haha I remember playing that at festival of games. It was very fun to play. I do remember it was much more low res, pixely back then.
I think the image compression makes it a bit blurry. We didn't change anything since FoG so it's still pixely and low res! http://lethalleague.reptile-games.com/
Ehh, I wouldn't call everything posted so far pixel art, but given that this site isn't about pixels, I will try contain my OCD urges. Because most stuff does tend to follow the aesthetic feeling.
This isn't true. You can also upscale by 3x or 5x (300% or 400%). It just needs to be in increments of 100%, or in integer numbers; 7 times larger is okay, 7.5 times isn't. Generally, I upscale by 2x or 3x if something is rather small. Only rarely do I ever go above that. (my avatar is sort of scaled 12x, though)
Pix - you might want to tweak your grey-brown ramp a bit, so you can get smoother shading on the balloon (unless you're going for cellshaded) and I think you can merge some of the darker colors of both brown ramps into one ramp. Dark colors are often a good place to save some slots.
Quesocotl - looking promising, for some reason I quite like the rock the most. All could use some refining, though.
Base - I think you could benefit from working on a slightly smaller scale and focusing a bit more on color choices.
Remmers - efficient stuff. You get a lot of use out of very few frames.
Lipedal - I think you could also learn a lot about color ramp efficiency, blending, and so on. You have a lot of colors in there, but the changes from grass to desert, and around the well are rather crude. I do quite like the overall feeling of the buildings, though. And the people seem cute too, but I would not animate them in a permanent T-pose.
St4lis - Very nice, and very Metal Slug. Though there's a sliiight clash between the some pixel art bits and some photoshop resized/filtery bits.
Tysho - While I like how these look, I think you would have been better off either going for a completely painted look including alpha-transparency or a more pixely look. Right now the binary transparency is a bit grating. I like ThunderMutt the most, even though he relies heavily on soft brushstrokes.
Nagicoa - I think you can be a slight bit more simple with the wings, and use a blend between the straight/abstract lines and a curvy dither-like pattern like you have on the neck/chest. I think you might not need the brightest color or the secondbrightest one. Maybe swap merge them, and add one color to blend nicer on the wings? Also, thanks for linking all the tutorials.
madPXL - Great stuff as usual. Last pic and the 3D work reminds me of how Minecraft should have looked; embracing its cubic abstraction rather than trying to apply mediocre 'realistic' pixel art.
Em' - Really liking the sky-city image. Looks very crisp, and the soft vignette keeps it modern. Nice approachable science/tech colorscheme too. The purple image is a bit less because you have several styles fighting; in particular the large pixels on the trees, and partially the more scribbly sprites.
DemonPrincess - heh, yes, programmer-designed palettes are a bitch. I'm of the opinion that every universal palette should have a brown/skin ramp just like it needs a gray one.
AtticusMars - Really liking this. It reminds me of, I think, Makkon's coop 2D knight brawler thingy. It could use some refinement, though. Have you considered adding a dash of color to him? Overall, good use of 8 colors.
Here's something fairly recent of mine:
Oh. And the banner I made just before starting this thread:
A few samples from a game I'm working on. First real experience working with in pixels, so tried to keep them kinda simple.
A little bit of the tile work for the stages, have a bit more that needs to be finished and added to the stages, just background stuff to look more lively.
haha, what about it caused you to spit out your drink?
Oh just that I'd worn that fire keeper robe so much I recognised it instantly.
madPXL: Really nice though I don't know what secret you mean
DemonPrincess: Great work with the EGA palette. I love the detail in the skirt. For some reason that skin colour always makes me think of the first Leisure Suit Larry.
DemonPrincess: Great work with the EGA palette. I love the detail in the skirt. For some reason that skin colour always makes me think of the first Leisure Suit Larry.
Ah yes, a great game that indeed used the EGA palette! :thumbup:
The only other options for EGA skin tones are the brown, which doesn't leave you with a shading color... or alternatively you could use the white with gray shading, like they did on Commander Keen.
I've never ventured into 3D art so I've never posted any of my own art here. I've been pixelling for several years (off and on) however so this thread represents a unique opportunity for me to actually share.
I've never ventured into 3D art so I've never posted any of my own art here. I've been pixelling for several years (off and on) however so this thread represents a unique opportunity for me to actually share.
