pixel art

Mr_Threepwood · Wed 05/10/2005 16:44:58

Thanks a lot MrCollossal, those tutorials are erally helpful. I check them out earlier but the site was down or something, Im no where near as good an artist as you are but I think I can at least learn some PS and artistics tips from those tutorials.

Andail · Wed 05/10/2005 16:58:05

Kinoko, can't you list a few things that actually make PSP better than PS?
It's not like I don't think it can be done, I'm just curious.
It will also make a much better post than just repeating "paint shop pro, paint shop pro, paint shop pro"

Nacho · Wed 05/10/2005 17:20:42

Mmmmm... I've discussed a lot about PSP and PS. The conclussion is that PS is a little little bit better, but not enough to change if you've learned with PSP.

Also, PSP is cheaper (not a big difference since we all have our copies for ages...)

So... The "mothership" products of adobe or Jasc software are very good, as usual when talking of "motherships" of marks, no matter if you're talking of bikes, cars... No need to make a lot of buzz discussing about this, both are good.

Anarcho · Wed 05/10/2005 19:00:04

I've used PSP 5 for a couple years now. It works fine for me. The only problem I encountered is that you can't resize or rotate images without a whole lot of anti-aliasing. That sucks if you want to animate pixel art by rotating legs or arms. People have told me that you can turn off anti-aliasing, but it sounds like it's just in the post version 5 packages.

If you're doing general pixel art, there really shouldn't be a big difference between programs. A good pencil or 1 pixel pen, a magic wand/lasso, line tools and the use of layers is pretty much everything you need.

Helm · Wed 05/10/2005 20:58:35

I use pro motion too. Progz finds the interface easy to use but it's because he knew dpaint and pm is a clone of that. Otherwise it's quite confusing for a newbie. Best place to start is Graphics Gale. PSP is good too. Unless you're really serious about pixel art, you'll never have to go to pro motion. Ggale is even better for animating that pro motion is because it has layers ( but pmotion has animbrushes! woo ). New version of pro motion will have layers too though so neat. Avoid photoshop for pixelling regardless of what eric says. He can't change all the pixels of x colour with y colour in just a few clicks, can he? If you need just one generic art program for non-professionals, PSP. one program just for pixel art but not really serious, graphics gale. One program for all your pixel art needs and ambitions: pro motion.

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens · Wed 05/10/2005 22:07:17

I love you, Helm. But I still think Pro Motion is fairly easy to use. Maybe I'll give Graphics Gale a once-over and see what I think of it.

Darth Mandarb · Wed 05/10/2005 22:39:45

Quote from: Helm on Wed 05/10/2005 20:58:35Avoid photoshop for pixelling regardless of what eric says. He can't change all the pixels of x colour with y colour in just a few clicks, can he?

Are you kidding? (I'm afraid I don't know your humor)

It's quite easy to do color replacements in Photoshop. Especially while doing pixel art (with no anti-aliasing). In fact, it can be done with only two clicks!

Sorry ... I get protective of Photoshop

scotch · Wed 05/10/2005 22:51:08

I already explained to Helm once how to do that in PS (and you have more than one way, depending on how flexible/fast you want it to be), he just doesn't want to realise PS is better than PSP for everything, including pixel art!

lo_res_man · Wed 05/10/2005 22:54:52

an Ms pain man myself, I love the curve tool. and colour selection is SO easy. and the fact all I got is that and artgem, makes me a mspaintin' man

cornjob · Wed 05/10/2005 23:23:39

As a longtime PSP user, I'd like to ask if there are any significant and useful features in PS that PSP lacks. I don't say this to be argumentative, it's just that I don't have deep experience with PS, so I'm genuinely curious.

Mr_Threepwood · Wed 05/10/2005 23:38:09

Ok ive figured out the basics of photoshop with the keyboard shortcuts and all.Ã,Â As for imageready, I managed to make multiple frames by hitting the animation toolbar and then duplicating frames, is this the correct way to do it?

Also, how do you work easily with more then one image at once, I currently have to hit the window button and then click on other images, whereas it would be nice to have some of them side by side to see how then will look together.

Kweepa · Thu 06/10/2005 00:19:06

Is pro motion really limited to 256 colours?
I was so happy when I stopped having to worry about that limitation back in 1997.

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens · Thu 06/10/2005 02:16:01

Yes, it's 8-bit, but that's part of what makes it so good for sprite work imo (I've always found working from a palette to be so much nicer than color pickers). I'm not really sure you need more than 256 unique colors for a game background either, but if you do then pro motion isn't for you.

Helm · Thu 06/10/2005 07:12:17

pixel art is about limited palettes. if you don't care how many colours you're using, chances are, you don't need 'dedicated' pixel art software. You're just taking it easy, which is totally fine, but doesn't call for anything of pro motion caliber.

Darth, I'm not kidding. I'm half-joking about the colour replacement, which is stupid in PS still. You can't even see the indexed palette for christ's sake and select colours from there. in psp there's an actual COLOUR REPLACER tool. come on, scotch, tell me how I can replace 50% dither of that colour with this other colour while doing brushwork. Not all instances of colour a, but while drawing with patterns.

jaz · Thu 06/10/2005 15:09:15

I was just about to write what Helm said. Limited colours. Once you are serious with pixel pushing you will find that 256 colours is more than enough. Ã Ât might seem that high colour count doesn't matter at all nowadays but for example doing gfx for a mobile java game means you have to fit all the graphics and animations into about 50 kB. Now there every colour saved counts.

Even though I am doing graphics commercially, I am still guilty of not tuning my palettes properly and sometimes I resort to techniques that are not considered "right" by pixel purists. Yes, I mostly use PSP 7 and I consider it a great tool even for pixelart.

But I highly recommend trying Grafx2. It does just about everything a pixel artist needs and it is fairly similar to legendary Deluxe Paint from old Amiga ages. And it is FREE!

You may get it for example here:

http://www.topshareware.com/Grafx2-download-11930.htm

DanClarke · Thu 06/10/2005 16:43:03

I've used paint shop pro before, but i have to say i much prefer photoshop, it just has a lot more depth in the things you can do with it.

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens · Thu 06/10/2005 20:29:46

Not that I have a point to this, but I still find that the Amiga was the greatest showcase for pixel art ever. The many hundreds of demos produced for it constantly amazed me by the sheer level of detail they were able to get out of 32-256 colors- but don't let me convince you, have a look at some screenshots from a few games and demos.

http://amiga.art.free.fr/graph/planches_screenshots/ecrans_titres_amiga07.jpg
http://amiga.art.free.fr/graph/planches_screenshots/ecrans_titres_amiga09.jpg

(some of these are scans and some are not. You may be surprised about which ones are not)
http://amiga.art.free.fr/graph/planches_screenshots/demo_scene_amiga05.jpg

Vel · Thu 06/10/2005 21:03:13

Would anyone know which game is this image from?