Art showcase

A place for your artistic side. Discuss techniques and tools for pixel art on the NES, GBC, or similar platforms.

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UncleSporky
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Art showcase

Post by UncleSporky »

We were talking about the difficulty of finding artists to work on NES games in another thread. It occurred to me that I had never posted my own drawings here as far as I can remember, so I figured I'd make a thread for people to showcase their work.

This isn't like an open call that I will do art for anybody's NES game, although I might depending on what it is. I don't have any delusions of being a totally awesome pro or anything, it's just part of the hobby. :)

Pixel art:
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This is an old background wall I did, I still really like the rocks but the tiny blocks are way too busy and something's off about the giant crystal.
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Here are some backgrounds I've been working on specifically for the NES:
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Animations in Easytoon:
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An animation from Flipnote Studio on the DSi:
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And finally some random drawings:
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Some dudes and a chicken nugget (linked so it doen't break the page)

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Last edited by UncleSporky on Mon Jan 11, 2010 11:37 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Bregalad
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Post by Bregalad »

Wow you sure is a good artist. I can draw a few things, but it takes me like forever to have something looking decent so I only do it when I really need it for my game.
Not to mention I have trouble coming up with monster, and when they come on paper they are somtimes almost impossible to pixellate.
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Celius
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Post by Celius »

Hey, some pretty nice stuff here! I like the detailed animation of the black mage :) !

I seem to recall the guy in the 7th picture on the right being discussed in the thread about the fighting game, am I correct? It looks really nice, and the shading is really sharp. You could easily scale that down to only 3 colors (I think I see 4 in the skin tone, and some more for the eyes. Perhaps I'm wrong?).

And for the one right below that for the background with the rocks, I agree that the background is way too busy. My recommendation would be to darken it down so it looks more like emptiness with something in the distant background. The way it is now, I have trouble telling if it is side scrolling or top-down (the wall almost looks like a floor). Otherwise, the rock pattern looks pretty nice, and the background wall looks good it just needs color adjustment (in my opinion, at least).

And the stuff below that is pretty cool too. I'm curious, how did you color the last one? Is that photoshop, or was it actually colored on paper?

As for some of my work, here are just some things I've posted in other threads:

Some pretty big portraits for my NES game (actual segment of a screen print of FCEUXD):

Main character:
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I think the mouth needs a little work, because with the limited pixel space it makes the player look like he might be making a stupid face... I still think it looks coolish, kinda. The sprites of that character:

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It's hard to tell where what ends because the player is actually made with a black outline and black in other spots. It's just against a black background so it's hard to tell...

For the other character, here is the NES portrait and real portrait:

[img]http://the_bott.webs.com/NESPaint.JPG[/img]

And here's a link to the real pic so it doesn't make you scroll over and crap:

http://the_bott.webs.com/Leah_Scan.jpg

It's not that great of a painting, but I like the nintendoization of it a lot.

That's basically all I have for now. Nothing that special, but decent I think.
UncleSporky
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Post by UncleSporky »

Thanks for the comments.
Celius wrote:I seem to recall the guy in the 7th picture on the right being discussed in the thread about the fighting game, am I correct? It looks really nice, and the shading is really sharp. You could easily scale that down to only 3 colors (I think I see 4 in the skin tone, and some more for the eyes. Perhaps I'm wrong?).
You're right, that was a long time ago! I color reduced him for that thread, he needs one sprite for eyes:
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And for the one right below that for the background with the rocks, I agree that the background is way too busy. My recommendation would be to darken it down so it looks more like emptiness with something in the distant background. The way it is now, I have trouble telling if it is side scrolling or top-down (the wall almost looks like a floor). Otherwise, the rock pattern looks pretty nice, and the background wall looks good it just needs color adjustment (in my opinion, at least).
It was supposed to be a background along the lines of a Sonic water level. I just ditched the small blocks and today I've been working on making the rocks usable for solid tiles in a NES game, trying to figure out which style looks best:
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(by the way they're not easily usable right now, I screwed up the tiling of the sides/top and have to redraw some stuff)
And the stuff below that is pretty cool too. I'm curious, how did you color the last one? Is that photoshop, or was it actually colored on paper?
Just Photoshop.

I like your portraits too, they remind me of NES FF2 portraits. And the sprite looks very much like it would fit in a modern Castlevania.
Celius
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Post by Celius »

Haha! It's funny you say the sprites remind you of modern day castlevania, because they're for my game "ChateauLeVania", which is basically going to play just like modern day castlevanias. The portraits are much bigger than FF2 portraits, however. They're about 64x96 pixels, I believe. That's like 1/3 of the screen tall! There's a lot of sprite layering that happens there too, so it's a pretty complex image to display.

