

365 days of pixel art - eigenbom
https://medium.com/@eigenbom/365-days-of-pixel-art-f6131f280537

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potomak
Great project! I'd like to tell to everyone who want to start drawing pixel
art, I built a very simple tool to get started with this technique:
[http://drawbang.com](http://drawbang.com).

Try it, give me your feedback, and share your pixel art masterpieces!

~~~
eigenbom
Neat :)

I definitely need a right-click colour picker (or shift-click) to work more
easily. Can I suggest cutting back your GUI, removing that 3d look, or if you
like it too much, then making the pixel art pictures also be 3d like that.

Also your palette is way too saturated. Check out something like
[http://androidarts.com/palette/16pal.htm](http://androidarts.com/palette/16pal.htm)
for a much nicer set of colours.

~~~
potomak
Nice, thanks for the suggestions!

I definitely must find some time to make a lot of planned features/fixes. See
a list of them at
[https://github.com/potomak/drawbang/issues](https://github.com/potomak/drawbang/issues).

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pandatigox
I've always wanted to do pixel art, but somehow things don't seem "right" when
I try. What are some good tips for an amateur pixel-artist? And also, what are
some resources you would recommend? I really want create something but always
feel stuck

~~~
cousin_it
Are you good at sketching with pencil and paper? If not, I recommend dropping
pixel art for a few weeks, picking up a good book by Betty Edwards or Andrew
Loomis (both can be found as pdfs online), and filling a couple sketchbooks.

To make good pixel art, or any other kind of art really, first you must learn
to see shapes in a particular way that's not intuitive for non-artists. It's a
bit hard to explain in words, but if your mind hasn't learned that trick, your
shapes will always come out wrong and you won't know why. Sketching allows you
to learn that skill quickly and easily, while pixeling has so many
distractions that IMO it's almost impossible to learn from pixeling alone.

With the right approach, as described in the books I mentioned, most people
see obvious and major progress after just a day or two. I'm not exaggerating
at all, it took me literally one day of sketching with Betty Edwards' book to
go from "I can't draw, it must be genetic" to "I can draw anything right if I
look hard enough".

~~~
babuskov
I can confirm this. I struggled a lot with making pixel art because I was
trying to draw the outline with pixels and would always fail (except for
rectangular inanimate objects like boxes and similar).

Then I tried to sketch first and it worked great. Here's the process:

1\. draw by hand on paper

2\. scan it (I take photos with my phone)

3\. scale it down to the size you need

4\. draw the outline (make sure two pixels do not touch except diagonally)

5\. color with base colors

6\. add shading

For steps 5 and 6 make sure you pick a consistent palette beforehand.
Something with limited set of colors (say, up to 24) works best.

P.S. You can check the graphics I created this way in my Twitter feed
(@mbabuskov). Look for the horse-shaped robot and the spaceship images and see
how those look way better than other stuff I drew earlier.

~~~
cousin_it
With all due respect, I just looked at your pictures and it doesn't look like
you're sketching right. Like, they're "ouch" level bad, 1 on a scale of 1 to
10. Sorry.

My best suggestion would be to actually go through some exercises in the books
I mentioned. You should see massive improvement within days.

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jokoon
Saving the page doesn't save all the images. How annoying. I guess I'll get
called a pirate or a content thief.

You can't even right click and use save as. I don't understand what sort of
html or javascript is doing this, but I see it often. I tried using the page
info panel and select all the picture and clicked save as, but it downloaded
many blank files.

EDIT:

it was caused by the :large and :small. removed them, created a html file,
saved as, done.

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coldnebo
Page crashes chrome and safari on ipad. Fyi

~~~
eigenbom
Ah thx, thats a shame. There are a lot of tweet embeds in there.

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chazu
I've enjoyed #pixeldailies immensely. Its one of the few things on my twitter
feed that consistently brings me joy. Its also motivational - though I haven't
tried my hand at pixel art, I've been drawing at least a little bit every day.
Thanks for the pixels!

~~~
eigenbom
Great, I'm glad so many people seem to enjoy it! :)

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needaremotegig
So much talent. Hard to believe he spent so little time on each of these.

~~~
eigenbom
Thanks! I think I averaged about 30 minutes per day on these, with a few
pieces taking up to 2 hours. The daily practise has had a huge impact on my
speed, more than anything else.

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cxa
Nice work. If you're into this sort of thing, you might also appreciate
[https://instagram.com/pxlpeeps/](https://instagram.com/pxlpeeps/), though the
style is more constrained, and the focus is on pop culture characters.

~~~
eigenbom
Neat :)

I'm also reminded of [http://davegrey.net/tagged/pixel-
art](http://davegrey.net/tagged/pixel-art) and
[http://iotacons.blogspot.com.au/](http://iotacons.blogspot.com.au/) wrt small
pixel art drawings from pop culture. It's amazing that you can capture
character in so few pixels sometimes.

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monk_e_boy
Could you sum up your personal feelings of games using pixel art over a more
cartoony vector art?

Personally I felt that Paper Mario was a lot easier on the eyes than more
traditional pixel art games.

BTW moonman looks totally amazing.

~~~
agumonkey
I can't define it. I love it. And I have no words better than that. I don't
know if it's nostalgia of the 8bit era I grew up in. I don't think so. It's a
blend of sensations. Legos also bring that feeling. The geometric simplicity,
yet complex combinations.

Maybe the low-resolution asking your mind to fill in the details
subconsciously. Like visual incarnation of words. It goes beyond the
instantaneous perception.

~~~
RBerenguel
I really like pixel art, but good vectorised games (masterpiece sample would
be Another World) can have lots of charm and much better animations

~~~
agumonkey
Ha, these games fall in between don't you think ? or maybe I'm biased by my
love with flashback (Another World cousin), AW was almost entirely flat, while
flashback had pixel art elements. But still they share that minimalism found
in pixel art (low res, low details, impressionism).

[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8vSAxF44FvU/Trk8AnyBdPI/AAAAAAAAKY...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8vSAxF44FvU/Trk8AnyBdPI/AAAAAAAAKYU/J5rgcjJbPPk/s1600/Blackhawk_026a_Flashback.png)

[http://www.anotherworld.fr/images/another_world/AW_arrivee_1...](http://www.anotherworld.fr/images/another_world/AW_arrivee_1280.jpg)

ps: I love reading about AW making of
[http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/page_realisation....](http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/page_realisation.htm)

~~~
RBerenguel
Yup, also read that. I guess you'd love reading (if not already) the making of
Prince of Persia and /or Karateka

~~~
agumonkey
For a reason I never cared about these technically. Will do.

