General Pixel Art Discussion Thread

Started by Logiedan December 1st, 2010 5:42 PM
  • 32768 views
  • 200 replies
Age 5
Male
battlefield
Seen September 28th, 2022
Posted January 9th, 2022
2,982 posts
14.2 Years

Introduction


So I decided the spriter's showcase thread was basically a forum for criticism on scratch sprites. This thread is to discuss about pixel art in general, styles, tools, references, etc. There are some rules you'll need to follow however.

Rules


All Pokécommunity rules apply.

Showcasing
Please don't showcase sprites here, this is a discussion thread. If you would like to showcase your sprite(s), post it in the Spriter's Showcase thread or create your own showcase thread if you have four scratch sprites to showcase.

Topic
Stay on topic, if you would like to bring up another topic then do so but include a response to the previous topic.

Help
If you need help regarding tools, terminology or have a question including those topics, feel free to post. Asking for constructive criticism for your sprites in this thread is prohibited. Such posts will be deleted.

Advertising
Like the general Pokécommunity rules, don't advertise websites including other forums. You are not allowed to advertise your shop or sprites as well.

Spamming
Just don't spam. It's that simple. Such posts will be deleted. ):

That's pretty much it, if you have any concerns, questions or suggestions please contact Logiedan.

Starting Topic: What program do you spriters use for your pixel art?
Where The Carrots Be
Seen April 10th, 2019
Posted September 11th, 2013
583 posts
14.1 Years
I use MS Paint... The good 'ol XP version. Which as far as I know is essentially unchanged from the good 'ol Win98 version. For my "Paint can't do that" needs I use Paint Shop Pro, and for animation, Animation Shop. Everything related to the spriting itself I do in Paint though. :D
Where The Carrots Be
Seen April 10th, 2019
Posted September 11th, 2013
583 posts
14.1 Years
Well, transparency is a purely aesthetic thing for displaying your sprites... Almost any program a sprite would actually be used in would use one of the colors present in the image as the transparent one. I can't deny that I like to post my sprites to forums as transparent though, especially when they have a non-white background color.

Spherical Ice

Age 25
Leicester, UK
Seen 2 Hours Ago
Posted February 20th, 2022
5,251 posts
15.5 Years
I use Windows XP's MS Paint with Vista's graphics, barring the default palette which is seemingly unchangeable. Whenever I try with things like PS, GIMP, GG etc. I just don't feel as comfortable. :/ I do, however, use GIMP for transperent-ing my sprites, after going around the outline in white on Paint.
Where The Carrots Be
Seen April 10th, 2019
Posted September 11th, 2013
583 posts
14.1 Years
I don't really use any of that... Not for spriting, at least. I like to do everything manually, pixel-by-pixel for most of it.

...Unrelated to the topic at hand, but does it seem to anyone else that Pokemonatoms has decided that I'm the only one on his side, despite the fact that I'm saying the same thing as everyone else?

Back on topic again, I've heard a lot of people mention Paint.net lately. Is that an in-browser image editor or something?
Age 5
Male
battlefield
Seen September 28th, 2022
Posted January 9th, 2022
2,982 posts
14.2 Years
To be honest, I think Pokemonatoms is ignoring all of your criticism. He hasn't even tried the popular suggestion to work with official sprites and play around with them seeing as he went off and did a Ghost fakemon.

Anyways..Paint.NET is actually a program similar to GIMP. I never used it before for graphics or pixel art, so I'm not very experienced or familiar with the program.
(You manually recolour a sprite, pixel by pixel? o__o)

project ember

The 100 Mega Shock

Male
Seen March 10th, 2013
Posted March 23rd, 2012
1,234 posts
12.7 Years
It has the odd quirk I would prefer to behave more like Photoshop (Colour Picker tool only works on the active layer, anything moved outside of the canvas gets chopped off and there doesn't appear to be an easy way to flip or rotate a selection of pixels by 90/180 degrees) but it's useful for when I want a smaller and quicker program instead of loading up PS.

It's also got less design flaws than Graphics Gale (bad layer behavior pretty much cripples the animation functionality once you start adding lots of frames.)
Where The Carrots Be
Seen April 10th, 2019
Posted September 11th, 2013
583 posts
14.1 Years
(You manually recolour a sprite, pixel by pixel? o__o)
Well, I said "for most of it". For recoloring I pick out a few palettes I think might work, then use the Erase tool to replace the shades on the sprite one-by-one. If a palette works well, I'll set the recolored sprite aside; if it doesn't, I just delete the sprite. Once I've tried all of the palettes I picked out, I'll put the recolored sprites side-by-side to pick the best one.

...Then I'll usually need to pick a palette for a different part of the sprite.

Nina

Age 31
Female
Arkansas
Seen December 20th, 2020
Posted December 7th, 2020
2,409 posts
15.5 Years
I'm still not sure if I understand what you're talking about,

but in terms of pallets I'm really bad about not starting with one, when apparently I should be. I just sorta pick out colors. I need to learn to unify them more.




Want to get help with your pixel art?
Consider joining my discord server Atelier Pixel!
Join here!