General Pixel Art Discussion Thread

[Lornami]

Ah excuse me, my error. TinEye. I probably got confused with TinierMe.

On google I kept narrowing and narrowing down date searches, until the oldest this image has ever been on the internet is in a 2009 tumblr post, which links to a blog, which is among the three more pages in early 2010 before it's everywhere. It probably got updated, which is why it's linked from a 2009 page. (Not linking to the blog because it has NSFW content.)

The other blog is a news blog and all the tumblr pages do not seem like artist blogs.
Also, specifically the news blog's translation about page says

"Greetings
This blog is link free.
Link to this blog is not as long as they stick to freedom or without contact and reporting.
This blog summarizes the thread management people were anxious plate and plate breaking news animation of 2ch, mainly from plate light novel."

It's Japanese.
It's on a blog that reports stuff from 2ch.

My best educated guess is that you're not going to find the original artist unless from word of mouth, as posting on a ch and then trying to claim it later would be a mess in terms of searching.

Tried my best! o7

[mineox100]

Hey guys, I was just turning the outlines of a sprite to black. Then, I randomly sepia it in Paint.net, messed around with the Hue and Saturation, and somehow the outlines got their shading back! Is it just me or is Paint.net an outline shading machine?

Oh, and I have no idea who those sprites belong to. They do look good though.

[Sydian]

Ahhh, its something to do with Sydian I think? I remember on the sprite discussions thread someone posting this image and mentioned making it using Sydian's device... but I have no idea what this is.

I'm possibly no help atall lol, but its worth a shot :]

Just want to clarify I have nothing to do with those sprites. I love them, but I didn't make them. lol

[Logiedan]

Originally Posted by mineox100

Hey guys, I was just turning the outlines of a sprite to black. Then, I randomly sepia it in Paint.net, messed around with the Hue and Saturation, and somehow the outlines got their shading back! Is it just me or is Paint.net an outline shading machine? :P

Oh, and I have no idea who those sprites belong to. They do look good though.

Does Paint.net work well with pixel art? I've never used it before and I thought it was a simple and free graphics program.

Also, I'm sure this would help, Penetrait

The sprites were a project started in another website, so it's not just one creator but a bunch of spriters and pixel artists working together to devamp gen 2 + to the RGB-style. Involuntary-Twitch (who incidentally is a member in PC as well) is one of those spriters and creators of the project (look at her deviantart description).

[HoodieDoodie]

Originally Posted by Sydian

Just want to clarify I have nothing to do with those sprites. I love them, but I didn't make them. lol

Ahh, I see. It just confused me when someone posted them lol x)

[mineox100]

Originally Posted by Logiedan

Does Paint.net work well with pixel art? I've never used it before and I thought it was a simple and free graphics program.

It doesn't really work great with Pixel Arts...
But it may change your sprite's color without having to make another completely new pallete (Hue/Saturation)!
It's good program for other things though.

[Logiedan]

Originally Posted by mineox100

It doesn't really work great with Pixel Arts...
But it may change your sprite's color without having to make another completely new pallete (Hue/Saturation)!
It's good program for other things though.

Changing the Hue/Saturation with an option like that isn't always the best. It's better if you manually choose your own colours, and some pixel artists use hue-shifting which makes sprites look horrendous when their hue/saturation changed with that kind of feature.

[Froslass_Maniac]

I start to hate how most people here tell themselves how they are the worst spriters in the community. It can be very discouraging for beginners and I gotta admit it's starting to discourage me too... I've been looking around after I haven't been very active in the Pixelart community but I barely see any bad spriters.

[Logiedan]

I agree. People should be coming out with their work with a more positive attitude when dealing with showcasing and getting critique. But I remember when I was discouraging myself early in spriting, so many of us are usually like that.

[Ach7AC]

Just a quick question, but what makes a bad sprite, well, bad? Honestly, I've checked several "bad" fakedexes (Including the infamous Quartz and Topaz.) However, even though the spriter clearly needed more practice, I couldn't understand what went wrong with them. The shading and outlines seemed to be decent and some fakemon even had excellent detail, but I thought the problem was the concepts (Such as a Hellenistic pillar with its tongue sticking out.) So, what exactly goes wrong with fakemon-filled hacks?

[Logiedan]

It really depends on what you mean by bad? But like Quartz, during that time there wasn't a very evolved style such as the Black & White spriting style where the shading is very simple and there are dark outline. During Quartz, the style was very much like the Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald style where there would be more colours and a much more complex shading than it is currently and many, many highlights.

I guess the reason we call Quartz sprites bad nowadays because we have a new style and most of us believe that the new Black & White sprites are the epitome of Pokemon sprites. We pay too much attention to the new sprites and we end up comparing all of the new fakedex's and new fakemon to the current official style. But I think the concept is very important as well when it comes to judging a sprite because I remember seeing Babos from Pokemon Quartz and that thing was... unusual.

[Ach7AC]

Originally Posted by Logiedan

It really depends on what you mean by bad? But like Quartz, during that time there wasn't a very evolved style such as the Black & White spriting style where the shading is very simple and there are dark outline. During Quartz, the style was very much like the Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald style where there would be more colours and a much more complex shading than it is currently and many, many highlights.

I guess the reason we call Quartz sprites bad nowadays because we have a new style and most of us believe that the new Black & White sprites are the epitome of Pokemon sprites. We pay too much attention to the new sprites and we end up comparing all of the new fakedex's and new fakemon to the current official style. But I think the concept is very important as well when it comes to judging a sprite because I remember seeing Babos from Pokemon Quartz and that thing was... unusual.

