Pixel Joint Forum: How was this drawn?

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   I have a question regarding the creation process of a few pieces of art here...

The background from these two image.

This entire mockup.

This logo.

This "hot cave shaft" backgroud.

Every single one of these images seem as if they were drawn in PS or some other advanced software. There's no way any of these were done pixel by pixel, especially not the interpolation and the color blending. But when I zoom in and see the palette, it's just too... organized. It couldn't have been drawn in PS and then put through a filter. The colors (especially in the gray parts of the MSR388 logo's letters) are just too sharp; too precise. I just can't understand how these pieces of art came to be, or how I myself could draw gigantic, detailed artwork and have it work so perfectly on a pixel level.

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Physix Midshipman Joined: 20 July 2016 Online Status: Offline Posts: 10	Topic: How was this drawn? Posted: 21 July 2016 at 11:25pm
	I have a question regarding the creation process of a few pieces of art here... The background from these two image. This entire mockup. This logo. This "hot cave shaft" backgroud. Every single one of these images seem as if they were drawn in PS or some other advanced software. There's no way any of these were done pixel by pixel, especially not the interpolation and the color blending. But when I zoom in and see the palette, it's just too... organized. It couldn't have been drawn in PS and then put through a filter. The colors (especially in the gray parts of the MSR388 logo's letters) are just too sharp; too precise. I just can't understand how these pieces of art came to be, or how I myself could draw gigantic, detailed artwork and have it work so perfectly on a pixel level.
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eishiya Commander Joined: 04 August 2022 Online Status: Offline Posts: 1109	Posted: 22 July 2016 at 7:31am
	Digitally painted -> reduced palette (the pixel work is too messy to not be automatic; dithering can be done automatically too) -> manual palette tweaks here and there -> manual clean up to sharpen/polish details. That last step is probably what's making you doubt that this is largely automatic, since it adds the much-needed human touch. The first two steps could actually be one index painting step, which is basically when you use painterly/messy tools but have the image automatically restricted to a small palette. Modern programs don't do this very well, but it was much more common in the past when hardware was limited to a smaller number of colours.
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Physix Midshipman Joined: 20 July 2016 Online Status: Offline Posts: 10	Posted: 22 July 2016 at 1:44pm
	How do they know how many colors to limit it to? Too big and the effect is worthless, too few and the entire image is dithered.
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had0c Midshipman Joined: 03 September 2016 Online Status: Offline Posts: 20	Posted: 16 September 2016 at 5:54am
	http://danfessler.com/blog/hd-index-painting-in-photoshop
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