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[freeformschooler]

Encouraged by Shook, I tried doodling up this guy here (from one of my forum games). I don't really like how he came out.



The clothing was originally armor but then I decided to make it more flowy near the bottom.

[Shook]

Hey that's pretty nice! There's a tad of banding going on (i.e. pixels following the outline too closely, but it's a hard thing to avoid), and the feet seem a bit odd (they look kind of like shoes, but i know how ridiculously hard it is to draw feet), but otherwise you got it nicely. In particular, the head and hands (nice stylized appearance, i always catch myself trying to show ALL THE FINGERS on even the smallest sprites) strike me as very nice, because i always struggle with those (DAMN YOU, HUMAN ANATOMY). Keep going like this and you'll be super good in no time flat!

If that's your first shot at pixel art, then i'm going to go curl up in a corner. My first sprites were... Well, horrible. Not just bad, completely and utterly horrible. Behold, my first idea of a nuke, scaled up so you can see all the horror (psst: it's made 9 months after my very first try, i fortunately have no sprites from back then):



AUGH. What's wrong with it, you say? EVERYTHING. Pillow shading(!!!), banding, excessive amount of colors, badly drawn nuke symbol, bad contrast on between yellow and grey, complete lack of details... Suffice to say it's not a sprite i'm proud of today. I later went on to re-do it:



Well, at least it isn't pillow shaded. The yellow symbol clearly stands out, but is still pretty badly drawn. The sprite is also far too dark, and sorely lacking in contrast. Sure, low contrast gives a smoother look, but it's also much more flat. So, i remade it again:



Oho! It has details! The changed color was more of an experiment than anything, but it looked neat enough. It also has increased contrast, and i abolished that horrible nuke symbol because i couldn't make it look any good. Also, notice how the outline barely changed at all between first and final. A proper outline is important, but so is the content within it. Not that it couldn't be better, i've seen a gagillion spriters able to outdo that with striking ease, but i'm content with it myself.

It took me THREE YEARS to get from the first to the last, because i'm slow like that. :c (but it also goes to show that even an incompetent schlub like me can get almost decent at arting with sufficient practice, so hang in there people)

(parenthesis ramble ramble)

[freeformschooler]

Ooh, very nice nuke. Yeah, I haven't done a serious pixel art thing in many years, and many years ago I did not know how to draw. But thanks for giving me advice. I really had never considered the "banding" concept, but now that you've pointed it out, it's quite visible.

[Fniff]

Bugger... At least you shaded. Look at my first attempts, there isn't even a buggering attempt at it. You are much better then me, Shooks.

[Shook]

Bahaha, lies and deceit! That first nuke was after 9 months (took me in excess of a year to realize that pillow shading is baaaaaaaad). My very first sprites were exponentially worse than that, being nothing more than smudges of color speckled with completely random pixels of barely related color, and a horrible affront to other sprites. Your first attempts are WAY better than mine, since i can see what they're supposed to be. Mine were equal parts ass and obscurity, and i remember them clearly enough to say that yours are better. So worry not, hang tight, and keep practicing. You're off to a better start than i was.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE: See, i was trying to make a laser gun...



And i ended up drawing a grey poop instead! How silly of me. Not only does it not even remotely resemble a gun, the uhh... "SHADING" is also totally off. Really, sometimes no shading is better than bad shading, so don't feel bad.

If it's giving you problems, you can always try looking up tutorials on the net, i was helped tremendously by it. This one in particular is quite nice. Especially note that red box near the bottom; as i've practiced more, i've found it both easier and better to just quickly sketch down the shaded areas with the pencil tool. Doing it per pixel takes a gagillion years, and often ends up looking about the same anyways. The worm i made previously was shaded this way, with a few manual corrections. I tend to do very cartoony shading though, so i'm not the guy to approach if you want super realistic skillz.

@freeform: Heh, thanks. Also yeah, banding is also something i only recently started to consciously avoid. It's subtle, but fixing it can help the image as a whole.

[Shook]

also clouds



Trying to improve my drawings of them. I followed this tutorial, and it actually works really nicely. Better than my previous clouds, anyways. From here i can probably work my way to something even more neat.

[Muffindog]

Shook, you should master the art of animation and start making awesome cartoons/games

[GlyphGryph]

I would not have known those were clouds. Thought they were piles of coal at first.

Man you gotta get the SWIRLS in.

I like drawing clouds, though admittedly all of recent experience with cloud spriting has been in Terrarria - game just doesn't feel right without a sky full of clouds and their beautiful silver linings (that I conveniently use to quickly grapple-hook everywhere).

Anyways, I think you need to make them look a lot less... regular. And the bottoms shouldn't bulge out like that - like in the tutorial, they should be nearly flat on bottom. (because clouds sit right on top of boundary layers most of the time)

I think just fixing the bottom would make them look a lot more like clouds and a lot less like piles.

[Lord Dullard]

I would not have known those were clouds. Thought they were piles of coal at first.

Methinks you need an eye exam.

They're not perfect, but... coal? You know what color coal is, right?

On a sunny day like that, they should look a bit lighter, though.

[Shook]

Well hey, on the plus side, i just figured out how to draw piles then.
Anyhoo, thanks for your input! I shall try this immediately.



Any better? I can draw items and monsters, but clouds? Seriously nature, stop being so hard to depict!

@Muffindog: Well, i'm already making a game, though that doesn't mean i won't practice animation. I grew up with cartoons, i fuggin LOVE cartoons, and animation has long been a bit of a dream for me, so i definitely need to try my hand at it some more. c:

POST SCRIPTUM: oh yeah and this

[GlyphGryph]

Of course, coal looks like this:


And yes, its clearly lighter than that.

New picture is a lot better, I think, though still not great. Is there are reason you went with that type of cloud, by the way? It's generally one of the harder types to draw, those flattish storm clouds.

And they don't usually occur scattered about like that. I'm also not sure why you're trying to go realistic instead of stylistic when you do stylistic so well!

Maybe try a fluffy cloud instead?

[Shook]

Well, went with that type of cloud because it's the one shown in the tutorial, minus blue tint. :U
I'd love to draw stylistic clouds, but the thing is... They look like this:

not a new image

it is inadequate. I need to find a proper way of drawing cartoony clouds that match my cartoony style.

hrmmrhmrhmrhmrh

I think the biggest issue is that i try to make things both realistic and cartoony at the same time. I'm starting to have a style pegged down for characters and objects, but proper backgrounds still elude me. Probably because i don't draw them with outlines. :U

*scribblescribblescribblescribble*



it resembles jell-o

[GlyphGryph]

Well, try the basic white fluff - darker flat line for bottom, with outline. Pulls up a bit at the very edge, outline fades as they curve back, and then three nice circles for mounds on top. Make sure the circles overlap, and the bottom third are cut off by the bottom of the cloud. Use greys to indicate the overlaps, and maybe throw an extra smaller circle or two on with grey on the bottom of those (though not as dark as on the very bottom of the cloud)

That's... probably a terrible way to describe it, actually. Heh. But maybe it will help?

[Lord Dullard]

Observe these:


I think yours look a bit too much like rocks, Shook. They're not bumpy enough. If you want to go for cartoony but still recognizable as clouds, the surface should look less uniform. More like you squashed a bunch of marshmallows together.

[GlyphGryph]

Also, in that image, notice that the clouds are in many ways just bunches of repeating overlapping circles.