Ashbad's Pixel Art Tutorial

[LincolnB]

Ah, ok thanks, I didn't realize how saturated the colors were. I'll change it and post some more grass here.
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-LincolnB

[Ashbad]

[Spenceboy98]

My first real sprite:

I used this tutorial.

[Ashbad]

Here's a very good read I just finished, by an admin on a pixel art forums site. Very good reference to train yourself to notice pixel banding (at least it had been for me): http://www.pixel.schlet.net/

The dude's a very good artist, but he's really obsessive about finding and fixing banding so I guess he's the perfect guide for teaching such a subject.
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-Ashbad

[flyingfisch]

Nice tutorial.

Color 101 note:

I agree about not using black. My mom paints with acrylics and one of the first things she taught me was that black is a "shortcut" (as well as pure grays). What I use is a very dark blue, or a dark orange. Depending on the colors immediately near it.

And, I think a great addition to this tut would be a color theory section.
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[zeldaking]

I have decided to start doing pixel art also, although I am not sure about the MLP ones. Here are my subjects, err quick drawings I am going off of.
Link, from Legend of Zelda, DS spirit tracks and phantom hourglass

This is a half-finished scetch of a phantom which I will be doing after I finish the Link one.

Any suggestions before I start? Comments, concerns?

[Ashbad]

Nice work! What are you thinking for the dimensions of the actual pixel art itself of these? I personally think they could fit in 200x200 pixels and still be ultra detailed, or even possibly 100x100.
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-Ashbad

[zeldaking]

I don't really know, not ever having done pixel art before. What do you suggest?

[Ashbad]

[zeldaking]

I started bigger How do I scale it down to 100x100?

[Ashbad]

[zeldaking]

I drew an outline, it's roughly the same size as the picture above. I think that is too big.

[Ashbad]

[zeldaking]

Is there anywhere on paint to check the current picture size?

[Ashbad]

[zeldaking]

Bump:
Here is my outline. It took me a while becuase I am just starting out, but I think the results aren't bad.
What do you guys think?

[Ashbad]

Not a bad rough draft of the lineart. I noticed that not all of the outline pixels are pure black; saving as a monochrome bmp and then resaving as a 24 bit bmp would fix it. (don't save as PNG until it's time to post it, though; png images screw things up a lot in paint; mostly with the color replacement side-tool of the eraser)

And of course, clean up all of the lines so that they're one pixel thick from there you can easily fix any anatomical issues you have.
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-Ashbad

[Spenceboy98]

This is what I have of my pony pixel art so far. It's my friend as a pony.

[Ashbad]

[Spenceboy98]

I originally drew this on a piece of paper. That's why it looks bad. It looks better on the paper. I posted the original on the mlp topic.