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Flonne
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Quote Flonne Replybullet Topic: How can i give texture and "depth" to pixel art?
    Posted: 12 August 2020 at 12:13pm
I am a big fan of pixel art, following many artists twitters and pixiv galleries and i aim to become a pixel art artist myself...but i have lots of problems with the concept of depth, texture and illumination.

This is a topic i am really struggling with, apart of knowing how to pick color (what i make is either the wrong colors or has too many).

Basically i don't know how to give texture to pixel art (so it doesn't look flat and pure solid) and how to choose my colors to do so.

What i do ends up looking like oekaki instead of pixel art.



Example 1: wood.

This is my first try to make wood, it looks like oekaki and can't give it texture (click to see larger):



This is my best try so far, it makes use of shadow and lights of a cube, but the problem still persist...there is no texture in the wood:



That happens pretty much with everything i try do.

I found a tutorial here.



The problem is i do not know how to jump in the steps of the work.

It went from this:



To this:



And finally to this:



I honestly don't know how to do something like this, nor can find any resource that explains how to do so.

How the artist knew which colors to pick for the lighter and darker places and how he/she decided to apply them in THAT pattern to give texture to the wood.

Color theory doesn't help much, knowing that "warm" and "cold" colors exist, that colors have opposites in a color wheel and that you get new colors by mixing others doesn't really help here.

Resources on shadow and light often use cubes and spheres to explain everything you need to know about how to apply shadows...but that's hardly useful for cases like these.





Example 2: Tea cups!

Here is a cup of tea i made:



  1. The colors look off and the porcelain doesn't have a porcelain-like texture.
  2. You can see that in the center of the cup i did some curves like these ) ( to try to give it some texture but to no avail.
  3. It's full of colors (30+) even if it's a small art, yet there is hardly depth and texture, it looks plain, spiritless, dull and sad.



Compared to the work of skilled artists:





  1. In the first image, the brown tea being a liquid noticeable due to the color usage.
  2. In the second image teapot has dithering, but for the cup no dithering was used, yet you can CLEARLY notice the porcelain texture.
  3. Vibrant and pale tones coexist beautifully.
  4. Both images make a masterful use of light, shadows AND use that with colors to give texture of their tea cups in ways i do not understand.




Example 3: Ice Cream!

This is an ice cream i made (it's the perfect example of my problem):



  1. The colors look flat.
  2. The image looks flat, even if i tried to give it depth with lights a shadows.
  3. It lacks texture, the ice cream balls are...just solid colors.
  • It looks plain and dull.



  • Compared it with the work of skilled artists:



    1. You can see the textures if the ice cream and the cups.
    2. It's a masterful pick of a colors, the tones of each color harmonize with the lighter/darker ones perfectly.
    3. Not only the colors were picked perfectly, the usage to give to give different texture to the ice cream and the cups very noticeable.
    4. Vibrant tones beautifully give impact to the whole scene.
    5. Not only the artist managed to give the ice cream texture, but darker and lighter tones of those colors also work as light and shadows.


    I don't know what i am lacking, i practice hoping that i would suddenly understand how to give texture to what i draw, but see no improvements, maybe art is truly a gift you are born with and i am just talentless.

    I cannot find any resource to help with my issues with pixel art.


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    Hapiel
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    Quote Hapiel Replybullet Posted: 12 August 2020 at 5:46pm
    Art is definitely not a gift, but a skill! All can be learnt and trained, don't worry :).

    Getting the textures and colors right is very difficult in any medium, and therefor also in pixel art.
    I'm not a fan of tutorials like the one about wood. They don't teach you how to draw, they only teach you how to recreate their work. Try to look at real wood, and pictures, and find out what makes them look how they are. Find the important characteristics, and then exaggerate them, scale them or ignore them depending on the needs for your work.

    I think you need some general art tutorials that talk about color, this is a good start:
    http://androidarts.com/art_tut.htm (written by a pixel artist!)



