WIP Boom! icon
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: Pixel Art
Forum Name: WIP (Work In Progress)
Forum Discription: Get crits and comments on your pixel WIPs and other art too!
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5855
Printed Date: 27 February 2026 at 2:19am
Topic: WIP Boom! icon
Posted By: Wiredgirl
Subject: WIP Boom! icon
Date Posted: 15 January 2008 at 11:25pm
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Hi folks, Noob to Pixel Joint here, glad to meet y'all. I've got a WIP that I'd like to share, let me know what you think. Thanks.  |
Replies:
Posted By: Club Beuker
Date Posted: 16 January 2008 at 12:31am
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Well first, welcome to PJ! Now for some c&c: You could turn up your contrast a bit, because now it looks a bit flat and weary. You could also use some darker outlining instead of the grayish red. And last but not least, the right piece of the ball is missing. Still, I like the picture and setting, it just need a little tad on the colors. Keep practicing, you're heading the right way. ------------- Without me, it's just aweso |
Posted By: Wiredgirl
Date Posted: 16 January 2008 at 4:04pm
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Ok, contrast upped, outline darker.... it still seems to be missing something.
Anyone out there got any thoughts? 
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Posted By: Hatch
Date Posted: 16 January 2008 at 4:26pm
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How did you make that radial gradient on the sphere? ------------- |
Posted By: Lawrence
Date Posted: 16 January 2008 at 5:08pm
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... I hope I don't seem rude, but this doesn't really seem on par with the
stuff on your website, especially your impressive resumé. If you want I can make an edit to show some of the fundamental things that need changing.
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Posted By: Wiredgirl
Date Posted: 16 January 2008 at 11:23pm
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No, it's ok. I'm basically self-taught and I follow direction well. I had a good design doc to guide me on the last project. Most of my other work is 3-D. I'm weak on drawing, which is why I've joined this forum to motivate me to improve and learn more of the basics.
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Posted By: Wiredgirl
Date Posted: 16 January 2008 at 11:31pm
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As for the radial gradient, it's something you can do using Photoshop's gradient feature.
Choose the gradient, then in the bar at the upper right hand corner of Photoshop's option bar, choose the radial gradient. Then, click on the gradient you see in the option bar. This will bring up the gradient editor, where you can play with the hue and number of colors in your gradient, as well as the spacing between the colors in the gradient. You can even save custom gradients after you've made them. It's a neat little feature, but not terribly useful unless you have a perfectly round ball to color in...... |
Posted By: Club Beuker
Date Posted: 17 January 2008 at 12:26am
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As for the radial gradient, it's something you can do using Photoshop's gradient feature. This is a big no-no in PA country, pixel art is about placing each pixel by hand. That way you can control the outcome of your pic, thus it takes time.. a lot of time... You can only use a couple of tools in Photoshop (peeps, correct me if I'm wrong) - Pencil tool - Selection tool - Filling tool and that's it. If your unsure about how to pixel the gradient in the ball by hand, there are a few tutorials on the PJ site that explain it very well. ------------- Without me, it's just aweso |
Posted By: Wiredgirl
Date Posted: 17 January 2008 at 9:10am
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I appreciate the advice. I'll follow community standards and redo the ball pixel by pixel. However, do professional artists in this community avoid time saving tools available to them when they're doing production work? It seems counter productive. |
Posted By: Fuzzyleaves
Date Posted: 17 January 2008 at 9:13am
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http://www.derekyu.com/extras/pixel01.html - http://www.derekyu.com/extras/pixel01.html Is a good tutorial. Check step seven for dithering. It will help you with the gradient on the ball. edit: also have to outlines... they aren't good! ------------- <a href = "http://www.nitrome.com" > <img src = "http://www.nitrome.com/images/links/nitrome2_button.gif" width="88" height="31"/></a> |
Posted By: Hatch
Date Posted: 17 January 2008 at 9:17am
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Club Beuker was only talking about the rigorous standards set by the PixelJoint gallery, and most agree that doing it the long/hard way looks better, most of the time.
Time-saving tools are accepted as a necessity in a production setting. ------------- |
Posted By: Lawrence
Date Posted: 17 January 2008 at 11:16am
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Using automated tools is okay, especially for commercial projects, but when you're learning pixel-art, it makes it difficult for people to help you, because they can't know what you've made and what has been automated. It also makes it more difficult for the person learning PA because they don't get a holistic understanding, which is needed first. Because of the resolution of most pixel art, you need to value the latent importance of each pixel, so in this piece, the blurring of colours on the skin cannot be noticed so it's not necessary; a good tip is whilst you're zoomed in, have a second window open at 100% or 200% and decide what to do based on what you see in that. In order to make the best use of each pixel you'll eventually find yourself doing things which you would never get with automated tools and wouldn't do in other mediums. ------------- |
Posted By: Wiredgirl
Date Posted: 17 January 2008 at 2:54pm
Here's the latest revision:  Her skin got a bit washed out again. Why that didn't show up while I was previewing it in Photoshop I don't know. I'll up the contrast. Here we go:  |
Posted By: Metaru
Date Posted: 19 January 2008 at 12:51am
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"welcome to Pixel Joint" was the line that everyone forgot to mention above :D before any futher progress is made, I must warn you that color conservation is a relevant subject in pixelart, as it is part of the "control over each pixel" philosophy. currently your image contains 64 colors, wich are, for an image of this size, too much. most of these colors located on the ball, wich appears to be made using Auto-Antialiasing. Auto AA is another forbidden element in pixel art, like gradient tools or any other automated elements/filters. here's a sample of the colors used on your image minus the ones in the ball that couldn't be displayed.  notice that most of them are very similar. a good exercise would be the use of the replace color tool, pick the one that is predominant in each tone (ornage, for example)and start replacing the rest with this color. i would suggest to check the character's anatomy. specially its single leg, wich appears to be lonely without is fellow comrade. zones like the ass and the toes/feet need a revision too. a couple of references would be a good idea. Pixel, unlike some other art-forms, has an amount of rules that must be followed and understood in order to fully achieve the esscense of the way of the pixel. i recommend you to have a read at the many tutorials that are hosted in the resource and support section of the forums in roder to get the most basic concepts first, and then apply them on your project. hope to be helpful ------------- I ate leel's babies |