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Blitzzo
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|  | Yoshi's Corner Pixel Tower (Organized by Garr)
« Thread Started on Dec 9, 2007, 11:39pm » | |
As seen here:
http://www.mrwong.de/myhouse/
Rules and Guidelines
For the "tl;dr" people:
- Create one section (or more) of the pixel-art tower by using one of these templates included in Garr's post below. Use a 24x12 grid to place your floor tiles.
- Your graphics program should have these tools: Pencil, line, eraser, flood fill, selection (rectangular and lasso), eyedropper, zoom. These tools are also helpful: Color replacer, keyboard shortcuts, palette loading/saving, grid display, layers. Do not use destructive Photoshop filters.
- For a comprehensive tutorial on pixel-art, try one of these resources: 1 2 3
- When drawing straight lines parallel to the ground, use appropriate stepping: move one pixel down, two across using the line tool. Try to avoid "jaggies".
- To save your artwork, use either GIF or PNG. Do not use MSPaint to save GIF, and you should never save pixel-art in lossy formats such as JPG. You must save the final image on a white background.
- Post here when finished. Garr is in charge of organization, so he has say on all matters. Have fun!
Long Version:
Your objective is to create one or more sections of our pixel-art tower. Each of these sections can be a wall or a cut-away room in which you may place anything. The templates for this can be found in Garr's post below, and will give you the outlining shape on which you will draw. These seem to be designed for a 24x12 grid, so use that as your scale for floor tiles. It is generally favorable that you stay within these templates so that the pieces of the tower connect seamlessly. You may make your section shorter or taller vertically, if you wish, but you should not change its horizontal size unless you know for sure that it will connect properly with the other sections.
Selecting a Graphics Program:
Your graphics program should have these essential tools at the very least:
- Pencil - Use this to draw outlines, pixel-by-pixel. You should have this set as a 1x1 pixel, with 100% opacity, hardness, and density. Note: In Paint Shop Pro, you use the Brush tool instead.
- Line - Use this to create a long, straight line more quickly than with the Pencil tool. You will need to disable anti-aliasing and set your pixel width to 1.
- Eraser - In programs that use layers, your Pencil or Brush tool typically won't allow you to erase pixels, so switch to the Eraser tool in order to delete them. Use the same settings for pixel-art as the Pencil tool.
- Flood Fill - This allows you to color a region very quickly, which is usually what you want to do for EG. the flat side of your building, or to make a color reference before you shade your objects.
- Selection - This tool is helpful in moving things around. With the lasso you can carefully select around the outline of the object you want to move at the very pixel level. Do not feather your selections.
- Eyedropper - This can be a godsend when you are constantly switching back and forth between colors. Without it, you generally have more moving to do in order to swap colors.
- Zoom - Because you will be working at the pixel level, the zoom is essential in that you can more precisely draw on each individual pixel that makes up your piece. Note: Photoshop has a strange method for zooming with the mousewheel that causes it to zoom in arbitrary increments, instead of snapping to numbers like 100% or 400%. This can prove very hazardous. When desperate, tell it to zoom back to Actual Pixel size under the Zoom tool.
These tools can prove very helpful:
- Color Replacer - This allows you to take all of one color on an image and replace each instance of that color with another. If you need to tinker with the colors or shades of an image, this is generally much faster than the Flood Fill. Note: In Paint Shop Pro 8.1 (and possibly other versions), there is an issue with this tool that causes the program to become unstable after a while due to a resource leak. This can be resolved somewhat by turning off caching in the program preferences, but if you notice the interface becoming unresponsive, it'd be a good idea to save and restart the program.
- Keyboard shortcuts - This applies not only to pixel-art but to computer art in general. Being able to switch between tools, quickly toggle the Eyedropper, and zoom in or out with the press of a key can prove to be very, very useful as it accelerates your workflow and makes things much more convenient. For example, you could be drawing on the image and then quickly press X to switch to the Eraser without having to mouse up to your Tools and click the icon. In most programs, you can also hold either Ctrl or Shift while in the Pencil or Brush tool and click to grab a color.
- Palette loading/saving - Perhaps not entirely important for this exercise, but in other cases you will be glad you can load and save palettes. Keeping a cache of colors and then loading it in will allow you to reuse the same colors quickly.
- Grid display - In an isometric environment, you typically have things snapped to a grid. Enabling the grid will allow you to more accurately align your props in the scene.
- Layers - Much like keyboard shortcuts, this is helpful for any kind of computer art. You will be able to use it to operate individually on different objects and move them around without having to redraw what was behind the object. There are many other applications for this, but I won't list them all here.
