random thoughts on pixel arting
So for over a year now I've been pushing pixels for Project Exploder. This caused some thoughts to form in my head unbidden, concerning the process and pixel arting in general, at least as far as it concerns drawing mechanical stuff (god forbid I draw a real human bean, the thought keeps me awake at night). Inasmuch as a novice - one terrified to find out that he's enjoying the process - can have any valuable insight, here they are.
The tool matters. It really does. On top of that, no matter the deeper options, the out of box experience will influence your work greatly. I've tried Kirita, Grafx2, GIMP (gods what an awful tool), heck even MS Paint, but the one that just clicked with me almost instantly was Aseprite. It made it all - fun. Even when it's a chore. I'm not saying you should get it. I'm saying that perhaps - only perhaps - trying a different tool may help.
Sketching at least a rough outline, traditional pen & paper style, will help your imagination sculpt the shape you're going for, which in turn will be immensely helpful when shading and animating.
Observation is important. Take a non-trivial object on your desk. See which bits are darker, which bits are lighter, and how that relates to its shape. But also, the single most important teacher for me was playing and admiring a whole dang lot of Amiga games. Watching how people like Torben Larsen, Mark J. Ferrari, or Arno Seiler used the limited (but not that limited - 32/64 colors is a lot for pixel art) palette to impress shapes, reflections, and shadows was, and still is, very educating.
I found intentionally limiting the amount of colors per object to be an educating experience. Though I must constantly fight the impulse of just adding another in-between shade for extra definition, picking a tiny slice of VGA or AAP-128 (and being consistent about it for object themes) made me much more aware of the relationship between shading and shapes. In fact, overdoing the colors will make the whole thing muddy and blurry. Instead, try dithering. You know, the funny dot patterns.
I frigging hate rotating objects in pixel. I don't mean the kind that can be done with code - the kind that requires you to redraw and reshade almost every frame. But it looks wonderful and adds a lot of character. So if you do it, the number one tip is: sine the bi*ch. Any individual point on a rotating object will not move linear with time, it will move sine (i.e faster near center, slower near edge).
Observe how much the edge moves vs its position in each frame.
Don't go overboard with asset size/resolution. Trying to pixel art a detailed 1200x600 object is misery. If you need to go big, either lower your resolution, or divide things into reusable, repeating tiles.
Finally, you don't need to be perfectly detailed. One of the most fascinating things I have started to notice is that there's this almost a hard turning point where after one more detail/shade/gleam something stops looking like spilled pixels and starts looking like a thing. Human brain is pattern seeking so once you provide enough pattern hints you may call it a day. If you add too much... are you doing pixel art or shitty resolution realism?
yeah.