I do not think Baro's style of spriting is bad. It's just that his Pokemon seemed to look... out of place, to understate it. His spriting skills are actually quite good, if you pay attention to his shading. And I do not mean "bad" by my opinion, just by the general community(But then again, I did use youtube for feedback, which was likely my biggest mistake.) So basically, in order to make a "good" sprite you need to pay attention to your audience? Perhaps I should put a few of my sprites in display to get some feedback. I haven't decided whether to create my own style or to attempt to create a Pokemon-ish one yet.

[Logiedan]

Note:
Contest Discussion has been enabled in this thread. So now everyone can talk about future weekly pixel contests, current ones and past. Please keep in mind the Pixel Art Rules.

[Spherical Ice]

Huh, I really expected -ty-'s to place at least third place. I kinda feel guilty now lol

[-ty-]

Originally Posted by Spherical Ice

Huh, I really expected -ty-'s to place at least third place. I kinda feel guilty now lol

haha, don't feel guilty!!!

Yours was very cute, and the idea that golette's energy source and soul was fire, was creative, as opposed to the obvious, take a pokemon and add flames to it.

I think I restricted myself a bit with cherubi, although it turned-out decently.

BTW, I think you should have entered that Cradily with a bit of alteration to the joint between the flame neck and body. The singed prongs on its head would have been a showstopper!
Ugh, I should have taken inspiration from this and singed my Cherubi's leaves



Question...If we suggest a theme in a general sense, are we still able to compete in that competition. For example, if I suggested doing an amalgamation with a certain palette restriction, would that make me ineligible to compete. For the record, amalgamations are not my cup of tea, just used as an example.

[Chesu]

Oh wow, I wasn't expecting to win at all; I thought ty would take first for sure. This was voted on by members, right? I've looked all over, and can't find mention of a voting thread anywhere...

[Plumpyfoof]

I second Ty's question. Although I don't really believe it fair for the person who suggested the theme to compete.
I mean I could have a totally awesome sprite of a Triceratops just lying around on my computer and I could suggest the theme be an extinct pre-historic scratch sprite and win my own contest every time.

Still I'd like to know the official rule on it.

[Logiedan]

I feel that those who want to suggest a theme should be able to compete, but even when entering a contest with your weekly theme; you should be entering it clean without use past sprites. So basically people should only be entering sprites made specifically for that WPC.

I think a vague theme is most likely helpful to prevent any unfairness, but having a very exact theme with not many options and choices would make it unfair.

Also, -ty-'s entry was very well made, but I think -ty- put it very well himself; he restricted himself. When a theme lets you have the option to choose any 649 Pokemon, it's convenient, but the choice really matters. The idea was clever but not enough, this is a pixel contest after all. Although it was a simple yet clever idea, it comes down to colour choices, shading, outline and all that jazz. (Not saying those were the problems with -ty-'s entry, but stuff like that is a big deal in the WPC)

[-ty-]

Exactly Logeidan. I didn't even touch the leaves, if I actually singed them, then I would have completely transformed the sprite. As is, I really only did alter the bottom half. Also, the contest awards were allocated appropriately. Chesu's sprite is clean and brilliant; furthermore, I thought his sprite out-shined the original sprite! Also, Thanks for getting back to me about the contest suggestion rules. My idea is presented below.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Silhouette Challenge

You know that feeling when a new generation of pokemon are introduced, and GameFreak teases us with those silhoettes? Have you ever tried to guess what the concept was, or image what you wanted that concept to be? Well, you will have your chance to replicate that feeling with the Silhouette Challenge! A random and unique silhouette of a non-existing pokemon must be brought to life by color and shading to form a unique pokemon. The form can be flipped and turned as long as the silhoutte is not altered; thereby giving much more ability for the artist to interpret the ambiguous figure.

Here is the same image flipped and rotated as an EXAMPLE:

Do you see any ideas?

Do you see a llama, sunflower, snail, lion, sloth, octopus, or any other animal/concept?
TRY THIS OUT BEFORE YOU CLICK THE SPOILER

Here is what I came up with:

Spoiler:

IF it sounds like fun, please let us know in the thread! Thanks

[Plumpyfoof]

Well you have the power to decide what is and isn't 'vague' enough I suppose, Logiedan.
Thanks for the clarification.

Also that's a really creative idea by Ty, this is exactly why any of my contest ideas wouldn't float, Haha!

[danaxe]

wow i gotta medal!
so unexpected!
yay yay yay

so let's start the wpc 22 that i think skippend a very boring week

[Logiedan]

I think pre-historic scratch sprite is a very viable theme because it's not as specific per se, but it's better than a "4-legged pre-historic dinosaur scratch sprite" then you go and have colour restrictions being "green hues only" then we may run into problems.

[-ty-]

I LOVE THIS WEEKS WPC THEME!

Great idea to kick-off Fall.

[Plumpyfoof]

Umm, on my side of the world it's Spring. Can I do Spring or do I have to do 'Fall' (Autumn) as well?

[Logiedan]

Originally Posted by Plumpyfoof

Umm, on my side of the world it's Spring. Can I do Spring or do I have to do 'Fall' (Autumn) as well?

You have to do Fall/Autumn. It's the theme, and it doesn't really state that it's following any format or time-based places. Honestly, for me it's the beginning of September and for a lot of people in North America, it means Fall/Autumn or beginning of a school year so that's the main reason the theme was chosen. I plan to do other season-based themes as well such as Winter in the future even though it may or may not be very close or not close at all to Winter

tl;dr autumn theme