Tutorial_01: Rules of Pixeling

Pixeling, like many other mediums, is a form of art that looks good if you mostly follow a certain set of guidelines. This tutorial will explain to you the 'guidelines' that help make a piece look good. Although this is the most boring of the tutorials, it is essential that you know everything here.

Lineart: The very basics of pixeling. If your lineart does not look good, your picture will not look good. The best way to get better lineart is to study objects and animals and most of all practice, practice, practice.


Colors: Coloring is very key to your pixel art's success. You should keep the saturation of your sprites below 170 otherwise it hurts the eyes to look at it. If you do not know how to lower the saturation of your sprite simply pm me.


Shading: The second most important part of pixeling is getting the shading right. If you don't do a good job shading, it is hard for the onlookers eyes to tell where it is and where the light source is. All you have to do is pretend the object is 3d and dertermine where the light will hit and where the light wont hit.


Programs: I almost forgot this one. There are many programs that you can use.
1. Game Maker Built in: I hate it and it doesn't do saturation. 1/5
2. MS Paint: Da best in my mind. Has pretty much everything you need. 5/5
3. Adobe Photoshop: Very good in my opinion if you know how to get it set up for pixeling. 4/5

Assignment: Pixel me a bird. Any bird! Post your work here. This is mostly just to get a feel for where you all are.

Credit: Chessmasterriley

Introducing Pengy! The Nice little penguin.

Let me know my stance, poor,fair,good :D

Gaming4JC
P.S: Next time tell people a linky on the GMC, everyone thought you quit, or atleast I did...

here is my birdy its a cardinal

(i dont think its very good)

hey does anyone care if my brother is in the class he can be on my profile and hell post his work in my posts

where's the shading?lol

Here's my bird. I'm pretty new at this so it's not that good...



Update: And this red one:



But it's good for me. :)

here is my bird:

it losed some color in paint

Roko, try saving as PNG. Also you need to clean the lines up a bit. Round of corners and stuff.

I'll post mine some time.

-DM

Birdie!


Oh and btw: paint is one of the worst programs you can use for pixeling.
Try using graphics gale (free, has anything you need) or photoshop (if you have it.).
I don't know what makes paint the 'best program for pixeling'. It's just uncomfortable :/
but that's just my opinion.

Hi. I did a seagull. it took about 10 mins and i didnt use any of the programs you said. I used paint shop pro 4. its way better coz it adds more advance as paint but less advance than photoshop. and if you want a cool background it has heaps of types of styles with the paint bucket. any way heres my seagull.






EDIT:

heres a better one.

9_6, You should be teaching. ;) That is amazing. Nice work.

-DM

This is mine:

I think this lesson didn't help me such as I tought this forum would do :(.
I used GM to draw the bird, and after I used the Titleset Maker to make the gradient effect.

don't worry this is just to see where everyone is. it's not like this is the only thing you'll learn ;)

I shaded it just zoom in, in MSPaint, and you can see it.
BTW TheGameMaker, your's look very similiar to mine, you didn't simply edit mine did you (XD)

Gaming4JC

meh... a pelican... i think ill give him a cigar later lol but its just him with some basic shading

6 colours not including bg

No, I didn't. I made it myself. Don't you see? If it was similar, the bird wouldn't be so fat :P.

Was mine any good. it only took 10 mins but what would you rate it for 10 min seagull?

Not very good

Was mine any good for like the third pixel drawing I ever competed? Lol

when does this nee to be finfished? I can't do mine today but i will do tomorow or so....

I won't be able to finish mine till next week. I'm going away on Monday. I'll see what I can get done tomorrow.

-DM

Ok. I made a parrot. I think its pretty good for a first try. I spent like 45 minutes on it so... I have a few questions though. Are we allowed to use gradients? I used some... I can redu it if I have to.
Anyways...

Edit: Fixed up the eye.

this is my blue jay
im horrible at pixel art

@Stryke: You're not as bad as you think.
Only the feet could use some work, the rest is fine.

Well thanks ^^
I wouldn't be any good as a teacher though, I think.
Past events have shown that I'm very bad at explaining and/or teaching things.

Isn't it better to use shapes the just flat out draw it? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think using shapes gives it a nice smooth outline. Example: I made an oval and rotated to make a nice smooth beak.

Teachers: correct me if im wrong. Just my opinion.

Okay. I forgot to tell you. If you want me to give you pointers on your work, pm me the picture. You will get a full grading. If you simply just want to take the lessons to get practice, you dont have to.

BTW everyones looks nice. Great job!

@9_6...i cant see your picture and paint , i think, is the best program to use. GG is okay...i like paints simplicity though.

Paints 'simplicity' only slows me down.
It can only do very, very basic things.
I think i'm just addicted to layers (even simple oekaki programs have at least 2), propper zoom scales (paint only has one) and masks...
Besides paint was made by Microsoft and its name contains the word 'pain', but if you like it, fine.
It's not the pencil that makes good pictures, it's the artist, right? :)

Here's my bird:

well, this is my "attempt" i was very impressed that it looked like a bird, what does everyone else think, this is my first attempt at shading and i think it looked ok, but im not using this in anygame i make... except maybe as a picture on a wall lol



also its supposed to be a duck, but the bill isn't long enough i know

done my penguin! his name is Mr. Toomuchantialiasing. jk. i havnt got a name for him. i was able to narrow him down to 8 colors (not including BG), this is my second time ever trying to limit my colors.

Very nice! Love them all. Remember, if you want any tips or something about your drawing, pm me!

Made another one.



=)

Update:

Borderless:

BTW: I'm using Gale, very useful for dithering. First one was in paint, this one in gale.

Why are you taking this class again?

Purplg did you use the auto dither feature?

No, didn't know it had one.

@9_6 very nice work im sure you could be teaching, I actually thought this before we started class having looked at some of your work. However a point of improvement for that piece would perhaps be to reduce the colours used. The piece you have done is 25 colours, this could be a mistake caused by photoshop or unintentionally by you, however it can easily be reduced to 14 or 16 colours with relative ease.

Here is my new bird: :)

@Sohashu: I've never taken this class before.
@zeid: I've actually used 15 colours. Photoshop seemed to have messed that up :P
That's one of the downsides of it, it messes with the palette if you don't look after it.

CMR couldn't see my picture so I've uploaded it to imageshack.
I don't like imageshack because it keeped giving me errors when i was using an older version of opera and keeps directing to that imageshack homepage which takes forever to load.
Besides images on imageshack get deleted over time. This can be annoying when browsing through older topics but... well here it is:

LINK

Ok here is my bird.

I couldnt be bothered dithering.
10 colour palette.

-ACL

I meant 9_6 that you shouldn't be taking this class.

I see so you asked why I take this class and not why i take it 'again'.
Well my answer would be: I'm taking it for the same reason as everyone here takes it.
To improve my pixel skills.
Do you think joining this was the wrong decision?

no, it always helps to relearn the basics.