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    Quote SeDiceBisonte Replybullet Posted: 15 August 2020 at 1:23am
    I agree that art is a skill. People can definitely have an aptitude for it, and that might mean they get better results more quickly, but I think the rest of us can still get there as long as we don't get discouraged along the way.

    I think it might be helpful to focus on specific areas you want to learn about with each piece you produce. At the moment, you're trying to tackle colouring, texture, lighting and forms all at once. This is a very tempting thing to do because we all want to produce great pictures as quickly as possible, but I think progress would be faster by choosing a specific area to really work on.

    For example, you could work in greyscale so you don't need to think about colour at all and just focus on creating volume. Pick a single light source and focus on how the light and shadow create the illusion of a three-dimensional shape.

    You can also use palettes that others have created. Lospec's palette list has a lot to choose from, but I think something reasonably small (maybe twelve or sixteen colours – you don't need to use all of them) would be helpful for two reasons. Firstly, working around restrictions isn't just an important part of pixel art, but of all art. It forces you to be more creative and, in this specific case, it'll get rid of the temptation to add in more colours which, I think, is distracting you from more fundamental issues. Secondly, colour conservation is considered very important in pixel art as it leads to unified artworks and allows greater control of the image. This part of Cure's old, but still excellent, tutorial explains it well but I can give an example from a piece I'm currently working on. I'm doing a twelve colour portrait and the shading wasn't working for me. I could easily adjust the relationships of the colours with each other because there were so few, and my image only changed in this regard. I didn't have to worry about breaking any anti-aliasing or accidentally creating weird areas of noise that didn't exist before.

    If you go down the premade palette route, I gather DawnBringer's DB32 palette is considered to be excellent and versatile. It's a slightly larger palette but you wouldn't need half the shades for the images you've produced so far. I'm definitely no expert in pixel art, but a quick glance suggests it has the colours that would be required for wood, teacups and ice creams.

    I would also recommend posting images in this forum or the PixelJoint Discord (I've not yet had time to visit, but I gather it's very helpful for WIPs). The link is in the chatbox on the PixelJoint homepage. There's also Pixelation. The fora aren't as busy as they were years ago, but there is still great advice to be found. Edit: I realize that sounds weird since you have posted images. What I mean is to start threads in the WIP sections so people see them. I think constructive critique is one of the best ways to improve. I'll try to add some critique for the pieces you've posted here if I get time later, although I'm new to creating pixel art and my general art skills are very rusty.

    A nice feature of Pixelation is the Feature Chest. There you can see threads that the mods thought were particularly useful, interesting, or informative. If you can find ones where the images are still present (some of the threads are oooooold), you'll see that lots of people start out with work that they consider to be amateurish but that, with a few pointers, they improve dramatically and surprisingly quickly.

    Most importantly, stick with it!

    Big edit with crits:

    Right, I've had time to do an edit of the ice cream now. Before getting into the meat of it, I want to stress again that I'm new to creating pixel art (I've been visiting PixelJoint and Pixelation for years as a lurker, though) so there will be many areas where I am still learning. I can, hopefully, assist with some of the fundamentals.

    As I'm not familiar with your art background, please forgive me if any of this is obvious or redundant – I just want to be thorough.

    Firstly, I think references are very important and the more the merrier (even if you're copying a reference it can be helpful to see the object from other angles to help make sense of everything that's going on in your picture).

    I went with two that are a little sub-optimal (they're obviously heavily photoshopped since the cones are the same but the scoops are different), but which will do for our purposes.



    From the reference, we want to identify the key features that will make our ice cream cone look right. I want to focus on the form and texture initially. The shapes are simple enough, although the scoops have little rims at the base rather than being spherical. They also have cracks along the surface.

    The cone obviously has a lattice pattern, but we can see that the depth of the indentations decreases towards the bottom of the cone.

    I began by taking your outline and drawing over it using four shades of grey to define the main shapes and give them volume.



