welcome to Pixeljoint. o_O just yesterday ? you don't usually see this kind of stuff when someone started yesterday . It looks like year-s of experience to me. Are you drawing other stuff for long time pherhaps ? You seem very experienced with a technique. I can't help you as this stuff is above my current skill level. For your workflow - Yes, it's one way how to do it and also to animate, you can make animation with outlines first. I do it a bit in my own different way, but your workflow is right. Nice pixelart!

Edited by RebeaLeion - 15 February 2015 at 11:55pm

Even 1 year is not enough for most, it takes years. You're very talented - I saw those sketches.

Edited by RebeaLeion - 16 February 2015 at 12:00am

No, few hours is fine for art of such quality considering you are new to pixelart shading. You will be faster in no time as you understand drawing in general.

WOW! Well you're certainly on the right track, these are highly impressive for a beginner let alone someone who just started in a day. I didn't even know what AA was when I first started pixeling LOL

I found this extremely helpful and useful, invaluable
http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299

That's a hard one to answer about the AA, there's others who could explain it better. Typically though, it's best to use existing colors instead of making a color for the sole purpose of AA. It takes a while getting used to palette making, there were many times I wanted to pull out my hair trying to make an effective palette lol.

The best piece of advice I can have to make a nice and balanced palette though, is to think of all the uses a color can potentially have overall in the whole piece instead of thinking how the color can be used for one specific thing or purpose. Good colors for AA usually fall in to place then, if not then it'd be easier tweak a color to make it work.

For sel-out, sel-out and selective AA are the same, I guess it's also called broken AA.

Something that I might recommend, though you're much better at this, is changing the outline colors to a less standy-outy shade on the sword girl's head and arms.
Thanks :3

Also, I really like the anime style you have going on in this

Edited by adamgoldfav - 16 February 2015 at 5:15pm

For tonight's pixel art practice, I tried imitating the style of a pixel artist I like:



(I figure I'll dump my practice works in this thread over time. I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could critique my stuff!)

Edited by mauzel - 16 February 2015 at 8:32pm

The knee on the left side looks a bit jacked up.. Like it's curving back a bit. I looked for a reference of some sort and found this:

Tried to respond to critique (on the right), and also started a new practice piece:

Hi mauzel, like many other posters here, I think your work is in a good path.
I get a lot of capcom or maybe Blaz Blue vibes out of your work, and the set of tutorials I would most recommend to you are the one focusing on fighter games. They have a tradition of spectacular animation and great character concept:
http://gas13.ru/v3/tutorials/sywtbapa_making_fighting_game_sprite.php
If I were you, and my focus were indeed about animation, I would aim for clean, sharp cell-shading and skip the checker gradients. Those become tiresome after a couple of frames. Also I would explore the light reflection on different materials. The second piece, the one with the armored girl shows the light reflecting the same way on metal and cloth.
The third aspect to focus on would be pose. Out of all the pieces you've shown, the most interesting to me would be the cat-girl, since you can read some personality out of her stance. My best advice regarding that would be to work on the character sillouette first: if it stands out from other characters, if I can see what the character is doing and If I can read personality traits or emotions (anger, elegance, confidence, sadness, flirt...), then you continue.
Well, hope this advice suits you. You seem very talented and commited to your work and I'm really looking forward to more of your work..