So here's some stuff I've made over the years:
This one remains unfinished:
Did you actually work on The Binding of Isaac? :O
They look awesome.
Did you actually work on The Binding of Isaac? :O
They look awesome.
Sadly not. I would have loved the opportunity to work on The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. I'm a huge fan of Ed's original vector art in Isaac, and was a little disappointed by Rebirth's art. These sprites were my attempt at faithfully recreating the vector art into pixel art. I wanted to make everything in the game but got a job working on an indie title in the middle of my project and had to drop it.
I had a bit of fun with subpixels today. Not a whole lot in terms of art, but some experimentation.
A 2x5 pixel font, with a 6x5 pixel intermediary shape to figure out what subpixels to use.
A simple set of diagonal lines, comparing regular greyscale AA with subpixel AA. The righthand (top-right) side is a mockup of how I imagined the subpixels to look.
So, I'm trying to get into some pixel art stuff... because I always loved it to death!
But I wonder about sizes... gnarf.
Maybe someone around here is kind and experienced enough to answer me? Please.
Regarding a platformer or oldschool rpg (with top down view, like old zeldas/secret of mana etc.) what would be good sizes for sprites and tilesets?
Thanks.
Games for the NES, GameBoy, SNES, etc. work based on a limited set of 8x8 pixel tiles (in hardware). But because 8x8 isn't enough to convey a lot of detail designers in the 8- and 16-bit era typically used 16x16 macrotiles as a basis for their art. You can see this clearly in titles like Super Mario, Zelda and Final Fantasy.
Sprite sizes were limited by hardware. Up to 8x16 for the NES and GameBoy, up to 64x64 for the SNES. But again, 8x16 isn't all that much, so developers would move multiple sprites side-by-side to resemble a single larger sprite. Typical sizes for overhead views are 16x16 (Zelda, FF1-5) and 16x24, 24x24 (FF6), platformers start at 16x24 and quickly go up to 32x48 and beyond (Mega Man X). Fighters have some of the largest sprites, Street Fighter II sprites stand over 80 pixels tall.
In addition to size limitations there are rather strict colour limitations. NES and GB backgrounds are up to 4 colours per tile, SNES 4, 16 or 256 colours per tile depending on mode. Transparency is one of these colours, so NES sprites can only use 3 actual colours. some tricks can be used however: Mega Man's face is actually a separate sprite in the NES games so it an be a different colour from the body.
Colour limitations are as important to the pixel art aesthetic as size limitations.
Of course, with modern hardware we don't really have the same limitations. Pixel art can be as small or as large as you want, without having to optimise for 8x8 pixel tiles. Pixel art games released today may use a larger 32x32 basic tile size, or do away with tiles entirely.
In other words, set your own limitations and find a style that suits you
If you want some numbers to work with, I'd say start out with 16² or canvas, and 4 to 8 colors.
I'm an advocate of giving yourself very strict and small limitations, to faster learn how the medium works. It forces you to think because you can't simply draw in all the detail like you would in a regular 512² texture. And the more you think, the more you learn.
And while 8x8 isn't much, it's enough to convey quite a lot of information still:
(though, yes that uses an absurd amount of frames given the size)
Never done a pixel character before, and never animated a 2d character either so this is quite rough. Missing a frame or two I know, but I like a couple of em!
First of all, fantastic work you've got here I would like to show you my very first pixel art. I did it for an Indiegame, which me and my friends currently developing.
First of all, fantastic work you've got here I would like to show you my very first pixel art. I did it for an Indiegame, which me and my friends currently developing.
edit: sorry for double post, but something strange happend.
Great work to everyone in this thread! As a beginner pixel artist, I'm very impressed! Could anyone give me some pointers on some work that I just finished? Looking at a few tutorials, I recognized some things I did wrong but I'd like advice from experienced artists.
One is from a WWII roguelike I'm making with friends (using the Legend of Zelda palette):
This other is from another little pixel project I'm making using only 16 colors. Lots of fun with it so far (have to fix a couple small tiling errors, but nothing big):
I did this piece for a contest at GOG.com which basically was "Take one of our games and make them look retro". So I chose Deus Ex and made this pixelart picture of it. I had to rush it a bit in the end and it shows. The HUD and all left of JC Denton was done first and the right side was basically rushed and I just added some objects so it wouldn't fell that empty.
It is rather unbalanced in composition and in colors but it was still fun to make and in the end, I won a gift code on the contest, yeay!
