First of all is my ninja, I hope you like it LOL.

Next is an Ice Crystal I made for my avatar. I tried submitting it but didn't get a high enough score. Got one comment on it talking about staircase banding so I tried to fix it without changing the look to much.

And last is a weave I made while trying to practice warm and cool colors.

The crystal needs to be 64x64, not 65x65

I couldn't see your ninja, just a polar bear in the snow ;)


As for why this did not get in, it is not about the staircase banding. That is a detail you shouldn't worry too much about.
It's that ice crystals drawn out of random lines are boring to watch. The weave thing is more visually interesting but still the result of random luck and not of skill and thought.

Why not look up examples of real (ice) crystals and try to draw those? Once you are able to draw realistic looking ice crystals you can simplify them again to a couple of lines and still impress people, but until then this is a boring subject...

Froste, it is completely fine you dont want it to look like a real ice crystal.  The problem comes in the fact that the piece of art you have created is just not at a standard the mods and people of PJ allow in the gallery.  A big point of having a barrier of entry is that it forces you to improve as an artist.  In fact, sometimes mods don't accept a piece into the gallery simply because they believe it is not up to that particular artist's abilities.  I've had pieces rejected that were "better" than a lot of crude pieces that have been accepted.

Bottom line is why not seek to improve the ice crystal you have made, if not from a pixel technique standpoint than from a general art standpoint.  The colors are very hastily chosen.  The design is pretty cool, but again the banding and too many colors hinders its visual appeal.  You may be perfectly content with it now, but is there not any way you think you could make yourself like it more? 

I made an edit which really didn't improve on any of the artistic fundamentals of your piece.  (I didn't improve on the forms, and the shading done does not follow much any specific light source, but in turning up the lightness and switching some colors helped sort of imply more an ice crystal, even though it doesn't exactly look like one.  It just feels more like one and doesn't feel like geometric blue lines.

That's fine froste, really.  Again, it is fine in terms of design.  (No one can tell you what to call it, and what you do won't change its ability to be in the gallery) BUT, in terms of the pixels, they are controlled poorly.  Here's an edit:  I'm sure the edited version would be accepted into the gallery, if in the description you explain how this piece is sentimental to you.  The major thing preventing it from being accepted now is it is just not demonstrative of basic pixeling skills




Edited by Friend - 17 August 2014 at 11:36am

First of all, thank you Friend for pushing me and giving me that great example. Here is what I did with it.

In the top left if to your idea but used the shades on the side I wanted them to be.

The top right is the same picture, but I gave it some more contrast to make the sides pop out more.

After looking at that, I decides to rework it into the bottom left picture. This one has the same colors and the top right, but place differently.

When I was done with that, I started thing about AA and tried to add some. That is what I did in the bottom right and I think it looks way better. What do you think?

Haven't really figured out what a good amount of AA is, I don't like using it much but I figured I would give it a try.

I tried to find the best highlights and shadows for it, those seem to work better then the first set because they were easier to see. I could really only darken or lighten the colors because I want to keep it blue.

Can't really do a bigger canvas because I need it no bigger then that size so I can use it as my avatar. Unless you are talking about using the current picture as a preview and use the preview as my avatar which I think I have seen some people do. Not sure if I would want to make it bigger because I have other projects I would like to spend my time on.

I'll continue to do an edit or two, but in the meantime, your sprites are really weak in design.  They look far from professional. 

What you need to do if you are serious or at least interested in this as a hobby is to improve as an artist.  A lot of people tell new pixel artists who can't draw well to put the pixel down and pick up pen and paper instead. Pixel art is impossible to do if you can't draw well, unless you are good at making really tiny 8x8 sprites or something

develop your artistic eye.  "what makes this piece so good and this one not?"  Look at technique, colors, shading, everything.  You won't be able to make anything good if you can't envision what good is


Edited by Friend - 18 August 2014 at 6:24am

Your biggest issue right now is what's generally called "pillow shading". Here's a bit of an explanation but there are far more tutorials and such available via google: