November edit:
Decided to turn this thread into one big WIP thread. Original first post preserved below:

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Hello Pixeljointers. I've been interested in pixel art for some time now, but I've never actually practiced it, so I consider myself to be a total beginner.

I've decided to get into it properly, and so I figured I'd turn to the pixel-community for some possible feedback. So I won't bore you, I'll just post the images right away, and then write up some explanations/reflections on them afterwards. So if something comes to mind when seeing the pictures, feel free to comment without reading, but take a look at the text if you want some context :)






















I have some great, nostalgia-inducing memories from the first time I tried my hand at pixeling, some 7-8 years ago. I remember learning about antialiasing and dithering from a bunch of tutorials by a certain "st0ven". The past few days I've been reading a lot of tutorials again, and learned a lot of new stuff, but theory still isn't practice.

I figured I'd list what I think is giving me the most trouble, or what I'm struggling with right now.

Dithering
So, I realise there's a common trend among beginners to overuse dithering, and I'm probably no different. I just find it so fascinating from a technical standpoint, it's hard to resist the temptation to use it. My repertoar of dithering patterns is extremely limited though.

Contrast
I have a feeling I'm too afraid of darks. However, sometimes I feel a certain value is too light and darken it, only to find the surrounding values now need to be darker, so I darken them, and then in a domino-effect I end up darkening the whole object, value by value. Then the contrast is still lost, and I get an urge to darken again... etc.

Texture
Grass, stone, etc. Have a really hard time figuring those things out. And I probably lack a bit of patience.


Ok, moving onto these pieces in particular:

Characters:
Besides purely technical things, I'm also curious if you have any thoughts on my process (that you can see in the gifs). Does it seem like a reasonable way of doing things? Am I missing anything?

Landscapes:
Ok, so I'm going for that low-resolution style that you see so much in the indie-game dev scene these days. Imagine those big versions in roughly that size on your smartphone.

Specific worries:
Contrast
Again, the contrast. I'm at a point where I feel the whole thing works decently, but I'm sure it could pop much more if I were a little better/bolder.

Dithering
Mainly on the road and sky. I like the gradient effect, but is it too busy? Especially the sky pattern. Again, I like the sky going from dark to light, but I feel maybe the pattern draws too much attention (is that even a pattern problem?).

The way you pixel is very good, that's how you should be doing it, you just need some more practicing.

Avoid dithering on smaller pieces, it just adds noise where you could have detail. Use 'clusters' of color to show detail, it works really well even in small pieces you can infer a lot.

Use contrast, like on the persons face

Try to avoid lines intil all lighting is done (don't use lines for lighting, use them only to emphasize edges, though doesn't need to be on all of them)

To get good texture start with the darkest color, and blot out lighter colors, slowly getting lighter and lighter. You can add in betweens where you need. Thing about the lightsource, the shape of the object and the texture. For example the mountains should have pointy clusters. Definitely look at some other artists work to see how this is usually done.

Thanks for the replies, guys :)

ADrawingMan: I'm not sure I would call myself a painter :P If anything, a draughtsman (as in drawings, not plans or legal documents). But yeah, I have experience with painting and painting-techniques. I also generally like painterly aesthetics. Cool that you picked up on it.

skeddles: Thanks for the encouragement and all the tips. Very much appreciated!

Thanks Velrio :)

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So I cleaned up the woman and darkened the dark skintone.

Now, I have question about mixing resolutions. As far as I've been able to gather, it's a sort of "when it works, it's okay" type of thing. As in, it's not necessarily wrong, but it doesn't always work. And maybe it's a bit of a matter of taste as well? Anyway, these figures and landscapes are obviously in quite different resolutions, do you guys think they could still work together? Or would you discourage it?

Thanks for the great feedback, Harvey!

I have a couple of responses to some things you pointed out - not trying to be defensive, just to explain the thought-processes behind some decisions. Basically, since it's for a game, there are some special considerations to make.

- The composition is intended to serve easy-to-understand gameplay, as well as semi-random environment generation, so I need it to be fairly simple and symmetrical.

- The perspective is simply a result of trying to get the best readability for each element. I didn't want the horizon line too low, as there won't really be happening anything in the sky, so having a lot of sky leaves me with less room on the ground where the action happens. At the same time, given the small size, I figured a straight-on perspective of the characters would give the best readability and silhouettes. In the end, I figured the mixed perspectives wouldn't be noticeable enough to matter. And if the characters read more like symbols than characters in the environment, I'm not necessarily opposed to that.

I really appreciate the feedback, thanks again!


It's pretty obvious I'll have to standardize the resolution. At the moment I'm really tempted to lower the resolution of the characters, but I'm very torn.


lo-res character




hi-res environment. Obviously very rough.

Try some variation on the road, like wagon ruts, or grass encroaching on some sides. I'm sure you have plans for it, but just some ideas for ya.

Thanks, Velrio, wagon ruts are definitely going in. Some overlapping of the adjacent terrain is probably a good idea.

Thanks for the words of encouragement, jalonso, it means a lot. Glad to hear your opinion on dithering. Even though people seem to dislike it, I can't deny I still enjoy it. I find it... charming somehow (?).



Now, I'm a little unsure about stylistic direction, so I was wondering what kind of preferences the pixeljointers had. In my earlier female adventurer sprite I avoided outlines - however, when making another one last night I did, without really realising it. So apparently I can't quite make up my mind. So I'm wondering what's preferred - outline or no outline?

Compare: (sprites will be 2x the size)

Thanks for your input, vrine :)


So, I made another orc, since the other one obviously wasn't cutting it. However, I'm a little unsure about the padding around the armor bits. It's supposed to be sheepskin (or similar). I feel the contrast might be a bit high, but I'm not sure how to fix it without making it too thick and while keeping it light enough. It looks worse on the unfinished game background than on this grey, flat background, I think. Maybe it'll be okay once the game BG is finished.

After looking around the PJ gallery for inspiration, I realized maybe I should go for a smoother surface rather than boulder-y. Also maybe do warm lights and cool darks? I dunno, just messing around at the moment.

Feels like I might be getting somewhere now

Really impressive.

The rocks are looking great, though the upper bits look rather like a cemented solid mass. That might not be a bad thing, it depends on what you're trying to show.

Why do you keep using the same forced perspective in your landscapes? Are these backgrounds for some sort of game that requires it, or is there another reason? In any case, the rocks seem to be in different perspective to the road(?), they seem to have a much more distant VP.

Maybe it was on purpose, but the dithering pathern of the landscape sky make it look a little like a crayon drawing. Other than that, very nice.

yes i can see a difference, right side is better.

edit : both are great tho.

Edited by RebeaLeion - 23 May 2015 at 8:09am

I see little triangles patterns in the rock where did you get that Idea? Your rocks actually look pretty darn good!

Reminds me of Betrayal at Krondor and other classic RPGs. Are these just mock-ups or there will be a real game?