    I think it's best to start with volume because it will inform how the textures are shaded later on. I kept the light source in the top left like in your original image. It's also very close in terms of shape. I've rounded out the middle scoop more as, in the reference, they're all quite similar. I've also softened the bottom of the cone a bit. This is a base to work from, and we will want to respect the forms that have been created so we don't lose the three-dimensionality.

    You were concerned that your ice cream cone lacked depth and I think it's because you were looking at the whole image rather than breaking it down into parts (although I could be wrong). Each scoop is its own object and can be shaded accordingly. Don't be afraid of contrast, either. Sometimes you just need to punch it up a bit to get a sense of depth.

    The next stage was adding in the textures and less important details.



    This is all just using the same four shades of grey (plus transparency). I tried to fade out the indentations on the cone towards the bottom, just like in the reference. I also used the lattice shape to inform where I put the highlights on the cone. I went quite minimal with the highlights for two reasons: firstly, the cone isn't massively reflective and I wanted it to look a bit duller than the scoops. Secondly, after experimenting with several methods of portraying the indentations, I decided this simple approach was the most easily understood at such a small scale. For the same reason, I didn't extend the texture into the shadow on the right. We don't want a small image to look too busy otherwise it becomes hard to understand.

    I also experimented with the shading on the scoops. At first, I went very literal and tried drawing in dark lines for the cracks on the surface, but it looked weird. The more appetizing approach turned out to be swirling the shading round a bit to hint at the texture. This was literally just done by drawing lines with the mouse and then tidying them up a bit (not necessarily very well in this instance).

    For the melted drips of ice cream, I got a couple more references.


    You can see that the drips are quite long and thin, and that they bulge out a bit at the end, so I just did that.

    Your original image had 26 colours (not including the transparency), but you can see how you can massively reduce that but convey more information. With so few colours, it's also really easy to change them if they're not quite working. I don't know which program you're using but, in Photoshop, there are many different tools to allow me to alter the balance of the greys to increase or decrease the contrast, or alter the white or black levels.

    As a bonus, I also made a colour version using DawnBringer's 32 colour palette.


    That's got thirteen colours plus transparency. I think better colour choices are probably possible (I'm particularly unsure about reusing the cone highlight colour as the strawberry ice cream highlight) but I'm still learning.

    In my opinion, creating solid shapes with good volume is probably the most important area to focus on right now. Hopefully this illustrates that you can practice creating more volume in black and white and still translate it into a colour image afterwards (without even having to pick the colours for the time being).

    I look forward to seeing what you do next!
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    Quote Flonne Replybullet Posted: 05 September 2020 at 8:16pm
    Thanks everyone for your kind and helpful answers.

    Sadly, i keep and keep trying but see absolutely no progress.

    This is SO FRUSTRATING!

    The more i try to draw the more pissed off at myself i get.

    Even after reading the links and advice i just can't get it right, it seems i was born bad at art. I am not being pessimistic or overly-critical, this is a fair, accurate and objective assessment of my art skills.

    This is my latest attempt at pixel art, once again a failure:



    Where do i begin?

    First, i'll remove the water animation and sky background, those are just an attempt at hide my awful art. Here is how it looks originally:




    Now i can properly describe how i just don't improve:

    • The colors look FLAT: A tried a pathetic attempt at give the pointy thing of the ship a depth by adding some colors...instead not only there is no depth, that pointy thing looks bad with all those colors. The planks in the middle of the ship look AWFULLY FLAT.


    • There is no texture: Everything looks plain because i don't know how to give it texture. The shadow at the bottom of the ship and the veil looks simply bad...it looks like oekaki rather than pixel art. See that dark brown box that i attempted to make look like a cabin? It has some weird lines...that's my attempt at give it texture. It looks awkward...there is no plank texture there. This is what i mean (click to enlarge):


    • The colors are poorly picked: I tried hue shifting...i saw multiple tutorials at it...i suck at it. I honestly don't know when to go left or right on the hue when doing a hue shift. I tried moving towards warm colors (reds) in lighter areas and to cold colors (blue) to draw shadows...it failed. Also, look at that cabin, the brown tone is too dark!!

