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Are there any good tutorials for doing sprite art?
- Thread starter Elzair
- Start date
gromit
Arcane
What is it you're looking for? There are very few bits of advice which apply across the board in pixel art, that I know of, and it's all basic stuff. Those sprites aren't exactly rife with stylistic flourish, either, nor do they leave room for any.
When you get down to sizes like that (and palette sizes, if you're going for that, too) it's really more about having a general idea in mind, going at it, and making dozens of little, careful compromises.
I can suggest the obvious: constantly zooming back to fullsize and saying "does this look like ___?" Run stuff by your friends, too, because you already know what everything in the image is "supposed" to be, while it may actually look like something completely different. It sucks when you draw a super-awesome death knight of doom, and your friends and lovers ask why you drew a bunny in a top hat, but it's better than letting it stay like that.
When you get down to sizes like that (and palette sizes, if you're going for that, too) it's really more about having a general idea in mind, going at it, and making dozens of little, careful compromises.
I can suggest the obvious: constantly zooming back to fullsize and saying "does this look like ___?" Run stuff by your friends, too, because you already know what everything in the image is "supposed" to be, while it may actually look like something completely different. It sucks when you draw a super-awesome death knight of doom, and your friends and lovers ask why you drew a bunny in a top hat, but it's better than letting it stay like that.
Castanova
Prophet
Are you any good as a regular artist? If not, I'd start with that.
Assuming you have some level of regular art skill, I'd just collect pixel art examples like the one you're presenting and take very strong inspiration from them. If you want to draw grass, look how it's drawn in Ultima IV or whatever and just copy the technique. There's no, like, special technique for pixel art that once learned will allow you to draw anything. It's more about volume than artistic quality (i.e., both in volume of your experience and volume of tiles you're producing).
Assuming you have some level of regular art skill, I'd just collect pixel art examples like the one you're presenting and take very strong inspiration from them. If you want to draw grass, look how it's drawn in Ultima IV or whatever and just copy the technique. There's no, like, special technique for pixel art that once learned will allow you to draw anything. It's more about volume than artistic quality (i.e., both in volume of your experience and volume of tiles you're producing).
Excommunicator
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2010
- Messages
- 3,524
I would suggest doing them on your own, or finding someone on the Codex who feels like participating in a game in a way that won't demand much of their time for potentially high benefit.
Keep us updated on the project though, Elzair.
Keep us updated on the project though, Elzair.
Goliath
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2004
- Messages
- 17,830
A good tip for doing sprite art is that the challenge increases as you increase the resolution/color depth. That's why I - as a non-artist - paint 16x16 tiles, using a 16 color palette. Remember that you can scale up pixel art without loss of quality. That's what I do, I scale up my 16x16 art to 32x32.
There was a good tutorial on doing sprites for Dominions, or rather, on mixing and matching bits of existing sprites to produce a new one.
Ah, here it is: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=42737
Ah, here it is: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=42737
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