Advice, Please?
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: The Lounge
Forum Name: Resources and Support
Forum Discription: Help your fellow pixel artists out with links to good tutorials, other forums, software, fonts, etc. Bugs and support issues should go here as well.
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=17505
Printed Date: 12 September 2025 at 12:14am
Topic: Advice, Please?
Posted By: MillenniumLily
Subject: Advice, Please?
Date Posted: 15 November 2013 at 2:41pm
Hey there, I'm trying to learn how to do pixel art and since I've only just started, I'm having difficulty pinpointing what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it. I made this peach on my phone and I'm not sure how to make it look better. Is the connection between the leaf and the peach wonky? ( I think it is but don't know how to fix it) Are the colors off? The shape? Am I mangling the lighting or the colors??? Am I even doing pixel art!?!?!? Somebody please help.
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Replies:
Posted By: AlexHW
Date Posted: 15 November 2013 at 3:19pm
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your shading technique could use some work, luckily that just takes practice. I would look up general art tutorials on how to shade objects/primitives and study how light interacts with surfaces and casts shadows and things like that. The reason I suggest this is because you seem to be shading towards the edges of the object, so it ends up looking flatter than it should (if you're trying to go for a realistic look). |
Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 15 November 2013 at 5:35pm
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A peach is always going to be tricky because with its velvet skin, it doesn't reflect light, unlike an apple. |
Posted By: AlexHW
Date Posted: 15 November 2013 at 5:57pm
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Originally posted by yrizoud A peach is always going to be tricky because with its velvet skin, it doesn't reflect light, unlike an apple. if that's the case, we wouldn't see it. :P |
Posted By: MillenniumLily
Date Posted: 15 November 2013 at 6:38pm
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Originally posted by AlexHW
your shading technique could use some work, luckily that just takes practice.I would look up general art tutorials on how to shade objects/primitives and study how light interacts with surfaces and casts shadows and things like that. The reason I suggest this is because you seem to be shading towards the edges of the object, so it ends up looking flatter than it should (if you're trying to go for a realistic look). I'm not going for realistic so much as being recognizable and visually pleasing as a whole. I'm confused by what you mean when you talk about shading towards the edges? Is that...not a thing to do? I'm shading it mostly the way I would paint it. Something tells me that's not quite right for this medium. |
Posted By: MillenniumLily
Date Posted: 15 November 2013 at 6:39pm
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Originally posted by yrizoud
A peach is always going to be tricky because with its velvet skin, it doesn't reflect light, unlike an apple. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of me being very confused and unsure how to apply this information to my art. |
Posted By: jalonso
Date Posted: 15 November 2013 at 7:56pm
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Review the noobtorial thread and cure's pixelart thread in the resource section :) ------------- |
Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 16 November 2013 at 6:12am
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Sorry I wasn't clear: An apple or cherry has a very shiny surface, so with only a well-placed reflection of light source, you can give a very realistic sense of volume. You can even go as intense as white color for this reflection spot. But you can't apply this technique for a peach because it won't look right : the peach skin is fuzzy and doesn't allow such intense reflection spot. (If you look at a well-lit peach you will see the light spot reflection, bt only at the tips of the "hair", it's so subtle that you can't really represent it in low-resolution pixel-art) Now the trick is to manage to draw the kind of two-color aspect of a peach, without looking like a failed attempt as shading. I looked at a few references, a consistent pattern is that a peach always stays yellowish near the stem (and leaf). |