Pixel Joint Forum: My Premier Foray Into the World of the Pixel!

Message

   I've been occasionally lurking this forum with an expression of both curiosity and hopeless jealousy for a long time now, and finally decided to make myself an account!

This decision was motivated by me now being involved in a game project that involves me creating pixel-based graphics for both sprites and backdrops, therefore I shall have to do a lot of learning fairly quickly.

so without further procrastination here is my first attempt at some sort of speary alieny chap: 

I understand this probably looks rather rough and messy to you guys and this is what I seek to remedy, how are my colour choices? how disappointing is my total lack of decent dithering? only you can say!

Also, I'm used to using photoshop for digital art, but I have no idea if it's any good at pixel art compared to whatever you guys use, so should I stick with it or migrate to something more specialist for this project? if so, what would you recommend for a budding squire like myself?

P.S: thank you muchly in advance for any feedback, I'm anything if ungrateful   

Edited by Puddage - 05 December 2011 at 4:56am

Author	Message
Puddage Seaman Joined: 04 December 2011 Online Status: Offline Posts: 3	Topic: My Premier Foray Into the World of the Pixel! Posted: 04 December 2011 at 6:34pm
	I've been occasionally lurking this forum with an expression of both curiosity and hopeless jealousy for a long time now, and finally decided to make myself an account! This decision was motivated by me now being involved in a game project that involves me creating pixel-based graphics for both sprites and backdrops, therefore I shall have to do a lot of learning fairly quickly. so without further procrastination here is my first attempt at some sort of speary alieny chap: I understand this probably looks rather rough and messy to you guys and this is what I seek to remedy, how are my colour choices? how disappointing is my total lack of decent dithering? only you can say! Also, I'm used to using photoshop for digital art, but I have no idea if it's any good at pixel art compared to whatever you guys use, so should I stick with it or migrate to something more specialist for this project? if so, what would you recommend for a budding squire like myself? P.S: thank you muchly in advance for any feedback, I'm anything if ungrateful Edited by Puddage - 05 December 2011 at 4:56am
	IP Logged

Tom Tom Seaman Joined: 29 November 2011 Online Status: Offline Posts: 9	Posted: 04 December 2011 at 8:14pm
	It's a nice start. I'm far from an expert, but one thing I noticed was that my eye was drawn to the yellow spot on its head. Not sure you want that. As for pixel art programs, I also have Photoshop, but I prefer Graphics Gale (free edition). The interface and tools are more pixel art oriented. You should check it out.
	IP Logged

Partack Commander Joined: 20 October 2011 Online Status: Offline Posts: 260	Posted: 05 December 2011 at 4:19am
	Hello and welcome to pixeljoint! I'm afraid i can't see your image =< it gives a 403 forbidden error. I would suggest you find a better image file host than imageshack. (i used to know one but its name escapes me..) Be sure that the one you use doesn't convert your file to a jpg after you upload it. some do that (annoyingly) Photoshop is fine for pixel art, (takes a little getting used to but it's great at it) just be sure to turn off all anti-aliasing options and use the pencil tool instead of the brush tool. not to mention in your resize options (in general preferences) be sure to set resizing to nearest neighbour (preserve hard edges) or else when using the transform tool and marquee tools, you will get anti aliasing when you cut and rotate stuff. please re-post your piece and I'd be happy to C+C for you
	IP Logged

Puddage Seaman Joined: 04 December 2011 Online Status: Offline Posts: 3	Posted: 05 December 2011 at 4:57am
	how is that now? sorry about it disappearing like that, never happened to me before with imageshack Also just a few minutes ago I was working on a backdrop, what am I doing wrong so far? Edited by Puddage - 05 December 2011 at 10:11am
	IP Logged

mdog95 Commander Joined: 14 December 2017 Online Status: Offline Posts: 150	Posted: 05 December 2011 at 3:56pm
	Assuming the whole background is going to look like the left tree, it looks fine. For future reference, only dither like that if you're on a very limited palette. Dithering, for me, is just a smooth transition between colors, and what you're doing there is a bit... much... (If this is an iPhone game, the dithering will be blurred, so in that case, it isn't a problem.) Also, that is a massive piece for a beginner. It's a massive piece for anybody, really. I suggest going a little bit smaller. Yes, that is the size of of an iPhone screen (I think), but the retina is 480p or 720p, and that's a 1080p piece you're working on there.
	IP Logged

Puddage Seaman Joined: 04 December 2011 Online Status: Offline Posts: 3	Posted: 05 December 2011 at 4:21pm
	I was actually working with dawnbringer's 16 colour pallette before I did some colour processing in photoshop(which I suppose kind of defeats the point of the limited pallette ), as I generally find it easier to do colour work if I have a limited pallette(and I just kind of wanted to see if I could manage it). In terms of size, yeah I do see what you mean, it's pretty big, I suppose I'm used to working with much larger resolutions so scaling back so much for pixel art is difficult. thank you very much for the advice though, I'm going to do some smaller work before I jump back into something this big, and I do need to figure this whole dithering thing out properly also, this is just a small PC game project that's potentially moving onto the PSVita, and this isn't necessarily what the finished project will look like in terms of dimensions, I just picked a familiar res to work with. Edited by Puddage - 05 December 2011 at 4:28pm
	IP Logged

WIP (Work In Progress)
Pixel Joint Forum : Pixel Art : WIP (Work In Progress)