Show off your graphics!

Gah! I is in awe...

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

Using Editor version wip 20170527 gfx_sdl+fb music_sdl

Nice pixels valigarmander!

For the Lamia, what about giving her green hair in the same shades as her scales?

It's always great to see the first sprite and think: wow I could never do that well, it's almost perfect.

And then you go and make an improvement that is a million times better than the original...

I think you don't know what to do here because the pose isn't strong and dynamic, so no matter how much detail work and fixing you do, it won't really fix that the dragon is just standing in a way that is very dull. I don't know your workflow, but I recommend blocking in a strong pose really quickly, even working from a silhouette--focusing on making it look dynamic.

A good example of some dynamic dragon poses can be found here (you have to scroll through a bunch of other enemies, some of which are pretty neat): http://www.angelfire.com/ult/ace/WZD_SotD_bestiary.html

(The copper dragon on that site is posed awesomely)



Add some specular to that tail, you could use one of the bright greens you already have, i think. Just keep it sparse. Make it shiny.

There's some ugly banding on the knife in her right hand.

The rest are looking really good! In fact, those two look good, too. But you seem to be a bit of a perfectionist so I thought I'd point out where they could be better.

Actually, try playing with the contrast on the treant, I think he could 'pop' a little more, but too much and he'll stop looking like wood...

IMAGE DUMP!
























Whatever happened to this project, Mogri? Was it my fault?

...If it was my fault then I am so so sorry.

EDIT: Can we get click to zoom functionality on this board? Like on pixeljoint or pixelation?

I think communication kind of stopped all at once. I'd like to blame Sephy, but it's really my fault.

I would love to pick it back up. I used a modified version of the display script as the basis for my Littlest Game entry.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Excuse me while I print off sprites I've made and eat them.

I CANNOT, and I stress it importantly, make intricate details. I cannot just add...grit to a sprite! I look at those and see all intricate detailing and colors added to the sprites. Whenever I attempt to try these details, it winds up like...I just took the airbrush tool and went "WOOOOOoooOOO!!"

How do I art

You already are..t.

For the moment, just try to be less self-conscious about the quality of your work.
You will have trouble progressing if you can't remember what you've done wrong.

Your first priority should be to make your ideas readable.
This generally includes outlining and applying basic colors to express the components of your image.

Realize that the grit you desire is a nice effect, but ultimately a supplement to the core that is your idea.

Details will come and develop with more practice.
And as you gain more exposure, you'll begin to realize what works and what doesn't.

You can gain this exposure simply be reading into the images that you like (and also loathe).

Also tutorials. Tutorials are very helpful.

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♪♪♪ Du du duuuu ♪♪♪

That is the question, isn't it?

"Before you learn how to draw, you have to learn how to see"



Everything Twinconclusive said is good advice. Details won't look good unless your foundation (anatomy, perspective, modelling/rendering, posing, character design) is good.

Actually, I would posit that for effective enemy graphics, the order of importance is this:

1.Pose
2.Design
3.Anatomy
4.Perspective
5.Modelling/Rendering (shading)

Oftentimes, people think they need to work on #5 and that it is only #5 that makes good art. There is no opinion that could be more wrong. In fact, getting good at #5 without a solid understanding of #1-#4 will only serve to make those deficiencies MORE obvious.

The basics aren't sexy. But detail work when the basics are wrong? Looks so much worse. Check out some tattoo portraits if you don't believe me.

(Since I can just feel someone hating on the order up there, let me just say that that particular order is ONLY applicable to un-animated RPG enemies. I firmly believe that a well posed (#1) enemy who is ALL jacked up in terms of #2-#5 would in fact look BETTER than if any of the other elements were the only 'good' one. Actually, I think it would sort of look like cubism and would probably be really, really neat looking... Hm...)

Enemies with a boring pose will ALWAYS be boring! Boring is so much worse than 'flawed'! Think about how you pose your characters and your 'arting' ability will increase a lot, I promise!

