Rayzero's hobby begginings

[Rayzeroa]

Ello, before I start the post I would like to come up with several excuses for my artwork;

1. I studied programming game engines as such art was not really involved in anyway.
2. I have two left hands and I'm right handed.
3. I have ran out of excuses but stopping at two seemed lame.

Right, so I decided while fapping away I need a hobby and it would be nice to be able to make something that takes a bit of time and has a form of end goal so in my stupidity I decided art. However I cant really draw and have no practice with any of the techniques so I decided to "take/steal" artwork and try to convert it into a sprite/pixel like image. None of this is ever gonna be for profit but I do have a want to improve it.

So the reference I used;

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I choose Renamon because i was aware of her colour scheme and I'm a Digimon fanboy. (And making a furry sprite, I hear its popular so more feedback xD)

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That lead to this second stage where i just tried to break the drawing up into shapes then erased it to create black outlines. Then put in just solid singular colour so i could identify each area. This was the part I was like, yay it somewhat looks like something sprite-ish?

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Now the next part is where I get clueless, I don't understand shading or the use of light sources when it comes to artwork. I understand the concept when applied to a ball im like look that parts white and it gets darker on the opposite but in practice to anything... full brain shut down. I just made it so if things overlap I make it darker and if its near the bottom its darker? Forgive me artists.

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Now we get to the part I was like, Imma just move on to the detail additions because i forgot the nose because derp and purple lining/body art unsure how she got those mad birthmarks but they cool.

My post was made in regard to feed back due to my lack of understanding when it comes to shading, outlining and this alien concept known as dithering.

I have seen them and attempted each but when i try shading my brain essentially turns everything grim dark and it looks well.... covered in random shadows and any depth is lost. Dithering is the same it looks like I've mastered censoring and entire image.

Send Help.

 

[Vicissitudo]

Re: Rayzero's hobby begginings

Interesting hobby! Are you also planning into making animated sprites?

Personally I never tried drawing sprites before so don't consider my opinion too seriously. If I were in you I'd start from a already drawn and colored artwork with shading etc. In this way, just even resizing it and making it pixelated, you'd have a sort of "map" about how and where to shade it.

About the piece you are working on probably the best solution would be to do a quick search and try to find that character in a similar pose with similar light source and try to get an idea about how and were to shade it.

Anyway seems you are making a great work! Keep it up!

 

[Rayzeroa]

Re: Rayzero's hobby begginings

Interesting hobby! Are you also planning into making animated sprites?

Personally I never tried drawing sprites before so don't consider my opinion too seriously. If I were in you I'd start from a already drawn and colored artwork with shading etc. In this way, just even resizing it and making it pixelated, you'd have a sort of "map" about how and where to shade it.

About the piece you are working on probably the best solution would be to do a quick search and try to find that character in a similar pose with similar light source and try to get an idea about how and were to shade it.

Anyway seems you are making a great work! Keep it up!

Very big thank you for replying and yeah I understand what you mean but honestly I wanted to treat it as a learning experience to start creating/understanding shading.

It's more understanding how to create depth and shading which confuses me and most images already have both applied so its hard for me to tell why each part is shaded if its due to depth or lighting.

(Animation)Honestly I have been thinking about it but that just brings in a new aspect I'd have to learn about I have read and caught up on tutorials but since I cant really draw freehand etc it makes it rather difficult to modify images to create frames needed for animation unless I take something animated already but not in sprite form

 

[Yoshiiki]

Re: Rayzero's hobby begginings

Nice hobby to pick up

To be fair, as image gets smaller, less details can be shown (Yes, I already got my Cpt. Obvious promotion), but when looking at original and your version, I would say that enough needed details were transferred to say: Hey, it's this image in pixelart form! Also, yey, colors

Okay, enough of my weirdness.
As for light, going with most basic idea I would say go near ceiling lamp, stick your hand out and look where shadows are. If you imagine infinite number of beams of light coming out of it and stopping at your hand, you should get more or less idea of how it works and where depth is. Just because you know how it should be, doesn't mean your brain accepts that
I know, obvious, so here is another idea:
If after placing light source in your mind, you get too dark character, why not thinking a little outside of box and changing where light source is?
Shift it so it could give some easy to make shadows.

Pretty much, imagination.

Also, there are people on this forum that could maybe explain it much better, as I am not in their tier... YET xD

 

[tetsuya_shino]

Re: Rayzero's hobby begginings

If you want to learn how to do pixel art yourself, try googling this;

' so you want to be a pixel artist '

Click on the link at the very top. This is an excellent guide for beginners.

You won't become a pixel artist over night, or even this year, but if you seriously want try to become one, I wish you the best of luck.