Overpixeling
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=23982
Printed Date: 13 September 2025 at 4:47pm
Topic: Overpixeling
Posted By: Tidybraveguinea
Subject: Overpixeling
Date Posted: 26 June 2015 at 12:18am
| I've been always trying to squeeze as much detail as possible in my sprites, but recently I heard that it's actually not that good and called "overpixeling". But I can't find any tutorials to explain the term further. What exactly is overpixeling? How bad is it? How to avoid it? |
Replies:
Posted By: Uberlion
Date Posted: 26 June 2015 at 5:22am
|
I'm fairly sure it's something like using too much noise in an editor.
It can mess up the whole picture, I'll make one quickly to show you what I'm thinking. 
Note how it messed up the grass? Noise isn't all bad though. It's still a bit of a shortcut however. |
Posted By: jalonso
Date Posted: 26 June 2015 at 6:24am
|
When you are pixelling you should only go as far as you need to have the viewer read what you draw. Any pixel over that is overpixelling. As an artist you may be trying to draw something and get swept up trying to show all the detail you can when its not needed in pixelart because 'suggestion' goes farther than detailing as a general rule. For example, you can show grass and have it be detailed without having to show every single blade of grass. There is no such tutorial for this kind of thing because every pixelart has its on particulars. What Uberlion shows as an example is overpixelled to the point of being a pixel pudding and really jumps into NPA land. ------------- |
Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 26 June 2015 at 8:06am
|
Originally posted by Tidybraveguinea I've been always trying to squeeze as much detail as possible in my sprites If you're doing actual game sprites, or mockups, readability should be a concern to keep in mind, from start (how big ?) to final pixel. I see two aspects : 1) Plane separation : Characters need enough separation from the background for the player to quickly differentiate the two. Collectibles need to be visible (no green key in grass please?), dangerous bullets have to be instantly recognizable. Level of detail is one of the means to work on readability, if you insist on the same level of detail for everything, it leaves you fewer means to work on readability. 2) Sprites generally animate, so during animation, details can easily obfuscate the main character movement. If I take the example of your pretty dragon picture : Consider the scale highlights, they catch a lot the viewer's attention. If you animate the dragon, different images will have different scale highlights, but there ARE some consecutive images where a highlight will be at the same pixel position. This will trick the viewer's eye into thinking "something didn't move", even though it's different scales which randomly ended up at the exact same x,y position. For the viewer, the mix of movement and non-movement looks confusing and distracting. |