Are you sure you -need- an extra sprite for the eyes of your guy? It seems like you might be able to find a solution with your current palette for the rest of the body. It might really save you to not have to depend on two of the palettes remaining constant.

About your rock tiles, I really think the second one looks best. You've got a nice variety of color going on (or the illusion of variety with dithering), and it doesn't look as cartoony as the last one does. It's very nice shading.
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tokumaru
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Re: Art showcase

Post by tokumaru »

Preety good stuff, UncleSporky!
UncleSporky wrote:This is an old background wall I did, I still really like the rocks but the tiny blocks are way too busy and something's off about the giant crystal.
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I don't think this is the problem (being busy), I just think that there isn't enough contrast between the rocks and the blocks. If the blocks were darker it would probably look much better.
UncleSporky
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Post by UncleSporky »

Well I got the rocks all NES-ready. They lose a lot of the great organic feel from the original pic but I still like them.

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tokumaru
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Post by tokumaru »

Some things from my NES project (some are outdated):

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Here are some contributions I made to the Sonic 2 LD project (a hack of Sonic 2 SMS to make it look more like the MD version):

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Here are a couple of drawings (both are several years old now!):

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And here is some more stuff I've worked on.
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Kasumi
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Post by Kasumi »

Tokumaru: I always wondered why you never posted any art from your Sonic game on this forum. I found a few of those images on a Sonic forum a while ago. Glad to see they're finally here.

Sure, I'll play along with this topic. I'm gonna post some youtube videos (animations and gameplay videos, not films), and deviantart links.

A Face From a Photo

A thirty minute speed paint from a photo.

A Dive Animation

Walk Animation

Warning: A fat creature belly dancing. Weird Thing I'm Not Too Proud Of. I'm better at animation now. I might fix this up, or redo it.

A NES "portrait" of someone. It's This Guy

Last, but not least, a game I abandoned for the PSP. In some ways it was like RPG maker for PSP. It shows some sprites and stuff. (I'm of course, better at animating now.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAtGmIDEeGI
UncleSporky
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Post by UncleSporky »

Wow, that is some great stuff! :) Tokumaru, did you draw most of that Sonic stuff yourself, or are they partly rips from the Game Gear/Master System games? Either way they look great, and I hope you do manage to finish it someday. And the drawing with the sword guy looks straight out of a movie!

Too bad you abandoned that project, Kasumi. I can see how an RPG maker would be a lot of work. Nice work on the photo portrait.
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tokumaru
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Post by tokumaru »

UncleSporky wrote:Tokumaru, did you draw most of that Sonic stuff yourself, or are they partly rips from the Game Gear/Master System games?
I never rip sprites directly, at most I get together a few sprites similar to what I want to achieve and interpret them (sometimes it's hard to tell what pixel artists meant to represent when it comes to small details), then I draw my own version of that interpretation, according to the limits of the target machine. The Sonic 2 LD sprites were based on the MD/GEN ones, but I didn't copy anything directly.
Either way they look great, and I hope you do manage to finish it someday. And the drawing with the sword guy looks straight out of a movie!
Thanks! =) Your work is awesome too!
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Bregalad
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Post by Bregalad »

Well Celius your portraits looks very good, espeically the guy, it looks like you improved him a lot since the last time you show it to me. In fact I think his mouth is perfect too.

Tokumaru is sounds like you are actually a lot better at drawing that what I was suspecting. You really shouldn't have anything to worry about art in your games.

As for myself you can see art by me on my very outdated website (will upload it when I'll be done with the exams I guess).
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Dwedit
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Post by Dwedit »

I guess now would be a good time to pull out my TI83 Sprites Page.
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Celius
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Post by Celius »

Wow, Dwedit. I somehow skipped over looking at your page, but I have to say I'm impressed with how well you've maintained all those sprites even when scaling them down to ridiculous dimensions. I can't imagine trying to scale Zelda II sprites to be 8x16 pixels! What's even better, I didn't even have to read the text to see what sprites were from what games. That's hard to make someone do with sprites so small. Good job!
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Bregalad
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Post by Bregalad »

Well now I've eventually go trough an update of my website (I eventually fixed terrible misspelling and removed some really outdated info) and take up to date pics of the game I'm developing, with NTSC filter and manually corrected to normal aspect ratio.

http://jonathan.microclub.ch/rainbow/en/drggallery.html

Feel free to use my pictures to do the graphics analysis, altough you'd probably says that there is a lot of repeated patterns, and obviously no backgrounds because it's top-down view.

By the way if anyone known any software that could easily remove that white background on my drawing scans it could be cool
Useless, lumbering half-wits don't scare us.
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