Thanks for the tips, shakeyair. I did have a difficult time getting a decent pose for the dragon. It probably would have helped if I'd actually had a pose in mind when I started, but I wasn't sure how to go about it and just drew it one piece at a time. I think I'll redo that one from scratch.

And yes, I am a bit of a perfectionist, at least when it comes to spriting. I'd really like for these to look professional.



I tried that, actually, but I had a hard time getting the hair to look separate from the scales on her back.

Posture and positioning...its a horrible, cruel monster to me. I try the best I can to try and draw out, on paper, unique pictures I can see out in my head...but it just doesn't come out right. It feels...off. Maybe the arms don't look right. Her hands look wrong...that doesn't look natural! Wait maybe she should be-crunch crunch crunch, garbage can.

I could see that picture of Syneca in my head, crying, holding a very beaten up Alanna saying "I'm sorry...", with Zack crumpled out on the ground nearby, and a massive dragon bringing his claw down upon her...
I tried to translate that scene to paper and failed miserably.

That was just a fairly spoiler that I don't expect you to understand.

With computer, it's a love hate relationship with online artwork. I cannot just take a pencil and make all these good natural lines and curves. With such limited space and pixels, the edges can get mangled. Drawing humans is one battle, drawing inhuman things kills me, as it's obvious. Not one of my games has a dog, or a cat. Not many birds. No skeletons. God forbid if a dragon ever showed up in one of my games. No bears, no nothing. I can't draw animals. I'm lucky with the squirrels.

I can't draw them because they come out...unnatural. I've tried drawing skeletons. I get to the ribcage and it becomes a horrible barrel shaped abomination...I get to animals, and it usually happens when I try to make a defined body shape. Dogs wind up with mangled legs/tails, as do cats. Never even attempted a bear if I screw up that bad with just cats and dogs. Eastern dragons are plausible with me, as they are highly serpentine, but Western dragons, which are mostly RPG enemies, are a big no for me. Squirrels were simple for me. Common in forests, small, compact, and simple. Even then it comes out just slightly...off. Chobi's were my own personal creation of cute little balls of fur that have cleric like abilities, but timid. Simple concept and design, but never really explained in any of my games, nor went into great detail or character design.

I can draw humans, on paper. The pose is basic, but I go wild with details, designs, costume, hair...basically, I try to define a character as uniquely as I can. Syneca was one of the results of these drawings, with her dress, dual ponytails with ribbons, and dual scarves. Most of these details are hard to notice in game. I actually managed to render her in game...somewhat decently. If I could, my characters would be...more dynamic. The squirrels I make are sitting, so I don't mess up the legs and turn it into something that Slender Man would own.

Look at Illusions. The enemies? Squirrels, bees, elementals, and humans. Stuff that's easy to draw, and easy to avoid mangling entirely. I can see my art in my head. Then somewhere along the way, it all gets horribly mangled.

Odds are, since you have clearly tried hard and don't feel like you are advancing, you are working at the wrong things. Drawing, and pixelling by extension, have as many mental skills as they do physical skills. Perhaps there is something that you are not even aware of that is holding you back.

Try doing each of these exercises. If any of them are particularly hard, do it often. When your brain hurts, you are making a new connection--You are permanently improving. It is slow, just don't get discouraged.

1. Blind contour drawing. Draw an object without looking at the paper. Do not lift your pencil for the duration of the drawing. Do not focus on your hand, focus on outlining primary and secondary contours--focus on seeing all the 'lines' in the object. MAKE SURE YOU FOCUS ON SEEING THE LINES ACCURATELY. Do not generalize anything. Hell, exaggerate the slime out of the lines when your hand draws them. Turn molehills in to mountains, so you become more aware of the molehills. I hope this makes sense. You are training yourself to see lines accurately, which is much harder than you think it is.

2. Blind contour drawing #2. Same as blind contour number 1, but focus on your hand. Do #1 a couple of times before doing this, because the more autonomously you can pick out the lines, the better you can focus on your hand positioning. This helps to foster fine motor skills. Note: You still can't look at your hand. Don't exaggerate the lines here. This is a good exercise towards helping you REPRODUCE lines accurately.

