Armaina's Pixel Thread

[Armaina]

While this type of graininess can look cool and all that (Big Luxio), most times it leads for the worse (unicorn, growth dragons(not so bad tho)), because when mixed with layered shading, the styles sorta clash with themselves, and some areas of the sprite appear differently textured than others. Not to mention that constant dithering looks boring and repetitive when one has more than 5 colours, and becomes pretty unessesary at this point. It leads me to believe you have a blurry comp screen or something, which would justify the blending style.

Another thing about the shading. I notice you use alot of colours for your PA's and layer shade alot.. This could be fixed with 50% less colours and significant contrast between them, and AAing the borders. And when having a sprite consisting of light colours(LUGIA, unicorn), one should avoid drawing dark lines inside it, the reason being that they stand out much, and take depth away from them. Darker shadows should work better too.

Also, one can easily detect slight to horrible traces of jaggedness on outlines and curves, on almost every sprite above(mostly Eevees), most of the time on the shading layers. A quick work on smoothing the lines and AA them should do the trick.

On the animation, less dithering and more movement might do it well. For the flier's tail and legs, some waving might do, as well as some dangling movement for the green creature it's carrying.

The designs on the other hand are superb. Perfect anatomy and shapes on most to all sprites, and the ideas behind them.

Truth be told I haven't been doing scratch pixel art for very long, started back in December 2006, so I'm still learning a lot, playing around with techniques. Actually a lot of the old pixel art dithering had no pattern, where as the newer ones do have a pattern. I will point out that I use a flat tube CRT, so yes, the pixel art pieces do look a touch different to me than from those of you that have an LCD monitor.

Normally I use dithering to give the look of matte surfaces, otherwise things just look well, shiny IMO. Also surprised you thought the Saipryms (that set of growing 'dragons') looked too grainy, then there's actually no dithering at all in that piece, because I wanted it to be a 'shiny' surface. (only when the wing membrane meets the body is there any dithering)

Still trying to figure out proper AAing of outlines though, right now just been adding color based on light source, still haven't really gotten down a feel for the AA on the lines yet, some attempts just didn't have the look it should have had so I just would revert it back to the normal way I do it. I have one tutorial on it, but I'm still getting a feel for it, as it were. But yeah it's definately something I need to work on.

The animation is the first ever animation I've done in any medium. I've considered maybe tweaking the tail but at the point when I finished it I just wanted it to be done. Just haven't bothered going back to edit it yet. Lazy excuse, I know....
(PS, the lugia is the oldest one in that list, the Kirin is the second oldest)

Man, Smash took most of what I was gonna say, but I'd like to add that while, for the most part, your anatomy is superb, some of them look a bit wonky.

^ On the largest one, it seems to be squashed horizonatally, particularly the head. On the one on the top right, the face needs more depth, and there's something else about it I can't put my finger on.

Well, just personally I think the real problem is the back. I didn't realize it till after I finished the rendering but when you look at the back, shape looks funny. When you consider the lack of hair annd think of the placement of the spine and attachment to the neck, it actually bends at the wrong point, too low in the back, the back should have been rounded out and a bit flatter.

Not sure what to do about the top right one you mentioned, maybe add a one or two pixels of the lighter color to the face?

^ This one lacks the depth that a lot of your other pieces had, particularly with the wings. Compared to the others, there are more anatomical issues, like the proportions and the foot closest to us that seems a bit misshapen.

With your Eeveelutions, you seem to have suddenly lost the mastery you had with the anatomy on your growth set and the various commissions at the bottom of your first post. The back legs and the heads, as well as the shading aren't up to par with a lot of your other work.

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Overall, excellent work. It always puts a smile on my face when I see people post real pixel art and not just sprites. Keep it up! :3

That lugia is the oldest in the group, and it's also the laziest one I did, so yeah, it's pretty lacking haha.

The eevees, well, they're using the base any this is all supposed to be fast work that I can get done in about an hour so yea, there are some aspects about them that are a little sloppy, I realise this. But *shrugs* I am only selling the works for them for 5$

basically I just wanted to do something I could do fast and cheap haha.

And thanks, I still have a lot to learn and I'm still experimenting with things, animation and outline AAing being the two big things I need to work on ATM.