5 ms·

Any advice [for programmers] of how to draw such pixel art [easily]?

by zura 13y ago

petercooper 13y ago
Not a direct answer to your question but if I were in a situation where I needed art like those faces and I didn't want to spend money (and believe me, there are lots of people who wouldn't want to be paid much for great work out there) I'd "cheat" by initially using photos and Photoshop to do the hard work. Indeed, I just gave it a quick go. Searched for "old russian woman" and did some stuff with posterization and pixelation: http://imgur.com/a/Tj2Os http://imgur.com/a/Tj2Os - it's not great, but it took like 3 minutes. Obviously, I'd be looking for photos that could either be heavily edited or were open licensed/public domain if I were doing it for real.
cobalt 13y ago
Hire an artist. Pixel art is actually a very tricky form of art if you want to make anything actually look good. You have to be very meticulous and pay attention to every detail. You have to also have a good understanding of anatomy/shaping as well as lighting and color patterns.
- octo_t 13y ago
  This! I've seen loads of terrible pixel art by people who think it will be easier or look better than other kinds of graphics, and failed miserably.
- acdanger 13y ago
  Not that it isn't difficult, but the creator of Papers, Please pulled off programming, music and art apparently all by himself. I think it's possible to create expressive pixel art with some dedicated practice. Like learning anything new: start with the simplest project you can think of, be prepared for frustration, and show your work to people who will encourage you.
shurcooL 13y ago
Start to draw. Practice. Or hire someone who's good at it.
pre 13y ago
I've had better success using Blender to make the things in 3d then pixilating 'em after. But "better" is still relative. You probably wanna hire an artist.
- Theodores 13y ago
  I second this suggestion although I would suggest to use any decent 3D package that you can get your hands on, Maya 3DS Max, Lightwave have all had a long history as being used for making things for games, even if they are 2D games. There are plenty of 3D models on the internet that you can use, e.g. a pirate boat. You can put together some sensible lighting, e.g. with some fill, a key light, some ambient level or just one glowing thing in the sky, and, from that you can get some sensible shadows, highlights and subtlety to the colours that are flat in your source model. If you want an effect remember that 3D has been used for cartoons for a very long time, there are plenty of plugins and some don't need aeons to learn and master. If you want to have the boat explode you can animate that and tweak the animation until you have it looking good. It is not like you have a set of drawings to manually tweak. Depending on how far you have taken the style (e.g. cartoon plugins) it then becomes a matter of rendering to get your finished bitmaps. But why stop there? Once you think in 3D it becomes intuitive to do a game that way and use existing libraries for things like collision detection.
r4pha 13y ago
I tried the "learn by doing" approach to pixel art with my only android game so far. I honestly thought it would turn our worse than it actually did, but it's still _far_ from what an artist would give me. For reference, here is the pirate ship sprite I made: http://i.imgur.com/nsZpCVf.png http://i.imgur.com/nsZpCVf.png
- bennyg 13y ago
  That's pretty awesome! As an artist, the only thing I would really do is add some lighter/darker browns to emphasize shadows and areas in the light. The same goes with grays on the flag.
  - r4pha 13y ago
    Thanks! Note taken. I'll try to add a few more colors to it as soon as I have some free time.
- Detrus 13y ago
  Good effort and yea it does look like the work of a beginner. Papers Please looks like the work of a seasoned artist. If a programmer wants their game to have a polished look like Papers Please, he has to put in the time into becoming a better artist (not just pixel artist, a general one, because asking for pixel art only is asking how to be a good Android programmer only) That's why hiring an artist is reasonable advice, it will take years to become good yourself.
  - r4pha 13y ago
    Absolutely. Being good takes a lot of time and dedication. Had my main goal been making money, I'd surely have hired an artist. Good thing is for us, programmers, games can be relatively easily reused with new art on top of it.
    - collyw 13y ago
      I guess it is the same as programming. You can get your friends teenage kid to write something in PHP that will work, but if you want quality, you are better off with an experienced professional.
jere 13y ago
Learn the basics of pixel art with some good tutorials. This is my favorite: http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/tsugumo/ http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/tsugumo/ Practice a lot. Get feedback from others in the community (e.g. http://www.reddit.com/r/PixelArt http://www.reddit.com/r/PixelArt ) Have a consistent style and constrain yourself. The faces in Papers, Please are drawn with only 3 colors! It's a lot easier to get something decent looking when you limit your options. You could always hire an artist of course, but that doesn't answer your question and it doesn't allow you to be that lone developer who has fine grained control over everything. I'm no artist and I've been able to make at least workable graphics in a short time period: http://humbit.com/gkh/ http://humbit.com/gkh/
- dragonbonheur 13y ago
  Upvoted for mentioning http://www.petesqbsite.com http://www.petesqbsite.com
ANTSANTS 13y ago
I'm not quite there yet, so take this with a heaping spoonful of salt, but as another programmer who wanted to do pixel art for their games: Forget about pixel art for now and learn how to draw first. Pixel art is not an easy shortcut. It's just another form of art, and a surprisingly difficult one to do well. Trying to do pixel art without knowing how to draw sounds kinda like the people asking "how I make game without programming?" Answer: By stumbling around in the dark a lot and wasting your time. I recommend the Ctrl+Paint video series, if you're interested, which starts off with simple exercises done with pencil and paper, and builds up from there: http://ctrlpaint.com/library/ http://ctrlpaint.com/library/ Going from knowing your way around one field to being at the level of a small child in another is a frustrating but profoundly humbling experience that I sincerely recommend to anyone that's built up a bit of arrogance from being "good at computers" for as long as they can remember. I can honestly say it was a turning point in my life. It's also a very time consuming process, however, that often leaves me thinking that I'm wasting my time starting from scratch instead of focusing on my strengths. Alas, not everyone has connections or artistically talented friends, and most pixel artists I've talked to would rather work on their own games if you aren't paying them up front. Give it a shot anyways, there's a lot more logic to the drawing process than most people assume. If you find it's not for you, ASCII art or one of the various CC-licensed game art collections is probably a better use of your time: http://opengameart.org/ http://opengameart.org/
malbs 13y ago
Not exactly what you're looking for, but certainly Hexels is an interesting tool for creating cool art http://hexraystudios.com/hexels/ http://hexraystudios.com/hexels/