I'd love to do a pixelart game in the future, just need to level up my skills a bit first.
(Also, that "MEAT"-sign, god, it looks so horrible haha.)
Replies
Awesome, thanks for the info on that guys. I might have to mess around with making a pixel art thing or two now
I think the image compression makes it a bit blurry. We didn't change anything since FoG so it's still pixely and low res!
http://lethalleague.reptile-games.com/
I've played for about 30 minutes, it's a fun game, got the ball up to 178mph.
This isn't true. You can also upscale by 3x or 5x (300% or 400%). It just needs to be in increments of 100%, or in integer numbers; 7 times larger is okay, 7.5 times isn't. Generally, I upscale by 2x or 3x if something is rather small. Only rarely do I ever go above that. (my avatar is sort of scaled 12x, though)
Pix - you might want to tweak your grey-brown ramp a bit, so you can get smoother shading on the balloon (unless you're going for cellshaded) and I think you can merge some of the darker colors of both brown ramps into one ramp. Dark colors are often a good place to save some slots.
Quesocotl - looking promising, for some reason I quite like the rock the most. All could use some refining, though.
Base - I think you could benefit from working on a slightly smaller scale and focusing a bit more on color choices.
Remmers - efficient stuff. You get a lot of use out of very few frames.
Lipedal - I think you could also learn a lot about color ramp efficiency, blending, and so on. You have a lot of colors in there, but the changes from grass to desert, and around the well are rather crude. I do quite like the overall feeling of the buildings, though. And the people seem cute too, but I would not animate them in a permanent T-pose.
St4lis - Very nice, and very Metal Slug. Though there's a sliiight clash between the some pixel art bits and some photoshop resized/filtery bits.
Tysho - While I like how these look, I think you would have been better off either going for a completely painted look including alpha-transparency or a more pixely look. Right now the binary transparency is a bit grating. I like ThunderMutt the most, even though he relies heavily on soft brushstrokes.
Nagicoa - I think you can be a slight bit more simple with the wings, and use a blend between the straight/abstract lines and a curvy dither-like pattern like you have on the neck/chest. I think you might not need the brightest color or the secondbrightest one. Maybe swap merge them, and add one color to blend nicer on the wings? Also, thanks for linking all the tutorials.
madPXL - Great stuff as usual. Last pic and the 3D work reminds me of how Minecraft should have looked; embracing its cubic abstraction rather than trying to apply mediocre 'realistic' pixel art.
Em' - Really liking the sky-city image. Looks very crisp, and the soft vignette keeps it modern. Nice approachable science/tech colorscheme too. The purple image is a bit less because you have several styles fighting; in particular the large pixels on the trees, and partially the more scribbly sprites.
DemonPrincess - heh, yes, programmer-designed palettes are a bitch. I'm of the opinion that every universal palette should have a brown/skin ramp just like it needs a gray one.
AtticusMars - Really liking this. It reminds me of, I think, Makkon's coop 2D knight brawler thingy. It could use some refinement, though. Have you considered adding a dash of color to him? Overall, good use of 8 colors.
Here's something fairly recent of mine:
Oh. And the banner I made just before starting this thread:
Aseprite is pretty awesome, it has most of the stuff needed for game dev build in.
This little guy below was made in aseprite for example.
A few samples from a game I'm working on. First real experience working with in pixels, so tried to keep them kinda simple.
A little bit of the tile work for the stages, have a bit more that needs to be finished and added to the stages, just background stuff to look more lively.
my bad! engaged mouth (fingers?) before brain..
Good idea! I'll try to make some more sprites and post them up later. Color is a hard one for me; I'll need to study more. Cheers!
This one was done with the atrocious 16 color EGA palette, just to see if I could manage.
haha, what about it caused you to spit out your drink?
Oh just that I'd worn that fire keeper robe so much I recognised it instantly.
madPXL: Really nice though I don't know what secret you mean
DemonPrincess: Great work with the EGA palette. I love the detail in the skirt. For some reason that skin colour always makes me think of the first Leisure Suit Larry.
Ah yes, a great game that indeed used the EGA palette! :thumbup:
The only other options for EGA skin tones are the brown, which doesn't leave you with a shading color... or alternatively you could use the white with gray shading, like they did on Commander Keen.
