ever use outlines on things! But be cautious and deliberate when you do, and know the effect it has on your piece. It flattens it, makes it look more cartoony, and breaks things up.
I'll be brief on the idea of "smooth curves" as you seem to show at least some understanding of that in various sections. I'll just say that when it comes to longer, more gradual curves (such as the long feathers) you don't really keep up the natural smooth curves. It's hard with those large sections, but it shows, so always be careful not to let your curves get really bent out of shape. You made it extra hard on yourself - by making that last purple so close to the black, at 100% zoom it's hard to tell where that dark purple ends and the outline begins, meaning the unsmooth curves of that dark purple undo some of your hard work making the outline smooth. BAsically, keep in midn that all your curves should be smooth and form-following, not just the outlines.
Oh, actually, one other note: the signature. If you're going to have it, I would put some work into it - you obviously did it freehand. Put a bit of effort into cleaning it up and making it look smooth as well - by putting a really rough looking signature on a completed piece you kind of drag down the overall sense of the piece because the roughness is distracting.
Now I'm done. I apologize for writing all this text - I'm a wordy guy and like explaining things. If there's anything you don't understand, or want a better explanation of, or something I didn't mention, just ask and I'll see if I can't do a better job. And I don't mean to scare you away with all this - you're a good artist (your traditional art stuff on your dA gallery is pretty good!) and a little knowledge goes a long way to improving when it comes to pixel art. Keep it up! I'm looking forward to what you show next!
Cool if you think it's done, but there's definitely some things that could use some touching up. I could provide a few crits if you'd like so you can apply the lessons to future pieces you do if you'd like. Does that sound like something that would be helpful to you? No pressure to actually do anything to this piece.
I worked on it for far too long. I'm not interested in changing it at this point.
Don't worry about it. Progress ain't time-sensitive, so take all the time you need.
Good luck on the challenge over at dA!