Any advice [for programmers] of how to draw such pixel art [easily]?

by zura 13y ago

Any advice [for programmers] of how to draw such pixel art [easily]?

Not a direct answer to your question but if I were in a situation where I needed art like those faces and I didn't want to spend money (and believe me, there are lots of people who wouldn't want to be paid much for great work out there) I'd "cheat" by initially using photos and Photoshop to do the hard work. Indeed, I just gave it a quick go. Searched for "old russian woman" and did some stuff with posterization and pixelation: http://imgur.com/a/Tj2Os http://imgur.com/a/Tj2Os - it's not great, but it took like 3 minutes. Obviously, I'd be looking for photos that could either be heavily edited or were open licensed/public domain if I were doing it for real.

cobalt 13y ago

Hire an artist. Pixel art is actually a very tricky form of art if you want to make anything actually look good. You have to be very meticulous and pay attention to every detail. You have to also have a good understanding of anatomy/shaping as well as lighting and color patterns.

octo_t 13y ago
This! I've seen loads of terrible pixel art by people who think it will be easier or look better than other kinds of graphics, and failed miserably.
acdanger 13y ago
Not that it isn't difficult, but the creator of Papers, Please pulled off programming, music and art apparently all by himself. I think it's possible to create expressive pixel art with some dedicated practice. Like learning anything new: start with the simplest project you can think of, be prepared for frustration, and show your work to people who will encourage you.

shurcooL 13y ago

Start to draw. Practice. Or hire someone who's good at it.

pre 13y ago

I've had better success using Blender to make the things in 3d then pixilating 'em after. But "better" is still relative. You probably wanna hire an artist.

