pixel art

[Anonymous]

Hey,

I guess this could apply to any game art really, now before i go on…i’m a _code monkey_ first, so my art is kinda like a “forward’s challenge” in the premiership :lol:

what’s the verdict on putting black outlines around sprites in games – yay or nay?

or “if it looks good, use it”?

i don’t know if its a bad habit i picked up or not, but i looked at a few j2me games out there and some of the older games have a black outline, quite a few of the newer ones don’t.

cheers.

[Anonymous]

It depends on the style of art that your are doing Anthony, Although it is suggested that you should soften your outlines with similar shades to the colour of the object you are drawing.

IMO I reckon that black outlines can be a bit too heavy, but as I said it depends on the style of the art, One suggestion is not to mix the two styles, It makes it look a bit messy and makes some object more prominent than others

here is a good tutorial site with some good links off of it:
http://www.natomic.com/hosted/marks/mpat/

[Anonymous]

Thanks Max!

I have experimented with using a darker shade for the edges of my sprites, like if i had a green coat on a player sprite, the outer edges of the coat would be a darker shade of green, to give him some definition.

i’ll check out that tutorial now, thanks again :D

[Anonymous]

What! You haven’t read Tsugumo’s tutorial yet! :shock:
Well, sad news is, the website is dead. Good news is, while looking at my links I discovered that one of the other sites I wanted to mention HAS Tsugumo’s tutorials.
So go and check out Gas 13, from Russia, and browse their tutorial section. If it all appears in Russian, don’t panick, just click on English and it will change the language.
Gas 13 itself is more for pure isometric than “Zelda-esque” pixelart, but the tutorials listed here are all excellent.
Again, I cannot recommend Tsugumo’s tutorial enough. It’s a bit of a classic amongst pixel pushers :P

As for your actual question, black outlines vs. coloured outlines isn’t a question of taste, coloured outlines are just a tad harder, that’s all. If you have the patience and skill to pull it off, it’s generally nicer looking. Although of course that’s also a question of personal taste.

I can’t help notice Max’s sig contains a sprite from… is that Metal Slug IV ??? Good gods I love that game :D

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the links, unfortunately the link for Tsugumo’s 404s but thanks all the same.

I found this tutorial the other day and it makes a fair bit of sense, its very easy to follow, i don’t use MS Paint though as they do in their tutorials.

http://rhysd.syntesis.org/tutorial/index.php

[Anonymous]

Hey Anthony

you can get to the tutorials directly through the Gas 13 Site: http://gas13.ru/

heres another site with some nice tutorial to have a look at: http://www.spriteart.com/

Also there is nothing better than looking at ripped sprites from games, just do a search in Google for game sprites etc…
Heres a site with some nice rips on it: http://sprites.fireball20xl.com/

…And philippe_j
Metal Slug Rocks alright – I got the gif from here: http://www.persian-designers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1565&sid=1d8002b306f0b6fe367ae4e9a56166d6
Metal slug recently got released on Mobile – Looks pretty cool. they kept it pretty faithful to the arcade version.

[Anonymous]

my apologies, I didnt notice my links were malformed early enough :oops:
that spriteart website is very very nice, btw :)
Nice to see another pixel lover around here ;)

Also if you want to see _real_ dithering skills, I suggest you look for hentai pictures (porn anime pictures, if you dont know what that is).
Seriously, up to a few years ago (until DOS dissapeared, in fact), most hentai games were done in the old EGA mode, because it had better resolution but less colours. The solution the artists used ? Well, just dither your colours to make it look like there is more than there really is.
Actually, any japanese video game will probably do, IIRC Princess Maker is in EGA, too.
It really tells you something about Japanese artists when most of them were still doing better graphics with 16 colours than most games in the West had in 256 colours… :roll:
There, check those screenshots. That’s 16 colours. Look at the other pages, too :P

[Author]

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