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Total Members Voted: 52

[ShadowHammer]

I made a banner for the competition, but I'm not too happy with how it turned out. I'll post it anyway, I guess.

[Tiruin]

I'd be willing to do it--if it doesn't appear along Kal/banner this weekend then assume somethiing horrible happened that let me not do it (I'm not claiming to do it just pinning it down on my to-do list)

Um, did something horrible happen?
To everyone on this thread?

> Was very sad that I couldn't attend a burial of relative due to school reasons >_>
> Was very sad in general.
> Also sick. Cough with argh. And blood. Good thing: No TB.
> Still made progress despite lack of motivation.
> You're ok with silly pixels right?
> Can the banner be around 500~ width?

[Cptn Kaladin Anrizlokum]

I'd be willing to do it--if it doesn't appear along Kal/banner this weekend then assume somethiing horrible happened that let me not do it (I'm not claiming to do it just pinning it down on my to-do list)

Um, did something horrible happen?
To everyone on this thread?

> Was very sad that I couldn't attend a burial of relative due to school reasons >_>
> Was very sad in general.
> Also sick. Cough with argh. And blood. Good thing: No TB.
> Still made progress despite lack of motivation.
> You're ok with silly pixels right?
> Can the banner be around 500~ width?

Yeah, that's fine. Get better soon Tiruin!

[Parsely]

> Can the banner be around 500~ width?

If you like! The width limit was largely to keep some people from overextending themselves, but also in the interest of making it fit on most people's browsers without having to scroll. Keep it under 1000!

I made a banner for the competition, but I'm not too happy with how it turned out. I'll post it anyway, I guess.

It's a very good start! I gave you guys lots of time for a reason, you should all be posting your WIPs and asking for advice! Only the end product will be judged.

Your highlights are very nice but the overall shading job isn't so great. The banding on the empty vat on the left is particularly egregious, you oughtn't to ever shade that way.

Spoiler: Banding (click to show/hide)

You can see the obvious transition between colors on the leftmost image. There are techniques you can use to avoid that, such as dithering.

The wall and floor tiles are obvious and repetitive, and your light sources are conflicting. On all the vats we see a distinct light source coming in from the front-right, but all the wall tiles appear to be lit from directly in front, and the floor is lit from something above. It removes all depth from the scene and it makes the occupants appear to be floating in mid-air.

Also, there is no shadow at all cast by the monitor, the vats or the guy at the keyboard.

Your best solution to the lighting issues is to pick a direction (top-right, top-left) and shade everything using that as a rule. You can get by without having to make many changes to the vats or tubes if you fix the floor and walls.

all the wall tiles appear to be lit from directly in front

This is called pillow shading, it's bad and should be avoided in almost every case.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Above image is from: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=8624.0

All the things I've covered are in the tutorial linked in the OP. It tells you about things to avoid when you're spriting.

[Tiruin]

> Can the banner be around 500~ width?

If you like! The width limit was largely to keep some people from overextending themselves, but also in the interest of making it fit on most people's browsers without having to scroll. Keep it under 1000!

._.
You do permit usage of many different colors, right? Not just limited to 8/16/32/64 bits?

[Parsely]

Nope, no color limits.

As a rule pixel arts like low color counts so I don't recommend being too crazy with colors.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I wanna say this image from Hyper Light Drifter has less than 10 colors total including black*.

*It's actually something like a really dark violet, but your eyeball can't tell the difference!

[ShadowHammer]

I made a banner for the competition, but I'm not too happy with how it turned out. I'll post it anyway, I guess.

It's a very good start! I gave you guys lots of time for a reason, you should all be posting your WIPs and asking for advice! Only the end product will be judged.

Your highlights are very nice but the overall shading job isn't so great. The banding on the empty vat on the left is particularly egregious, you oughtn't to ever shade that way.

Spoiler: Banding (click to show/hide)

You can see the obvious transition between colors on the leftmost image. There are techniques you can use to avoid that, such as dithering.

The wall and floor tiles are obvious and repetitive, and your light sources are conflicting. On all the vats we see a distinct light source coming in from the front-right, but all the wall tiles appear to be lit from directly in front, and the floor is lit from something above. It removes all depth from the scene and it makes the occupants appear to be floating in mid-air.

Also, there is no shadow at all cast by the monitor, the vats or the guy at the keyboard.

Your best solution to the lighting issues is to pick a direction (top-right, top-left) and shade everything using that as a rule. You can get by without having to make many changes to the vats or tubes if you fix the floor and walls.

all the wall tiles appear to be lit from directly in front

This is called pillow shading, it's bad and should be avoided in almost every case.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Above image is from: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=8624.0

All the things I've covered are in the tutorial linked in the OP. It tells you about things to avoid when you're spriting.

Alright, I'll see what I can do about it. Thanks for the advice!

[Parsely]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

-image removed by me at some point- :p

A screen from my sidescroller (my first game! ) while testing projectiles.

[hops]

Nearest neighbor resize pls

[Parsely]

Nearest neighbor resize pls

I enlarged the screen with BBCode, I was testing it at native res. Making sure all the wiggly bits were workin' proper like-

[Shook]

so i herd u liek low-colour cylinders



3 colours. :v
Honestly though, having 4-5 shades per colour is probably the most comfortable, and if you zoom in on, say, this particular work of a really good artist (who also uses dithering to great effect), you'll notice that there are surprisingly few unique colours. While you obviously shouldn't outright handicap yourself by using limited colours (at least not beyond self-imposed challenges), using fewer colours is easier for the artist to keep track of and also helps to make the entire image more coherent. Also, supposedly a slightly off black is easier on the eyes than regular pitch black, although i personally can't see the difference. :v

no i have no idea who i'm talking to get off my back i just wanted to draw a cylinder okay

[GiglameshDespair]

When is the banner due? I need to know so I can either keep/stop procrastinating and do it.

[mastahcheese]

That's a pretty darn good cylinder, Shook.

I personally suck at shading, which is why you never see it in any game I've illustrated, so I'm very envious of people who can shade well.

[GiglameshDespair]

Shadin' ain't no easy thing.

[Parsely]

The "always use an off-black/off-white" rule is partially for the benefit of the colors that might be around your sprite. Say if your image is on a website or inside your program or in a game that's full screen with a low aspect ratio (you get black bars on the sides), white and black are really common colors and its not desirable for your sprite's pure black/white to match up with something that's in the background.

Spoiler: For Example (click to show/hide)

The other reason is because whitish purple > light purple > purple > dark purple > almost black purple makes it-

Spoiler: smoooooooth (click to show/hide)

When is the banner due? I need to know so I can either keep/stop procrastinating and do it.

October 31st, 11:59PM