My first pixel art!!!

[zwyrm]

So I thought I'd show off two pixel art pictures i did.

 

They're pretty much my first ones.

 

Acctually...the first ones I ever did were houses...pretty much straight lines

 

and such, but in these pictures I drew the images freely and sloppily, cleaned them

 

and coloured them.

 

 

 

Now this is the first one I did using the technique I just explained ..

 

 

 

 

I left the colors i used under it, just in case...

 

 

 

 

 

And I did this today. Now this is not completely finished yet.

 

I'm not completely happy with some colors and the shading in some places is still bad.

 

 

 

Stage 1 - The drawing of what I was planning on doing

 

 

 

 

Stage 2 - Cleaned out the lines...

 

 

 

 

Stage 3 - Added colors and did a shaded some of the colors..

 

 

 

 

Stage 4 - Finished (for now...)

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do you think?

 

I know I probably need to work on many, many stuff!

 

Any hints on what to fix next? Anything, but please be kind...this is pretty much my first try...

[Moonshadow]

Tree:

 

Dithering is nice once in a while for things, but don't go overboard with it. The trunk of the tree shouldn't be that dithered. It makes it look too round and lacking normal tree-ish texture.

 

 

 

Also, when you save your pictures, save in .png if you are using paint. If you are using photoshop, you could use save for web and use a high quality .jpg or a .gif. There is a similar save for web feature in gimp, although you will have to ask someone a little more familiar with gimp for that.

 

 

 

Your colors are very well chosen. But, you tend to pillow shade. Try doing a different light source. Make it come from one side or another. Try looking out your window and looking at trees and what the shades look like. Or even look at a picture of a tree on google. Don't be afraid to use references.

 

 

 

Figure:

 

Yay, sketch! Your sketch looks very nice. The arms are a little thin, but the pose is nice and the anatomy is OK.

 

 

 

Once you cleaned out the lines, I think you lost some of the definition of the neck. It looks very blocky there and because his helm is so big and blocky, it doesn't flatter the noodly arms. The hands look a little too big and like he is wearing boxing gloves once you cleaned up the lines. Take a look at some hands. Hands are hard though, they will come in time.

 

 

 

Overall, just keep pixeling. You could end up doing very well. For a first pixel is actually very well done. You tackled human anatomy quite nicely.

[AndyPandy]

For a first it's very good.

 

 

 

For the first one, you could make it look less smooth. Some idea of branches would make it look a lot better.

 

 

 

All I can really say about the person is you need to have a look at some anatomy. The body is a little off.

[venomai]

For the tree:

 

- You can get away with using less colours.

 

- Avoid radial gradients and pillow shading. Pick a light source (e.g. top left) and shade accordingly. Also remember that things aren't so uniform in life -- something like a tree should have more defining irregular shadows.

 

- It's a little too smooth, and could do with some details. You don't need to go crazy, but you need to give it some variation.

 

 

 

Dithering is fine to use even on a trunk of a tree, but it should be used scarcely. Dithering isn't something that we should be noticing, and it's mostly a technique to conserve colours. If you don't plan on conserving colours, you don't even really need to use dithering! :) Always save as a PNG or GIF when working with pixels, never as a JPEG. If you have more than 256 colours, save as a 24-bit PNG (the default in Paint, I think).

 

 

 

Sometimes it's helpful to learn from photos as well as other artwork.

 

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Notice how the tree is shaded as many shapes rather than a single shape?

 

 

 

 

This is a great place for tree references:

 

http://www.speedtree.com/tree_browser/[/hide]

 

 

 

As for the character... Good start, but follow the above points. Avoid linear and radial gradients for shading, and try to use a light source that isn't coming directly from in front (i.e. camera/eyes). Also be sure to add some detail and wear and tear (like scratches on the metal). Lastly, be sure to use specular highlights and "shinyness" to really make the metal stand out.

 

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Cool stuff. Keep it up. :thumbup:

[Shiny]

Great stuff for a beginner. As said, try to avoid pillow shading, and make the tree looks rugged and more nature-like. I'm liking the guthan pixel, as far as runescape goes.YOu do need to note that metal highlights light, and also would probably have some wear and tear (Use messy-ish lines maybe?).

 

 

 

What venomai said was very good, remember not too stop. These are excellent for a beginner!

[Sam]

Save as .png.

[dsavi]

Yes. Although JPEG is great at the highest quality, there is still loss. With pixels being such a precise art, a few slightly wrong pixels destroy the perfection.

[Hawks]

About the GIMP thing: When you go to save as, just type the name you want the file to have and then add the extension .png (don't save pixels as jpg, and saving them as gifs is kind of stupid) It'll want you to export it, click yes or whatever (I think it's continue) then another box pops up, then click save.

[Unoalexi]

One thing about Tree-realism. Leaves are not a solid, fluffy mass. There are breaks, and uneven shading.