General Pixel Art Discussion Thread

[Chesu]

Unfortunately, it seems that some or all of PokeInfuse's work is not his own. While there's nothing inherently wrong with pixel-overs, he appears to have been passing the art off as his own.

Spoiler:

Again, there's nothing wrong with pixel-overs, I just think he should be clear about which designs are and are not his own.

[PokeInfuse]

I dont see how alerting the whole community to the fact i do Pixel Overs (oh the horror) was necessary. If you had VM'ed me and explained that you think i should say they're pixel overs, then i probably wouldn't have thought anything of it and actually updated the first post.
But you decide to try and get me into trouble.
Pixel overs are still a form of Spriting are they not ?

Also, as a side note, nowhere have i been passing these off as my own. I just thought as it's a pixel art area, and these are pixel art, that nobody would mind. It's not like i'm claiming complete rights to it and trying to sell them.
Just VM me next time you have a problem with me.

[Chesu]

As I said, there's nothing wrong with pixel-overs, and I've even written a tutorial to teach non-spriters a basic method for doing it. The issue is that you made no attempt to make it known that the designs weren't yours, and by default anything you post is assumed to be your own work. The most glaring example of this is the WPC, the rules of which include the sprite be drawn from scratch and being an original design.

That being said, I don't have a problem with you; this forum just has strict rules regarding what can be considered art theft.

[Abnegation]

Keep things on topic here guys. In future Chesu, if you have an issue regarding a member, feel free to take it up with a staff member. There's nothing inherently wrong here so it's just going to slide. Just keep things on-topic and about Pixel Art, alright guys? Thanks a bunch!

[Logiedan]

Chesu has proven his case really well, all you really need to do is credit the creator of the artwork and design. Nothing is wrong with pixel-overs and what you're doing, but if you say: "I made the fakemon myself. Here's my artwork and pixel-over." etc. etc. then we're going to run into some problems. You can link to the original artist as well which would be really helpful to prevent more of these situations. This is more or less considered fanart.

If anything, I encourage you to do some more, but like I said, give credit where credit is due. Pixel-overs are considered sprite art but it's not completely scratch work which most pixel artists move onto. I personally am a fan of them but it doesn't help teach you the fundamentals of shading if you are trying to transfer the artwork's shading onto the sprite work.

[C_r_e_a_m_p_u_f_f]

Oh, I think Pixel-Overs are simply plain. It doesn't teach you much, maybe just straightening the edges or something but all the Pixel-Overs I've made were fairly easy. I Pixel-Over a lot, and even my current avatar is one.

So yeah, new topic:

Do you find it hard to get your textures right?

I mean, textures are important right? They basically show you the shading style. The easiest way to get it right is just copy up a similar Pokémon. But sometimes, I just feel that we should do more than that. And I find that hard.

[Logiedan]

Textures are important, but a lot of it is in Pokemon sprites when there's mostly fur. The shading is more simple in Pokemon sprites I guess; textures should be used more, but I think more subtle.

[★Hoenn★]

Fine, so I want to discuss about the new topic : Retypes.

I don't know, it's just my general opinion, but people almost never retype the Pokémon into normal. I've had some tough times with it, so I want to ask, how do you make a Pokémon Normal typed? After I remove it's 'elemental features' and give it a recolour, it just ends up looking unfinished. I don't know why. Any help?

Also, small clarification:

Is it compulsory to retype a Pokémon into a new type created by yourself?

[Chesu]

Retyping is kind of a choose your battles sort of thing. For example, while you could replace Roselia's roses with boxing gloves to make it Fighting, trying to remove Ninjask's bug features would be impossible without almost completely redrawing it. This is true for the majority of Pokemon based on birds, bugs, plants, and sea life, though there are some exceptions; you could fairly easily make Cacturne look like a Normal-type scarecrow. The key to retyping is replacing features rather than removing them, which I think is the problem you're running into. Normal would probably be the most difficult to retype to though, since they don't really have an equivalent to leaves or rocks... They're just normal. If you think about the general shape of the part that you want to replace, however, you should be able to some up with something (a ribbon, a balloon, a tuft of hair) that will work.

