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[Shook]

I think yours look a bit too much like rocks, Shook.

HOW FITTING

i'm a geology student :U

Anyhoo, thanks for the example! Definitely going to try that circle approach ASAP. I need to stop getting lazier anyways.

aaaaaaaaaand

behold



This is rather frustrating. OK, gon' take a step back and go really simple, as Glyph suggested.

HERE WE GO



i also drew a loaf of bread for comparison

Anyways, the bottom one is unique in that it's one of the very few clouds i've drawn that i actually like somewhat. Went ahead and tried shading it as three spheres mashed into each other, you tell me how it looks. :U

[GlyphGryph]

I think the bottom is my favorite of yours so far too. Thats the basic, "simply" cloud base used in countless backgrounds I've seen, drifting by.


Now, the first one, you've actually got a bit of the circle effect going well, but it looks like a big sheet of bubble wrap. You need to have that clean bottom - almost all clouds have that, it's a product of how the atmosphere works - a clean base, with either gentle turnovers or wisps of some sort at the end. You don't want clouds to look that flat on top (unless you're doing streak clouds or something talled enough to reach the next layer, which you're not there)

They don't have to have their widest point in the middle, but the narrowest points should deifnitely be at the end.

[Lord Dullard]

I like them both! As Glyph says, I think the first one needs some work on the bottom - overall it's still a big improvement, though. The bottom one has a kind of simple 8-bit/cartoony elegance that I like, as well.

[Muffindog]

I think this one looks the best. Also, downloaded your game and played a bit and died on lvl 3. :c I suck at it. I'll play it tomorrow some more.

Oh, and did you use the GML or drag&drop? Or a mix of the two?

[Shook]

Purely drag & drop (with an ungodly amount of variables). I bet my newly acquired co-programmer uses GML though, because he actually knows it.
Glad to hear you're giving it a proper try, it's a meaningful project to me. c:

In other news, i think i finally found a type of clouds i like! (still requires a little bit of tweaking, but all in due time)



Fairly simple to draw, looks way smoother than it has any right to, and reminds me inexplicably of Rayman and Worms (both integral parts of my childhood). Can't quite wrap my head around those super good clouds in the image that Dullard showed, so i might as well stick with the ones i can (for now, as with any artist i seek to improve my craft, however slowly it might be). Huge thanks for your help by the way, if you hadn't popped around, i'd still be waddling around with turd/jello/coal clouds. (further notes still much appreciated, of course)
Doesn't even look super bad when brutalized by a black outline either!



Except for a few jaggies of course, but this was just an experiment. For the record, ellipse tool was used for the base circles, which is not entirely optimal, but still passable with a few fixes.

[GlyphGryph]

Now you've just got to get stacking down, which isn't hard, and you've mastered the white fluff.

Actually, you're pretty much on the verge of my own skill right now, so there's not a whole lot left I can teach you.

But those are some pretty good looking clouds, I think.

Once you've got basic stacking down and looking good, try stacking up and to the side, extending beyond the "base", and you'll be getting incrementally closer to the fancy clouds from earlier. Making bigger circles full of little circles might not be a bad route to explore next either.

Also, here's an example of the kind of clouds I tend to make:



Edit: Err... let's try that again with a background color, heh...

Here we go:


So you can tell me if you want any more advice or not.

Also, this is still just FLUFFY clouds - Mine are cumulus, yours up there is more like stratocumulus. The difference is that cumulus clouds are puffier and piled higher, while the stratocumulus are elongated and not as tall.

Stratus clouds have a completely different approach to them, although nimbus clouds are in many ways just super cumulus types with more complicated stacking (the fancy picture linked was of that type, I'd say) I have trouble with vertical cloud structures in general, though.

Ice clouds (high level Cirrus clouds) tend to be even more different, super wispy. Closer to stratus, I guess.

Stratus clouds can be a lot of fun to draw, and are pretty easy with a brush but not so much with pixels. I've never quite got the hang of getting them to look good, anyway.