    • The shadows just suck: It's pretty self explanatory, but i'll go in detail. I tried to put a lighter tone of yellow (with a failed attempt at hue shifting) to note the top part of the gold border of the ship was illuminated...but it's hardly noticeable and looks bad. I am speaking of this (click to enlarge):



    • The whole composition looks FLAT: I said the colors look flat, but the composition looks flat too. Look at my attempt at give it depth on the poor excuse of a cabin, the planks look flat and as if it was continuing from the supposedly illuminated part (click to enlarge):




    I could go on all day detailing how awful is my attempt at art.
     

    Another one from another artist:



    This looks ADORABLE!!

    The colors, the texture, the shading...absolutely NOTHING looks out of place.

    And when checked the colors i was shocked at how many colors used:



    HUNDREDS OF COLORS.

    I just can't understand how it is humanly possible to just know how to pick hundreds of colors, apply them to an art piece like this one and somehow NONE of them look out of place while the artist gives it texture.

    It's superhuman.
    It defies reason.

    While i really like pixel art, i am actually aiming at making pixel art for a game so the amount of colors i use doesn't matter as long as it looks great, but i am nowhere near to do something acceptable.

    And ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE NEAR the work of these artists art which i aim to draw like.

    It's so frustrating to try and try but not seeing improvement or understanding how to improve!
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    Quote Pig_catapult Replybullet Posted: 06 September 2020 at 12:08am
    If I may be frank, you're being really, really down on yourself. I can't tell you how to live your life, this extreme negative self-talk isn't healthy in any context. You are being pessimistic and critical.

    Talent is a myth. There is only cultivated skill. The artists you want to emulate have all drawn hundreds, maybe thousands of bad drawings on their journey to where they are now. Everyone is born bad at art. Everyone starts with a mountain of bad art inside of them, and you need to get your bad art out before you can reach the good art.

    So draw bad art. Draw lots of it. Accept that this is part of your journey without judging yourself for it. And start small. Those artists using hundreds of colors didn't start out that way. They all started out small, too, with small palettes and small canvases.

    And I mean like really small canvases. The reason your work looks like oekaki is that you're lost in an ocean. Look at the size of that ship. Cropping the canvas to the ship's edges leaves you with 409x272. That's 111,248 pixels. That means every single pixel's importance is 1/111,248 of the entire drawing. And since pixel art is art controlled on the level of individual pixels, you've given yourself over a hundred thousand tiny decisions to make, none of which are very consequential on their own.

    Open up a 40x28 canvas. Zoom way in. That's still 1,120 pixels, but that's two orders of magnitude smaller than what you were working with before. Each pixel is worth a lot more now! Give yourself a low-saturation, medium-brightness color as a background and three or four shades of gray or brown. Then draw a plank. It can be any plank. Find pictures of real planks you like and try to put down what you see. This is called doing a study, and lots of great artists do studies when they want to improve at or explore something.

    It can feel really daunting to try to work at that scale, and I certainly had a lot of resistance to it when I first started pixelling. Having fewer options to choose from sounds scary, but it actually makes those decisions a lot easier. When you only have a few options, it's a lot easier to consider all of them and choose the best one. Making a lot of small works teaches you faster than doing a few big ones, too.

    Experiment. If an attempt is really just not working out, that's fine; start a different one. If you're still feeling stuck, try scaling down some of those photographs to see what details survive. It's also 10000% okay to straight-up trace photographs as a learning exercise; just don't try to pass them off as original works. It makes you think about the forms and the boundaries between colors. These are all "behind-the-scenes" techniques that lots of artists use.