As for the WPC, yes, I believe that the goal is to come up with an entirely new type and to retype a Pokemon to that.

[kinataki]

i did retyping a lot, like a lot, but my works are lost and i can tell you about retyping a pokemon to normal.

it is very difficult, since normal type pokemons came in every shape, every colour. but they have things like this in common


pink-pinkish colour(yellow comes second)
fur. lots of fur.
puffy things
blank areas.(like consider a ursaring, it has a very very big and blank body right?)
being not too much spiky(like not having horns or something like that)

these things make a pokemon to look like they are normal type imho. they aren't %100 accurate homever, but i guess when retyping a pokemon, if you use these things carefully, pokemon will look like normal type.

[★Hoenn★]

Yeah, thanks, I'll try that. Fur is easy, but I think it's the in-body pattern that matters. Most non-Normal types have exterior features but Normals are the ones which have stripes, patterns etc. Also, it's good to emulate the animal base more, right?

[kinataki]

yeah i guess so. water type pokemons and normal type pokemons are mostly based on real life animals.

[blackmoonflower]

I has a sad. I didn't think my entry for WPC #25 looked like a Neopets pony.

*eyes Chesu*

Mimicking Gen V's shading techniques is hard to do and make it not look flat. Oh well. I tried.

[Chesu]

Well, I'm sure you wouldn't be subliminally affected by anything and draw it like a pony unintentionally...

*eyes moonflower's signature*

...Right?

[blackmoonflower]

Funny guy. Congrats on the victory, though.

[kinataki]

why no wpc this week, i loved those things

[Retribution]

Kinataki, there's a notice at the top of the section saying why there isn't one this week: "WPC #27 will not be started until Sunday March 10th 2013 due to time constraints. Thank you." Don't worry; I love them too ahaha. xD

[Logiedan]

Ugh. Getting the poll up for WPC #27 was so disorganized. But I really enjoyed the entries and theme. :D

[Chesu]

In WPC #27, I'm kinda disappointed that there aren't more entries incorporating shamrocks into their designs. I know that the main thing is recoloring, and that the shamrocks are more of a small detail to keep things interesting, but it's disappointing that most of the sprites have just the little 5x5 shamrock Logiedan used as an example.

[Logiedan]

I agree with that, I was surprised most entries was just using my example and not coming up with their own ways to include the shamrocks which was disappointing. Some were not badly hidden to be honest, like I really loved the shamrock spores/pollen from the Jumpluff recolour and I thought that was really clever.

[★Hoenn★]

Originally Posted by Logiedan

I agree with that, I was surprised most entries was just using my example and not coming up with their own ways to include the shamrocks which was disappointing. Some were not badly hidden to be honest, like I really loved the shamrock spores/pollen from the Jumpluff recolour and I thought that was really clever.

Half way through I realized that, which is why I made one of mine have a custom three-leaf-shamrock, although I never thought of making them big.

(Could you direct me to the poll? I'm for some reason not finding it...) Seemed that I was looking for it in Pixel Projects... xD

[kinataki]

Originally Posted by Logiedan

I agree with that, I was surprised most entries was just using my example and not coming up with their own ways to include the shamrocks which was disappointing. Some were not badly hidden to be honest, like I really loved the shamrock spores/pollen from the Jumpluff recolour and I thought that was really clever.

i thought that we must use the shamrocks in the example for our sprites... now i am looking at the sprites and seeing the shamrock designs of other people... why am i so stupid :/

[Logiedan]

Originally Posted by WPC #27

Also, you must hide or put a three-leaved or four-leaved shamrock in each sprite in some way, maybe make it hold a three-leaved shamrock or have it hidden in it's shading.

I thought I made it clear with giving some examples like hiding the leaves with holding it, shading. Maybe mentioning custom patterns could've helped. ):

[GolurkIsDaBomb]

When I read it I thought we weren't really supposed to do any scratch on the sprite itself, so I tried to make it as unchanged as possible. :l Wish I had realized XD

[Discordant]

I thought we were meant to include it like the example. Gah. >:C