Theodores 13y ago
I second this suggestion although I would suggest to use any decent 3D package that you can get your hands on, Maya 3DS Max, Lightwave have all had a long history as being used for making things for games, even if they are 2D games. There are plenty of 3D models on the internet that you can use, e.g. a pirate boat. You can put together some sensible lighting, e.g. with some fill, a key light, some ambient level or just one glowing thing in the sky, and, from that you can get some sensible shadows, highlights and subtlety to the colours that are flat in your source model. If you want an effect remember that 3D has been used for cartoons for a very long time, there are plenty of plugins and some don't need aeons to learn and master. If you want to have the boat explode you can animate that and tweak the animation until you have it looking good. It is not like you have a set of drawings to manually tweak. Depending on how far you have taken the style (e.g. cartoon plugins) it then becomes a matter of rendering to get your finished bitmaps. But why stop there? Once you think in 3D it becomes intuitive to do a game that way and use existing libraries for things like collision detection.

r4pha 13y ago

I tried the "learn by doing" approach to pixel art with my only android game so far. I honestly thought it would turn our worse than it actually did, but it's still _far_ from what an artist would give me. For reference, here is the pirate ship sprite I made: http://i.imgur.com/nsZpCVf.png http://i.imgur.com/nsZpCVf.png

bennyg 13y ago
That's pretty awesome! As an artist, the only thing I would really do is add some lighter/darker browns to emphasize shadows and areas in the light. The same goes with grays on the flag.
- r4pha 13y ago
  Thanks! Note taken. I'll try to add a few more colors to it as soon as I have some free time.
Detrus 13y ago
Good effort and yea it does look like the work of a beginner. Papers Please looks like the work of a seasoned artist. If a programmer wants their game to have a polished look like Papers Please, he has to put in the time into becoming a better artist (not just pixel artist, a general one, because asking for pixel art only is asking how to be a good Android programmer only) That's why hiring an artist is reasonable advice, it will take years to become good yourself.
- r4pha 13y ago
  Absolutely. Being good takes a lot of time and dedication. Had my main goal been making money, I'd surely have hired an artist. Good thing is for us, programmers, games can be relatively easily reused with new art on top of it.
  - collyw 13y ago
    I guess it is the same as programming. You can get your friends teenage kid to write something in PHP that will work, but if you want quality, you are better off with an experienced professional.

jere 13y ago

Learn the basics of pixel art with some good tutorials. This is my favorite: http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/tsugumo/ http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/tsugumo/ Practice a lot. Get feedback from others in the community (e.g. http://www.reddit.com/r/PixelArt http://www.reddit.com/r/PixelArt ) Have a consistent style and constrain yourself. The faces in Papers, Please are drawn with only 3 colors! It's a lot easier to get something decent looking when you limit your options. You could always hire an artist of course, but that doesn't answer your question and it doesn't allow you to be that lone developer who has fine grained control over everything. I'm no artist and I've been able to make at least workable graphics in a short time period: http://humbit.com/gkh/ http://humbit.com/gkh/

dragonbonheur 13y ago
Upvoted for mentioning http://www.petesqbsite.com http://www.petesqbsite.com

ANTSANTS 13y ago

I'm not quite there yet, so take this with a heaping spoonful of salt, but as another programmer who wanted to do pixel art for their games: Forget about pixel art for now and learn how to draw first. Pixel art is not an easy shortcut. It's just another form of art, and a surprisingly difficult one to do well. Trying to do pixel art without knowing how to draw sounds kinda like the people asking "how I make game without programming?" Answer: By stumbling around in the dark a lot and wasting your time. I recommend the Ctrl+Paint video series, if you're interested, which starts off with simple exercises done with pencil and paper, and builds up from there: http://ctrlpaint.com/library/ http://ctrlpaint.com/library/ Going from knowing your way around one field to being at the level of a small child in another is a frustrating but profoundly humbling experience that I sincerely recommend to anyone that's built up a bit of arrogance from being "good at computers" for as long as they can remember. I can honestly say it was a turning point in my life. It's also a very time consuming process, however, that often leaves me thinking that I'm wasting my time starting from scratch instead of focusing on my strengths. Alas, not everyone has connections or artistically talented friends, and most pixel artists I've talked to would rather work on their own games if you aren't paying them up front. Give it a shot anyways, there's a lot more logic to the drawing process than most people assume. If you find it's not for you, ASCII art or one of the various CC-licensed game art collections is probably a better use of your time: http://opengameart.org/ http://opengameart.org/

malbs 13y ago

Not exactly what you're looking for, but certainly Hexels is an interesting tool for creating cool art http://hexraystudios.com/hexels/ http://hexraystudios.com/hexels/