Here some of my Pixelart. CC are welcome
So here's some stuff I've made over the years:
This one remains unfinished:
Did you actually work on The Binding of Isaac? :O
They look awesome.
Sadly not. I would have loved the opportunity to work on The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. I'm a huge fan of Ed's original vector art in Isaac, and was a little disappointed by Rebirth's art. These sprites were my attempt at faithfully recreating the vector art into pixel art. I wanted to make everything in the game but got a job working on an indie title in the middle of my project and had to drop it.
https://twitter.com/blekdar/status/340417186290085889/photo/1
Made a game awhile ago that never did get finished.
Here it is now.
I made a gnosis from eve online
I never do pixel art for a reason.
A 2x5 pixel font, with a 6x5 pixel intermediary shape to figure out what subpixels to use.
A simple set of diagonal lines, comparing regular greyscale AA with subpixel AA. The righthand (top-right) side is a mockup of how I imagined the subpixels to look.
Group shot of those Dark Souls characters I was working on.
But I wonder about sizes... gnarf.
Maybe someone around here is kind and experienced enough to answer me? Please.
Regarding a platformer or oldschool rpg (with top down view, like old zeldas/secret of mana etc.) what would be good sizes for sprites and tilesets?
Thanks.
Games for the NES, GameBoy, SNES, etc. work based on a limited set of 8x8 pixel tiles (in hardware). But because 8x8 isn't enough to convey a lot of detail designers in the 8- and 16-bit era typically used 16x16 macrotiles as a basis for their art. You can see this clearly in titles like Super Mario, Zelda and Final Fantasy.
Sprite sizes were limited by hardware. Up to 8x16 for the NES and GameBoy, up to 64x64 for the SNES. But again, 8x16 isn't all that much, so developers would move multiple sprites side-by-side to resemble a single larger sprite. Typical sizes for overhead views are 16x16 (Zelda, FF1-5) and 16x24, 24x24 (FF6), platformers start at 16x24 and quickly go up to 32x48 and beyond (Mega Man X). Fighters have some of the largest sprites, Street Fighter II sprites stand over 80 pixels tall.
In addition to size limitations there are rather strict colour limitations. NES and GB backgrounds are up to 4 colours per tile, SNES 4, 16 or 256 colours per tile depending on mode. Transparency is one of these colours, so NES sprites can only use 3 actual colours. some tricks can be used however: Mega Man's face is actually a separate sprite in the NES games so it an be a different colour from the body.
Colour limitations are as important to the pixel art aesthetic as size limitations.
Of course, with modern hardware we don't really have the same limitations. Pixel art can be as small or as large as you want, without having to optimise for 8x8 pixel tiles. Pixel art games released today may use a larger 32x32 basic tile size, or do away with tiles entirely.
In other words, set your own limitations and find a style that suits you
I think I'll try out some things and see how they'll come out! Haha.
And yeah, nowadays there are some freakingly amazing pixelart games.
I'm an advocate of giving yourself very strict and small limitations, to faster learn how the medium works. It forces you to think because you can't simply draw in all the detail like you would in a regular 512² texture. And the more you think, the more you learn.
And while 8x8 isn't much, it's enough to convey quite a lot of information still:
(though, yes that uses an absurd amount of frames given the size)
First of all, fantastic work you've got here
First of all, fantastic work you've got here
edit: sorry for double post, but something strange happend.
Great work, all!
This is my finished work:
http://i.imgur.com/6XKMWQK.gif
Based off of this ship from a game I play:
http://www.ravestats.com/public/fen/faction-dramiel-3.jpg
And this is a single frame:
http://i.imgur.com/PKD7vSr.png
One is from a WWII roguelike I'm making with friends (using the Legend of Zelda palette):
This other is from another little pixel project I'm making using only 16 colors. Lots of fun with it so far (have to fix a couple small tiling errors, but nothing big):
I did this piece for a contest at GOG.com which basically was "Take one of our games and make them look retro". So I chose Deus Ex and made this pixelart picture of it. I had to rush it a bit in the end and it shows. The HUD and all left of JC Denton was done first and the right side was basically rushed and I just added some objects so it wouldn't fell that empty.
It is rather unbalanced in composition and in colors but it was still fun to make and in the end, I won a gift code on the contest, yeay!
I'd love to do a pixelart game in the future, just need to level up my skills a bit first.
(Also, that "MEAT"-sign, god, it looks so horrible haha.)