Critic, hi res art by a lo res man, critic

[lo_res_man]

this is my first attempt at hi res art. im most often a pixel artist, but i have discovered a method for 640/480 art that will knock your sox off.
you draw your art in double line in paint, yes, ol ms paint. then you select the image in an even sized cut(very importent) then you paste that in irfan view(very usefull software) the back to paint to remove the blured edge, VERY easy if you did what i said earlier about even number sizes. and BOOM!
Don't the images look cel?

[Darcness]

Wow.

These are some really nice characters. Your method seems to be working nicely.

[Ozwalled]

They do ineed look marvellous. The one thing I'll mention is that the green girl and the goggled guy's feet are a facing opposite directions a bit too much, maybe. Pointing them more toward their fronts will help them look a bit more natural.

[lo_res_man]

Thanx, thats the kind of critic i need ozwald, i know the techneqe works, i just need to know about perpotions and such like. oh and "green girl"? SHE is an elf-orc.

[Ozwalled]

Hm. The image isn't showing up for me anymore... Bugger.
EDIT: Nevermind. Seems to be that nothing from 2dadventure.com is showing up for me at the moment...

For the past few days, though, I was wondering about this technique of yours. I'm not quite following your explanation (I'm a bit stupid sometimes), and I'm wondering what all it is exactly you're doing that's apparently working. I don't suppose that you could post a few pictures of the process that leads up to the image you have there (and what the big difference is if you don't use "even sized cut"). I, for one, would really appreciate it.

[lo_res_man]

My mistake. my techniqe used something that just-as-stupid me forgot to tell you :'(. when you put even cut sprite in irfanview. you HALF it, using the resample option.
if your sprite is even cut, using a black outline. and everything else i said, it will use the colour amounts you see in my gif. th even cut is importent because THEN when you copy back into paint. you can remove the anti-alies edging by pilling in the backround with the ligh grey in ms paint, then the dark grey. and THEN you'llget a gameworth sprite that looks like you hand drew it and scanned it in.

[Ozwalled]

I'd still like to get an idea of how things look, step by step. If you COULD post some step-by-step shots of the process as it's unfolding, I'd be greatful.

Also since 2dadventure is down, you may want to re-host the picture above (and any others, for the time being) somewhere else.

[lo_res_man]

All right, all right !  by this time tomorrow the explanitry pics will be uploaded for your viewing.

[Ozwalled]

Oh dear... I'm sorry if I came off as badgering you about that. I'm just not all that well-versed in the digital art terminolgy part of things, I guess, so I was having trouble following your instructions due to that fact (no fault of your own). So if you don't feel up to showing how you did the graphics, I totally understand.

Back to the graphics, though. Well, now that I can see them again, I was going to suggest shading for a moment, but when I tried doing a quick paintover, the improvemnets were minimal. I'm continually amazed at how slick you've made these look with the style and with the contrasting colour selection.

My sox remain knocked off, but I'll lay off now so that someone else can offer their critique.

[lo_res_man]

And here it is!

this is the VERY large( inÃ, IMAGE size not file size) verson that you first draw. it is done with the curve tool and the 2 line width marker for small details


and here it is after you copy it to Irfan view and did a 50%resize, with the RESAMPLE on.

Here is stage one of outer edge lighter colours removal, done inÃ,  ms-paint

and here is stage two. Almost done!

And here is the done sprite, perfact for uploading into AGS
NOTES.You MUST copy the double line image in a EVEN number image size. That uses the least colours. And allows you to do the one-two unwanted edging removel  the way I did.
AND here he is. M'Lud in Boxers!

[Kairus]

lo_res_man:

I think you are trying to show us the mixing of an antialiased image with a non-antialias border. I used a technique that makes the same effect of the one you're describing when making the sprites for my game, though it didn't have the oscurantism of imitating the antialias colours with mspaint shades of gray.

Later on I read an excellent tutorial by 2ma2 (I think it was by him, don't remember) called something like "the secret of CMI" that explained almost exactly the same techinque. He claimed it was the technique used by the guys who drew the sprites for The Curse of Monkey Island, it was supposed to make scanned sprites look better. It's nonetheless what you're saying:

- draw your sprite in 200% of the size it should have in the game

- select everything that's supposed to be transparent and make a new layer where all that pixels are green (or a distinct colour that's not in the original sprite), this will be the "clear region" layer

- go back to the sprite layer and paint all the clear region black (or the colour you are using for the border lines)

- resize the sprite layer using antialiasing to 50%

- resize the clear region layer without using antialiasing to 50%

The result is that you have an antialiased sprite without the nasty light-grey border pixels.

[Gilbert]

But of course, that would involve using a more "advanced" graphics programme that has layer support (like expensive  Photoshop and free GIMP), that also involves whether you're familiar with such programmes too.
If it's someone who loves to use cheap programmes like M$Pain sometimes (like me) and won't mind doing some tidying job, low res man's method is perfect, too.

By the way, Eric actually made a similar tutorial on how to remove the AA border, it's not about resizing a hi-res picture into a low-res. crispy AA look, but the idea is similar.

[Jayel]

or you guys can wait until my sprite editor is released. (prolly this summer)  It does selective filtering when you scale, and perfect for this kind of stuff.

[Haddas]

That sounds almost too good to be true!

[lo_res_man]

If it's someone who loves to use cheap programmes like M$Pain sometimes (like me) and won't mind doing some tidying job, low res man's method is perfect, too.

Thats what I'm saying Gilbot V7000a. Not ALL of us have the know how or (in my case) bandwith, to use or download these monster programs. Oh, and btw, i am NO way affiliated with irfan view. I just had it on my computer. That and MS-Paint are my ONLY art programs. what my tutorial shows is IF you use irfan-viw and paint. you CANÃ,  :o get a look just as good as gimp or photo-shop. It also, if you follow my instructions,makes tidy up WAY easy.