Pixel-art is all about working at the pixel level. This is where I must mention that the usage of Photoshop filters such as blurring, bevelling, and lens flare are strictly forbidden. These will destroy your work and the very novelty of this art style. Instead of sharp and crisp graphics you have a very distorted and muddy picture. Avoid the temptation to use these at all costs. There are, however, a few filters that don't harm your work, such as adjusting the offset or changing color levels. In favor of good practice, however, try to limit your usage of these.
Programs that you can use:
- Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, GIMP, Paint.net - All four of these are very fully-featured programs and should contain everything you need to do pixel-art (and many tools for other kinds of artwork as well). These tend to have good keyboard shortcuts and have good color selection features, as well as layers. As mentioned above, try not to use destructive filters on your image. Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro are both commercial, while GIMP and Paint.net are free (though I haven't tested Paint.net).
- GraphicsGale - A freeware/shareware package that contains all the tools you need for pixel-art, and nothing more. It also contains animation capabilities that would otherwise require a separate bundled program to access (Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, GIMP). My biggest gripe with this one is that there are no keyboard shortcuts, so workflow is considerably longer. If you don't mind relaying the mouse more to select your tools, this could be a very good program for you. Note: The freeware version is limited in saving to certain formats. Use IrfanView to convert across image formats.
- Pixen - If you're on Mac OS X, then this free program looks to be a very promising tool for pixel-art. I don't use Macintosh, so I cannot say whether this one is any good, but you might want to check it out regardless.
- Many pixel-artists seem to recommend MSPaint. In contrast, I do not, as it greatly pales in comparison to the tools described above. It lacks some of the more helpful features in terms of coloring and useful guides, doesn't have keyboard shortcuts, and also has problems saving to different file formats. If you do choose to use MSPaint, you should save to PNG and then use OptiPNG to reduce the image's filesize to almost half the original size.
To get started on pixel-art, I would suggest reading one of these tutorials:
http://petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/tsugumo/
This is a very nice tutorial that starts you off with some of the very core basics. It is very detailed in instruction, and even examines graphics out of various video games and how they apply to pixel-art.
http://www.natomic.com/hosted/marks/mpat/
A quick-start tutorial that teaches you how to do all the different aspects of pixel-art plainly and clearly with good illustrations. The descriptions are very short in case you don't want to do too much reading.
http://www.19.5degs.com/category/619.php
A collection of tutorials specifically tailored to isometric pixel-art.
A few tips/reminders:
- Remember that you are working on the pixel level. Draw in whole pixels only! The techniques used in higher resolution art don't always apply here. You can, however, do a sketch of what you want to draw, and then ghost it over another layer on which you draw your actual pixel outline. This approach tends to work very well for me when it comes to more complex shapes.
- Try to avoid "jaggies". A "jaggy" is when the lines along your outline don't step in consistent increments, therefore making the line look wobbly. To give you a better idea:
![[image]](http://www.19.5degs.com/nf/images/832/the_isometric_line_rule.gif)
When working with straight lines along your isometric grid floor, you typically want to go two steps to the right, then down one, and repeat for the rest of the line width. If your program's Line tool is able to do this, you can save a bunch of time.
![[image]](http://www.19.5degs.com/nf/images/832/the_isometric_line_wrong.gif)
The above image is an example of a "jaggy". To fix "jaggies" you can try removing pixels or adjusting your stepping. Edit, then zoom out to view the image at actual pixel size, then zoom in to make adjustments if necessary.
- Be consistent in coloring and shading. Like other art forms, you must establish a direction of light. For this project we will do lighting from the left. Also, since this is pixel-art, try not to use more than 256 colors. Pick your colors carefully.
Saving artwork:
When you are finished, you should save your artwork as either GIF or PNG. The final image must be on a white background.
- GIF is a good format for images that have 256 colors or less (which is usually the case with pixel-art). It can also support animation capabilities. Do not try to save true-color images in this format. Note: Do not use this in MSPaint. Last time I checked, it does not generate the appropriate palette, and as such, your colors will be remapped to different ones, often providing strange results.
- PNG can save losslessly in both true-color and 256-color formats and provide a smaller file-size than GIF. Note: MSPaint saves very large PNG files. Use OptiPNG to make them smaller.
I would not advise saving as BMP unless you absolutely have to due to some program restriction. It does not reduce image quality but the resulting filesize can be very large. Use PNG where possible.
Never, ever save pixel-art as JPG. This will result in moderate to severe quality loss for sharp images. All your individually colored pixels will be blended together into a muddy mess, so don't use it!
When you have saved the image, post it in this thread. When we get enough sections, they will be assembled into a large tower! Garr is the person organizing this project, so he has authoritative power over all decisions. Have fun!