3. Mentally 'trace' lines in your vision. Do this all the time, because you can do it in secret, when you're bored in class, whatever. This again helps teach you to see lines accurately.

4. Mentally 'rotate' objects. It may be helpful to think of them as wireframes at first. This is the start of teaching your brain to see volume.

5. Mentally, draw (trace) a real life object. Then add and subtract detail. (in your minds eye) Learn to see primary contours separately from secondary contours, learn to see shadow-shapes, you can even learn to 'stylize' things--all without setting your pen to paper. The more you grow your mind's eye and think it to uh... think visually, the better you will be at recalling visual information. (drawing without a reference is really a mix of recalling LOTS of visual information and some formal knowledge of how different 'materials' and physical shapes react and interact)

Odds are, some or most of these will be hard. But each of them will 'focus' on one aspect of drawing. (not that I've got them all, but the basics, and its probably one of these things that you're not 'getting') These do not take long to do and likely will show results quickly,

If you want to get REALLY good:

Learn the vocabulary. Something about just knowing that 'line quality' is a thing to look out for INSTANTLY improves your line quality. Actually, a better example: MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW THAT 'REFLECTED LIGHT' EXISTS. Odds are some of you who are reading that sentence don't. Look it up. All the sudden you will see that it is everywhere. When you know the vocabulary, you know the big deal things to look out for.

Learn 'color theory'--as much as its hardly a theory at all, just reading about it--reading about anything teaches you to think about it in ways your mind never would have. Pay attention to the ACTUAL color of objects. For instance, my laptop is silver. It's an old Macbook Pro. Right now, the highlights are almost orange and the midtones are a dull purple and the reflection from the screen is sort of a light lavender kind of color. But it STILL LOOKS SILVER. Because your brain 'auto-corrects' color information based on ambient light. You have to teach it not to.

Learn anatomy. Learn a basic amount of anatomy, please. But you can never know too much about anatomy. I didn't have money for anatomy books. I learned it from drawing people who are <9% bodyfat. Bodybuilders would be a place to start, but I'd recommend at least looking for the all-natural ones. I think there's some sort of 'figure-competition' stuff too, which is more about looking like a fitness model. That'll teach you the muscles. Then draw people with fat, and people with MUCH MORE fat. Its important to know the underlying structures as well as how whats laid on top reacts to those structures. The same is true for learning to draw cloth.

On pixelling in particular, learn about BANDING, but don't use it as a dogma. In fact, don't use any 'knowledge' as a dogma. We learn rules to break them, but you have to know them before you can break them right.

Look at a lot of art and learn to identify WHY, specifically, you like or dislike something. (knowing the vocabulary helps)

Oooh. I'm tired of writing. From those exercises I laid out, you can adapt them to involve value or whatever issue you are having trouble with.

Sorry. No proofreading. If there's something glaringly bad, let me know and I'll change it.

Master K: Not "can't draw them", instead think "Can't draw them yet" ;)

If it helps, do what I did in the past (and sometimes still do): study sprites from other games. Examine how the artist took a living, moving, three-dimensional creature in his or her mind and turned it into a static, two-dimensional sprite. Look at how the artist made the most of a limited palette. See how fur or scales or swords or bones or hands or cloth or wood is drawn. Keep an eye out for little details. Learn from what you see, and try to apply it to your own sprites.

I'm working on a little unique battle system demo, just to play around with scripting...I'm only going to have one enemy thus far for demonstration, and it's myself, Master K. Now, my avatar has been confused many times before as an elephant, a robot, a cyborg...no, it's none of those things.

THIS is Master K.



He's a ninja wearing a mask. He's never made it to any game as a character so far, and he's been meant to be put in game as a hero/NPC quite a few times, but the game never made it to that point. He shows up in Grayscale as an NPC, and in Forsaken's title screen. His story varies, and I've never really made anything canonical in my head. I originally drew him as an Akatsuki, and then made him my alter ego.