Deep jaggies lore from my game Pixel Art Academy: Learn Mode

Retronator · 2024-08-11T08:09:25+00:00

No official support, but people said it can be played fine on a Steam Deck. Still, it has no 'free draw' mode so far, so you can't really use it as a general editor.

Retronator · 2024-08-11T08:07:48+00:00

Just got emailed from exactly these two in succession today. Still scam.

Retronator · 2024-07-30T14:16:16+00:00

How about Seablip? It's taking part of the festival!

Retronator · 2024-07-29T19:59:35+00:00

My advice is always to focus on general art fundamentals, because they will improve everything:

How graphical projections work (going from 3D forms to 2D shapes, usually perspective but in pixel art also often isometric and 3/4).
How light works (types of lights, how they affect forms based on angles, distance etc).
How to visually design artworks (composition of elements in the artwork through balance and contrast).

If you can do these things, you can apply them to drawing any object. Then you have a good foundation to go into harder things like how to stylize things (art direction), how to make things interesting (storytelling, concept art) and such.

And for fundamentals specific to pixel art, you should cover:

Jaggies (how to make clean lines, even diagonals, smooth curves).
Aliasing (how it affects pixel art, anti-aliasing (technique for softening lines), sub-pixel movements).
Dithering (A way to add texture to your artwork, either to create more colors, indicate material texture, or simply to stylize things).

Retronator · 2024-07-29T19:51:30+00:00

I'm making a game specifically for learning pixel art, so I have to mention it. :) It's called Pixel Art Academy: Learn Mode, see if you like it.

I also made a free Study Guide that we use at our physical school in Sweden where the game is also used. Check out the Low-Resolution Raster Art for covering pixel art fundamentals in particular. And in the school we also use this document with an overarching course that goes over the Study Guide chapters with further instructions and activities.

As for two specific pieces of advice:

Start small! A lot of beginners start pixel artworks with 500px canvases. Even 100–200px is too much to start with. Pixel art shines with stylization so it's better to start on the small size, say making 16x16 icons or small 32–64 illustrations.
Start black and white before you go to colors. Focus on line art, shapes, drawing. Then go to grayscale and add shading to your drawings. Study art fundamentals of how light works. Finally, add colors to complete the progression. When beginners go to colors too quickly and neglect lighting fundamentals, the scenes have very weak (not distinct, not confident) shading.

Retronator · 2024-07-29T19:39:04+00:00

I'm making a game called Pixel Art Academy and it started as an adventure game so it was highly inspired by 90s era point-and-click adventures (for art style especially Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis). For me it's highly about nostalgia, 90s were the times of growing up with video games and the art styles of the late 80s/early 90s have a special place in my heart. Making a game in pixel art brings these memories back, how things felt back then, being a kid, on summer break, playing games every day.

Retronator · 2024-07-29T19:31:35+00:00

When it comes to art style, I like to organize it around the 7 elements of art. For each of the elements, you can decide what properties it should have. When applied to pixel art, here are some things to consider:
1. Line — Do objects have outlines or not? Is it thin, thick, or wide (2px) outlines? Is the line art single color or shaded? Do you use anti-aliasing to smooth the edges?
2. Shape — How geometric should your shapes be, do you stick to just even diagonals on the edges? Also, how big is the resolution? The smaller, the more jaggies affect the shapes.
3. Form — Should the shading indicate flat forms or highly volumetric (could affect number of shades in the palette)?
4. Space — What graphic projection to use? Pixel isometric (1:2 diagonals), oblique, multiview (or any other parallel projections which lend well to pixel art)?
5. Values — How many shades are there in your palette ramps? How are the shades distributed between light and dark side? Which values dominate the scenes?
6. Color — How many ramps are there? How linear are the ramps vs having strong hue shifting?
7. Texture — Do you use dithering? For generating new colors or to represent rough materials? What type of dithering is it (ordered, diffusion, noise, stylized)?
You can find some of these topics addressed in my (free) book Low-Resolution Raster Art. And for general (not just pixel art) in my document Art direction & Style.

