hey... just thought i would put my two pixel arts in

Edited by SamSam - 17 December 2006 at 4:49pm

Resizing an image makes it not-pixelart, therefore you shouldn't do that.  It gets blurred and stuff, so it's really not plesant!

Welcome.

Seems you need the basics first. This n00btorial may help you out some. Your rooms seem to have stopped at #4. Zoom in and study how to take your rooms from #4 to #5 first. Leave going to #6 for later.



Photoshop is fine for pixelling ;)

We all learned to pixel by asking questions, looking at other pixels and mostly through trial and error. Because we like to spend our time pixelling too, finding someone to stop and walk you though things is not realistic.
Take what you have. Use the zoom feature here and in the gallery and inspect closely to discover how things are done. Then post updates and learn as you go. You picked colors just fine on your rooms and you may not be confident but your color sense is not terrible. Its the techniques you have to improve on.
Again, nobody learned to pixel with a single tutor. We all learn to pixel from each other. Your assignment for now is to discover how to go from step #4 to step #5.

Since my tut didn't help, here is another way of saying the same thing.
Your room is not bad but I will focus on the things that make it gallery ready only so only crits follow.

Here is an edit that hopefully shows you how to pixel better AND to get you to think of making your room interesting/funny or whatever, pick one.

I did not know what was going on so I made a stupid thief that is cutting a hole in the floor in the wrong place, right in front of the guards. You come up with something else. I'm only illustrating my points here.

You have a yellow line which is a 'cutoff' point visually. With the floor as you have it the lines go in the same direction so it does not convey a 'stop'. I made my floor go in opposite direction to illustrate this.

You have two guards and two chairs. This is boring to the eye. I put 3 chairs to illustrate that they (guards) are level, anything outside the yellow line is not.

Zoom in to inspect pixelling techniques which I kept in your style and level, I hope.



On a techincal side your image has 111 colors, way too much. Notice how mine is more colorful yet uses far fewer colors. Keep an eye on that.


 
Use these suggestion and ideas on this room and the other one too. You sir are challenged.

edit: typos and I just noticed the trashcan is a little too small :/




Edited by jalonso - 19 December 2006 at 8:48pm

Do you think you could tone down the sig? Some places it's normal to use large banners as sig images, but here the custom is a small image and/or a line or two of text.

There are no rules that apply to color count. Its mostly about getting your image across with as few as possible for the job at hand. To the casual viewer color count is not that important at all. However, for the pixel pixelart fan when a piece comes across as 'complete' and the color count is low, it garners respect for the artist's pixelling skills. In PJ like other pixel communities its a skill that garners much respect. Because SamSam is new and wishes to learn the pixel ways. I think good pixelling habits are a critical thing to know as you get into it.

ps: I agree on the siggy comment ;)


Edited by jalonso - 20 December 2006 at 10:49pm

Glad to see you upadate and learn new things. Look forward to more updtaes.

ps: Its our custom here not to have overpowering siggys so that we may concentrate on the pixels. I understand cuz I'm a rebel at heart but, sometimes its best to fit in ;)

looking better and better, but why so many colors? most of your colors are so close its not noticeable, you could probably do that with 12 colors max, and no1 will notice a difference.



Remember theres nothing wrong with using lots of color, its just rather pointless if they have no visible use, when colors get to close together and not noticeable theirs no point for them to be their.


Edited by MattJ - 29 December 2006 at 11:32pm

Hi. Here is a tip to find find all those almost identical pixels and delete them to reduce your color count (in photoshop)
Go to your menu and click on "select", then "color range",  the eyedroper tool will appear, set the fuzziness to 0 and select a color. When the color in the picture is already selected, zoom in and look at the color selection, you should notice some pixels or parts that are not selected, now that you found them destroy them! (meaning paint them with the correct color)

Here is an example, I clicked on the floor with the eyedrop tool and look at how a color that looks identical to the rest was not selected:



If you do that with all the colors you will be able to get rid of all those unecesary shades


Edited by Dra_chan - 09 March 2007 at 11:32am