Pixel Art, How can I be less terrible?

Game Play & Game Design
#1

So I am trying my absolute hardest to learn how to draw decent pixel art, I have remade a Spaceship sprite at least 10x over and it still looks like utter gash.

Ignoring the fact it looks more like a fighter jet, it just looks “flat” and terrible, I don’t what what the hell I am doing wrong. I look at all these tutorials on the best ways to build up, some say start with an outline, then separate each part and select base colors, then add shading…others are saying start with a silhouette and just jump right into breaking up the image using a light source.

I feels as if I am reading tutorials, then going wow that sprite is so simple but looks cool! I attempt it, it looks like shit.

Does anyone have any tips?

I am wanting to create various Spaceship sprites, each using a “metallic” like palette but of various colors. I just can’t see to get it right, I can create shapes ok, I am not going with the traditional Spaceship that is shaped like a huge member but instead abstract and cool looking ones.

#2

Tinker around and keep working on one even if you think its not good.
It can still become in a later step, but it takes some time and -like said- tinkering.

#3

Guess everything takes practice.

How would I deal with choosing the amount of pixels I work with? Currently atm I am using a relatively small canvas of 24x16 for this particular spaceship, I was wanting to keep it small in order to make it simple.

However this will make my game art inconsistent, as my unit system is 1 unit = 16px. So say my spaceship fires a missile, it’s either going to be sharper due to being smaller with same res as a spaceship or look terrible because it is essentially a pixel or 2.

Any ideas for that?

Should I up scale my entire unit system?

#4

[quote]Guess everything takes practice.
[/quote]
Seemingly you misunderstood me. Not you need practice, but it just takes time to get a sprite to where it looks good.

If you have a problem with using a non-quadratic format, just don’t use one. :wink:

#5

Seemingly you misunderstood me. Not you need practice, but it just takes time to get a sprite to where it looks good.

If you have a problem with using a non-quadratic format, just don’t use one. :wink:
[/quote]
Fair enough, I am ok using it, making it look good however… :stuck_out_tongue:

#6

You can try drawing it big and shrinking it down, then cleaning up the pixels using layers and noise.

#7

Lol yeah that is never going to happen, I honestly can’t draw at all. I need a lot of practice but I did manage to come up with this…

What can I do to make it better?

http://s26.postimg.org/6j0lv5kjp/Scout1.png

#8

This looks actually pretty good.
What you can improve depends on what you want it to be, e.g. some more shadow effects for a more serious mood or something…

#9

Yeah that is the part I always struggle with, trying to make it look more shadowy. I always end up messing up up lol.

#10

If that ship is horrible, you should look at mine.

I’m not good at all at drawing nice shapes. I’m good at shading. I can make shit looking shapes look good by adding shades.

What you can do is make some parts of the ship brighter/darker depending on the curves of the surface, giving it more depth.

EDIT-
Now that I’m taking a closer look at the ship zoomed in, it has some detail man… This ship is nowhere near looking horrible.
My drawings look 10x more horrible :smiley:

#11

That ship is exceptionally good, you should be proud of it! You crammed a lot of detail in a tiny space, and that’s the cornerstone to becoming an awesome pixel artist. :smiley:

I think what you’re struggling with is depth shading and color balance, they’re some of the trickiest things in pixel art to hammer down. I still struggle with it today with some designs, because every piece you work on is a little different. But the idea is to keep your uniformed base shape bold and visible so it’s obvious where the accents/pieces are, then shade each piece individually while thinking about shadows casting down on top of it. Also, while it feels like it defies all logic when drawing pixel art, usually to get a natural looking shading effect you have to purposely make your shading a bit non-uniform, but still all generally coming from one direction. Once you get really good at making shading based on light sources you can get your image to really pop. Personally, I draw everything assuming the light is hitting it from the top left, and add 2 or 3 layers of same-color shading that’s just a hair darker or lighter than the base color I am working with.

It’s a bit hard to explain, so I said screw and made this: :stuck_out_tongue:

http://s26.postimg.org/6j0lv5kjp/Scout1.png
->
http://sixtygig.com/junk/Scout1.png

here’s the original PSD with all the colors layered if you want to play with it in more depth. If you don’t have Photoshop, It should open up in GIMP, not sure about paint.net.
http://sixtygig.com/junk/Scout1.psd

Also, feel free to use my updated version in your game royalty/credit-free if you want. I don’t mind at all. :wink:

#12

That ship sprite is really good (although it looks like a jetplane), but here are some tips:

You drew your ship totally plain, without any lightning or shadow. That’s quite uncommon, but not bad at all. If you can keep the same standard on your entire game, it might even turn great!

Also, don’t try to make your art exactly like some other developer/artist. Instead, try to attach your own signature, your own style to it.

Rayvolution added his own touches on the sprite, and it also looks pretty good; But again, it’s all about style. Some people like their art to have the least amount of different shades as possible, whereas some other people (myself included) like to smoothly transition the colors.

PuppyGames’s games always use that shady looking art with vibrating neon tones, which i find awesome.
Whereas for myself, my art style is really clunky, and i love to add noise on everything, so they look pretty dirty. I’m okay with that. Below lies the spritesheet of an old game of mine. As you can see, i find more satisfying to draw nature assets.

tl;dr: keep drawing and practicing until you find your art confortable.

#13

I thought the original sprite was already nice but you “upgraded” it really nice.
HOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW?! :smiley:

#14

I must say, thank you all.

Also Rayvolution…you literally just “opened” my mind, as soon as you posted that I managed to completely change the look of my sprite by fading colors from dark to light and light to dark smoothly, add more highlights and shadows, it is not as details as yours but I can defo see a difference.

http://s26.postimg.org/hxx2zrww5/Scout1.png

As you can see I added 2 little circleish things at each side of the ship, those are for weapons :slight_smile:

http://s26.postimg.org/m8bqvd1zd/Weapons_Fitted.png

#15

Looks a lot better now. Glad I could help! :smiley:

You could try slightly darker colors for your shadows. One trick to keep in mind is more contrast equals more depth. So you want the edges around your primary shapes to be a bold, dark color. Then, for the shading you want to pick 2 or 3 lighter than base, and darker than base colors. Usually your darkest/lightest shades will be on the more contrasted/extreme side and the middle shades below it would be closer to the base color. then, just shade away!

But, you’re definitely on the right track, tons of improvement in the new one. :smiley:

#16

You made it sound a lot worse. It looks great to me.

#17

I had never create an pixel art image before. Actually I had never drawn anything except stickman before :). But when I read your posts, I inspired from you. So I made my first pixel art. I worked on Photoshop Cs6. So here is the results;

What do you think ? Should I go on ? I hope to be better on next tries. By the way if you like it you can use it as you wish credit-free :slight_smile:

#18

I am horrible at pixel art
Mainly because I have OCD so no matter what I make it has to have some sort of pattern to it which in the end, ruins the image…

Instead I use sprites from sites like kenney.nl but it is annoying when they don’t have the one sprite I need…

So if anyone has pixel art skills and at the same time being a programmer, u definitely have an advantage…

#19

I’m actually jumping into pixel art myself. I used to paint miniatures in the past and the concept is similar. There are a lot of guide on how to pixel art. Read some, join a pixel art community or forum and check out their art for inspiration. You can check my yt channel for some stuff (not professional) too

#20

Well actually I recieved some nice feedbacks about my spaceship. But now I wonder that how can I draw this plane as tilted. I mean as going right or left. I saw some pixel art ships like that but I have no clue about how to draw it.

I simply tried it with Flash Cs6 3d option but it sucks. So do I also have to draw it from scratch. If so are there any tips or general formulas about it.