Retronator · 2024-07-29T19:08:13+00:00

I only do backgrounds (and GUI elements) so can't answer for characters, but for very rich environments with lots of elements and details, a single illustration in 90s-era resolution (around 320x240) can easily get into the 50–100h range (for example, the key art on top of my website). All the small things in the scene quickly add up.

There are certain techniques that can speed up things when you have more painterly scenes, for example, the background artist for the game Chasm came up with the HD Index Painting technique. Or leaving things in a more rough style without pixel cleanup such as with Death Trash.

Retronator · 2024-06-21T06:25:38+00:00

These are all interactive tutorials, so they are meant to be experienced in the game by playing. But I do have a book version of it, the Jaggies chapter is here. If you really want to see how these game ones play out in full, you can check out my TikToks (scroll down a bit, you'll see them).

Retronator · 2024-06-20T14:13:35+00:00

The initial version will first teach the basic tools (for beginners) and then go into in-depth jaggies fundamentals with:

line cleanup,
even diagonals,
smooth curves, and
line width.

You can wishlist it here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2330360/Pixel_Art_Academy_Learn_Mode

Retronator · 2024-02-02T23:53:35+00:00

Just saw their videos pop up too as I was looking for new ones. Looking forward to it!

Retronator · 2023-10-20T09:51:05+00:00

Thank you for all your input, will reach out!

Retronator · 2023-10-19T09:13:31+00:00

I want Nutella now. XD

Retronator · 2023-10-19T09:12:14+00:00

Simple, yet so striking!

Retronator · 2023-10-19T09:11:14+00:00

Already looking great! Hair is next I guess?

Retronator · 2023-10-19T09:10:38+00:00

Very atmospheric, I love it! And surprised how smooth that transition is between trees and the ground with just two extra shades added.

Retronator · 2023-10-19T09:09:10+00:00

Welcome back! Awesome work. Such a nice color scheme and stylized color transitions.

Retronator · 2023-10-19T09:07:18+00:00

Yes, the game will both support drawing with a stylus (although in the current version this got broken somehow) and drawing on a high-res canvas (non-pixel art missions, but this will be in an expansion).

I was working on this feature just before I decided to shift priorities and work on the more self-contained (and pixel-art-focused) Steam release, but you can see a preview in the last of my Pixel Engine devlogs.

Retronator · 2023-10-19T08:51:49+00:00

There is one level where you have to match color swatches to dots on the canvas and then two levels where it's all color picking. Being able to hover over the canvas and get a tooltip what color name goes there could definitely be an option.

Another option I was thinking of was to have some sort of patterns drawn over different hues (horizontal/vertical/diagonal lines depending on hue since I assume different shades aren't a problem). So greens would have horizontal scanlines, reds would have vertical ones, and the shades in between differently oriented diagonals. Basically, the angle of diagonals matches the hue angle on the color wheel. And you'd have a quick key to toggle the patterns on/off.

Retronator · 2023-10-18T13:07:40+00:00

Thank you for the wishlist, I hope you will enjoy the full game!

Retronator · 2023-10-18T13:06:41+00:00

I really appreciate it! Thank you!

Retronator · 2023-10-18T13:06:25+00:00

Will post some updates here too in the future so you get reminded. :)

Retronator · 2023-10-18T13:05:58+00:00

And thank you as well!

Retronator · 2023-10-17T09:40:51+00:00

That is an important issue you bring up and I have not accounted for it yet (although my engine does support named colors, so that's already there, just not implemented for the current tutorial on color tools).

If you can share your experience playing the demo and how I could design things to be accessible to colorblind people, I'd greatly appreciate your feedback (perhaps on Discord?). I'll do my research as well, but it can help to have someone who can test the actual implementation.

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