Well first, welcome to PJ!

Now for some c&c:
You could turn up your contrast a bit, because now it looks a bit flat and weary. You could also use some darker outlining instead of the grayish red. And last but not least, the right piece of the ball is missing.

Still, I like the picture and setting, it just need a little tad on the colors. Keep practicing, you're heading the right way.

How did you make that radial gradient on the sphere?

No, it's ok. I'm basically self-taught and I follow direction well. I had a good design doc to guide me on the last project. Most of my other work is 3-D. I'm weak on drawing, which is why I've joined this forum to motivate me to improve and learn more of the basics.

As for the radial gradient, it's something you can do using Photoshop's gradient feature.

This is a big no-no in PA country, pixel art is about placing each pixel by hand. That way you can control the outcome of your pic, thus it takes time.. a lot of time...

You can only use a couple of tools in Photoshop (peeps, correct me if I'm wrong)

- Pencil tool
- Selection tool
- Filling tool

and that's it.

If your unsure about how to pixel the gradient in the ball by hand, there are a few tutorials on the PJ site that explain it very well.

http://www.derekyu.com/extras/pixel01.html Is a good tutorial. Check step seven for dithering. It will help you with the gradient on the ball.

edit: also have to outlines... they aren't good!


Edited by Morgan cook - 17 January 2008 at 9:13am

Using automated tools is okay, especially for commercial projects, but when you're learning pixel-art, it makes it difficult for people to help you, because they can't know what you've made and what has been automated. It also makes it more difficult for the person learning PA because they don't get a holistic understanding, which is needed first.

Because of the resolution of most pixel art, you need to value the latent importance of each pixel, so in this piece, the blurring of colours on the skin cannot be noticed so it's not necessary; a good tip is whilst you're zoomed in, have a second window open at 100% or 200% and decide what to do based on what you see in that. In order to make the best use of each pixel you'll eventually find yourself doing things which you would never get with automated tools and wouldn't do in other mediums.

"welcome to Pixel Joint" was the line that everyone forgot to mention above :D

 before any futher progress is made, I must warn you that color conservation is a relevant subject in pixelart, as it is part of the "control over each pixel" philosophy. currently your image contains 64 colors, wich are, for an image of this size, too much. most of these colors located on the ball, wich appears to be made using Auto-Antialiasing. Auto AA is another forbidden element in pixel art, like gradient tools or any other automated elements/filters.

here's a sample of the colors used on your image minus the ones in the ball that couldn't be displayed.

notice that most of them are very similar. a good exercise would be the use of the replace color tool, pick the one that is predominant in each tone (ornage, for example)and start replacing the rest with this color.

i would suggest to check the character's anatomy. specially its single leg, wich appears to be lonely without is fellow comrade. zones like the ass and the toes/feet need a revision too. a couple of references would be a good idea.

Pixel, unlike some other art-forms, has an amount of rules that must be followed and understood in order to fully achieve the esscense of the way of the pixel. i recommend you to have a read at the many tutorials that are hosted in the resource and support section of the forums in roder to get the most basic concepts first, and then apply them on your project.

hope to be helpful