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Not-Garr
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| | Re: Yoshi's Corner Pixel Tower (Organized by Garr)
« Reply #1 on Dec 9, 2007, 11:47pm » | |
Thank you for making the thread, Blitzz.
Some further guidelines:
- You can make as many floors as you please, but I only ask that you put some work into them. No pasting images that have been warped to fit the template in unless you change the image drastically, etc, make it look like it belongs.
- The content should be limited to...well, whatever's normally allowed in the Art sections. Blood, alcohol, etc are fine as long as it's not excessive(no entrails, or spines or what have you).
- Be as creative as you can! This is an exercise to just see what we come up with, to see what's brewing in yours, the readers', heads!
- Movie/game references are perfectly a-OK.
- You can go outside of the guidelines for width a bit. Don't be afraid to include overhangs, flying people, glass, ropes, pipes, lights, etc. Just try not to interfere with any floors that may be above or below yours!
- POST YOUR FLOOR AS THE TEMPLATES SHOW, ON A WHITE BACKGROUND ALL BY ITSELF This makes it easier possible to format and put together.
Some templates(Most of them taken from the Goon Tower, which took them from Wong's Tower.), please use these but don't feel limited to them:
Empty floor:
![[image]](http://garr.ferretech.net/towertemplate.PNG)
Floor with windows:
![[image]](http://garr.ferretech.net/templatewall3D.png)
Solid wall:
![[image]](http://garr.ferretech.net/templatesolid.png)
And a template for people:
![[image]](http://garr.ferretech.net/pixelbody.PNG)
It's also advised you make/use spacers like these(credit goes to Something Awful users Intravenous Vodka and Hungry Hippo):
![[image]](http://garr.ferretech.net/midpoints.PNG)
And of course feel free to ask questions, post works in progress, or simply comment on the tower as it builds higher.
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red.yoshi
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| | Re: Yoshi's Corner Pixel Tower (Organized by Garr)
« Reply #2 on Dec 10, 2007, 4:01pm » | |
Bleh, too bad I only have Paint and Photo Studio at my finger tips D=.
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Despite the loss of my hand-eye coordination and despite the loss of my lower jaw, I realized that our staff should actually be sipping lemonade than making silly chat filters for random words. |
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Not-Garr
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| | Re: Yoshi's Corner Pixel Tower (Organized by Garr)
« Reply #3 on Dec 10, 2007, 9:43pm » | |
Quote:| Bleh, too bad I only have Paint and Photo Studio at my finger tips D=. |
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Contrary to what Blitzz may have said, MSPaint is really one of the more perfect tools for a beginner learning to make isometric pixel art.
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Blitzzo
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| | Re: Yoshi's Corner Pixel Tower (Organized by Garr)
« Reply #4 on Dec 10, 2007, 10:05pm » | |
Like I said, GraphicsGale is a free downloadable program for those who want a step above MSPaint (it's also a fairly simple program). I personally dislike MSPaint after getting used to a different workflow, but eh, whatever floats your boat.
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Yoshi
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| | Re: Yoshi's Corner Pixel Tower (Organized by Garr)
« Reply #5 on Dec 11, 2007, 11:58am » | |
Lookin' slick.
I'll probably hit this after the exams sometime.
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red.yoshi
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| | Re: Yoshi's Corner Pixel Tower (Organized by Garr)
« Reply #6 on Dec 11, 2007, 4:02pm » | |
I put it on my grand list of things to do. Pixel art looks so soothe and impressive.
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Despite the loss of my hand-eye coordination and despite the loss of my lower jaw, I realized that our staff should actually be sipping lemonade than making silly chat filters for random words. |
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Al
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| | Re: Yoshi's Corner Pixel Tower (Organized by Garr)
« Reply #7 on Dec 29, 2007, 4:44am » | |
I whipped a quick one together.
![[image]](http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/7581/buildingga6.png)
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My new deviant art is now located here
![[image]](http://www.pokeplushies.com/images/adoptables/45702.gif) Click to level up! |
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Matilda
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| | Re: Yoshi's Corner Pixel Tower (Organized by Garr)
« Reply #8 on Dec 29, 2007, 4:53am » | |
![[image]](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x116/emeraldvee/art/pokecenter.png)
Here's one I whipped up. It's kinda rough, but I think it gets the point across.
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Moot
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| | Re: Yoshi's Corner Pixel Tower (Organized by Garr)
« Reply #9 on Dec 29, 2007, 3:22pm » | |
when I actually get a decent amount of free time I should be able to churn some pixels out.
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Garr
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| | Re: Yoshi's Corner Pixel Tower (Organized by Garr)
« Reply #10 on Dec 31, 2007, 9:57pm » | |
Just letting you guys know this is still alive, another room or two and I'll start to build it.
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