    It's going to be slow, and it's going to take a long time, but be patient with yourself and keep at it.
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    Quote SeDiceBisonte Replybullet Posted: 06 September 2020 at 2:57am
    It's nice to see any update from you. You're definitely being too harsh on yourself!

    Regarding colours: I don't think that hundreds of colours are something to aim for with pixel art and, at least in the case of that second image, some of them seem to be the result of compression. You can see artifacts all over the place, which I'm guessing is the result of this having been posted on Twitter at some point.

    I'm not really sure why the first image has so many shades of green either, given that so many of them are very similar to each other. I reckon that palette could be more than halved with no appreciable difference to the image.

    That isn't intended to disparage those artists (they're clearly better than me) or your taste – I just think you're very focused on colour (I get it – I'm a very visual person) but I don't think it's the most important element to worry about right now.

    As for your work, I completely agree with Pig_catapult. Start smaller and work with a few shades of grey (you could maybe use a monochrome Gameboy palette) and really focus on creating form over anything else. As in my previous post, you can still translate it into colour later if you've got something you're proud of, but I think colour is distracting you a bit from making art that looks fully three-dimensional.

    What might be useful is finding a small object at home, getting a lamp, and angling it so that it's lit in a dramatic and interesting way so that you can really practice shading to create volume.

    You'll definitely get there if you work at it. It's not even been a month since your first post, though, so don't worry if you don't see any progress yet.
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    Quote Pig_catapult Replybullet Posted: 09 September 2020 at 5:18am
    Oh, I'd also like to add that outlines/lineart doesn't always help; at least for me, trying to do outlines-first can leave me floundering for a long time on even basic elements of a picture. I do a lot better when I block in a blob of my base color and refine it from there. I'm sure some people have the opposite experience, so it's worth finding out which way to make a shape is easier for you.
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    Quote Flonne Replybullet Posted: 23 September 2020 at 11:05am
    I think i was able to identify my issue with pixel art, but the problem is that i don't know how to solve it.

    This is a piece of plank in a "big" canvas:




    This is a plank in a SMALL canvas:



    It might start looking better.



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    Quote 7Soul Replybullet Posted: 23 September 2020 at 8:46pm
    Here's a gallery of some of my oldest pixel art I could find (unfortunately older stuff is lost to the aether)

    I only improved because I kept going. I looked at tutorials and I copied other people's stuff

    That piece of wood sucks, cool. Now do something else
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    Quote Hapiel Replybullet Posted: 24 September 2020 at 1:20am
     
    Originally posted by Flonne



    It's not the canvas size.    
    It's not just the fact i lack skill.
    It's not just the fact that i don't know how to apply color.    

    The problem is that i do not understand how pixel art works and how you are supposed to know how to texturize ANYTHING in it.




    It's not that you don't understand how pixel art works, it is the mindset where you punish yourself when not doing everything as perfect as the examples you share from professional artists.

    Yes, and understanding from how pencil drawing works will greatly help your pixel art. No, you can't copy the results of a pencil drawing 1 to 1 to a pixel art canvas.

    As for your wood, for starters I don't think it is that bad at all. It is a perfectly fine stylisation, and it is unclear for me what else you expect from it.
    However, for future drawings make sure you have good references, and don't draw from memory.
    Those artists drawing the fried chicken could only do that because they have studied fried chicken references.

    Also, textures are suuuper hard. If you want to see fast progress, skip the textures and work on something else. Form, composition, concept, all things you can do perfectly fine without the need for texture.

    If you want a tutorial that somehow fixes all your problems, without having to consider again and again if you're on the right track and how to get better, there is one. It is going to take you hundreds of hours, it is not about pixel art at all, I recommend you skip the texture section once you reach it a few weeks from now, but if you follow all the steps of this tutorial I 100% guarantee you you will have noticeable improvement as an artist, and understand much better what you need to do to improve your pixel art.
    It is called DrawABox.com . Good luck

    And please, please stop talking yourself down about the art you're making, if you don't have fun in the process there is no point to do it in the first place.

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