[Shook]

how do you know so much about clouds

Actually, nevermind that, good thing you're here.
That's a really nice cloud you've got going there! The shading's a bit rougher than what i'd usually do (read: yours looks awesome), but hey, we're different people. Before i get going with all those crazy cloud types, i'd better get my basic cumulus going. So, here goes!



Tried a bit of that stacking thing. It's painfully obvious that it consists of a bunch of spheres, but hey, it looks cartoony (and like cottage cheese). The outlined version is just to see how it looks when brutalized by the typical black outline i tend to use. Perhaps i should get used to making the outline not-quite-black again, because it stands out like coal on a glacier.

[GlyphGryph]

Outline should be silver, duh.

That's looking pretty good, I think. A bit TOO smooth, maybe, even for the style - Maybe consider adding in a number of smaller orbs that don't touch the edge, maybe, to break up those longer outlines? Worth a try. And they don't need to be perfectly round, either! You want to give it a bit of ... horizontal pull, I guess I'd call it. Stretch things out a little bit. Clouds aren't perfect, after all.

And it doesn't need to be strictly horizontal, just get an action line or curve, avoid dips, and try to let your cloud emphasize that line a bit, maybe? I'd also like to see a go with a third depth of shading thrown in.

[Shook]

Well, technically there are three colors, the bottom line is darker.
However, nowadays it's actually pretty infrequent that i operate with more than two main colors of shading; three if i need to do speculars, and four if i'm feeling really ambitious. Using this as an example, every distinct color shown has only 3-4 variations (plus an outline), and this is a hyper-ambitious project for me (which is still in progress eh wot). I guess i could just use that darker base color in the upper cloud too, but i'm not quite sure where i should be placing it. OH WELL, i'll probably figure it out when i try.

Also yeah, gonna try out some internal circles next time, might end up looking really net. Might also try some variation on the base line, though my brain seems fixated on a horizontal view upon the world.

But, for now, sleepytime. It is 3 AM and i have class at 9 AM tomorrow. I am probably going to die from sleep deprivation.

[Skyrunner]

Wow... how do pixel artists Do Their Stuff so well? ):

<is awed>

I kinda sorta gave up on spriting stuff because it felt like I was horrible.

[GlyphGryph]

I didn't mean curve the bottom line, I meant give the rest of the cloud sort of an action curve, and then try to distort your circles to emphasize that.

Eh, nevermind, heh. I'm just happy to say I helped at all.

[Shook]

Oh, well that makes sense. Didn't quite get what you meant at first.

@Skyrunner: Well, like all other artists i s'pose, though i wouldn't consider myself any good. :U
Also, if i had a penny for every time i felt like i was horrible, i'd have... a lot of pennies. Like, an awful lot of them. Maybe THOUSANDS OF PENNIES. Point is, don't let that feeling get you down, because any budding artist is just an unpolished diamond. (which is not a horrible thing, add polish and you have a... POLISHED DIAMOND)
Except myself, of course. I'd compare myself to some kind of basalt.

Also, i'll be gone for most of the weekend, so sadly i can't practice clouds (or pixel art, for that matter) for a few days. Feel free to contemplate this fine art while i'm out getting hammered, though.

[Shook]

And now for something that isn't a spaceship.



it's a DUCK

i mean dinosaur

And it shows how i usually shade things. After the flat colors, i just jot down the rough outline of the darker areas, then make some manual fixes after the fill bucket comes around. It works surprisingly well. What i can see, however, is that i need to practice highlights a bit.

[freeformschooler]

Man, you sure are good at drawing snout-like heads. I stink at that.

[Shook]

OBJECTION

I bet you could draw a really mean dinosaur. The only reason that this guy is marginally less worse than everything else i've made is because it's a dinosaur. Dinosaurs are awesome, y'know. Oh and because humans are ridiculously hard to draw in a way that doesn't land them squarely in the uncanny valley.



Actually, i can't believe how well that gentleman turned out, but that might be because i didn't set out with the intent of realism. Or perhaps i'm possessed, which would kind of suck.

EDIT FOR FIXING GRAMMATICAL FALLACIES