Speed's Pixel Cluster v2.0

AD · 12-29-2016, 05:14 AM

Originally Posted by Speed-X

OH MY IT IS BEAUTIFUL. HIS TUFFNESS HIMSELF! *wipes away tear*

**SassySnivy** · 12-29-2016, 06:51 PM

Thanks! :D Ohh, now I get your Showdown name. :P

I don't think I properly uploaded everything related to Zubat and Wigglytuff since I was in a rush to get to sleep but here we go:

Oh, look, another flying rodent

AD · 12-29-2016, 09:25 PM

Originally Posted by Speed-X

Ohh, now I get your Showdown name. :P

yep, the dank lord wigglytuff himself. Peeps thought the tuff was useless back in the RB days, i proved them wrong

**Suicune's Fire** · 12-30-2016, 12:10 AM

WHAT THE HECK SPEED YOU ARE THE QUEEN OF PIXELS, I SWEAR. That isometric bedroom is gorgeous so far. And those back sprites are amazing. (Omg I get HisTuffness now too!)

Keep it up. :3c YOU ARE THE BEST AT PIXELS. How long d'ya reckon that room'll take you? owo

**SassySnivy** · 01-31-2017, 06:41 PM

Wow...it's been over a month since I've made any pixel art. D:

Trying to work on cards that feature other artists other than the same three from Gym Heroes. I LOVE KOUKI SAITOU. HAVE I EVER MENTIONED THAT LIKE SERIOUSLY. I love his dynamicism and use of perspective in his work and how true he stays to the original proportions of the Pokemon. He's like Sugimori v1.5.

AND THIS ONE. I love how this turned out. Much easier to work with than all the...browns, reds, and greens with the Treecko one, and the water transparency and dithering effects were so much fun!

Wow! I wanted to make one that used Yuka Morii's art, but...holy ****. I really should not have tried it with Plusle, a mostly-white / cream-colored Pokemon. Didn't turn out too bad, though. Just still having some problems with fixing that readability.

This card has the CUTEST Espurr I think I've ever seen. I'm sad that the small size of this didn't allow me to do it justice, but I did try.

This one was a lot of fun. Bulls***ted the background...it worked out just fine so yeah :P

WHOA. I can't believe the colors turned out so well on this one. * 7 *

Merging the yellow and red actually turned out better than I thought it would. I LOVE THE STYLE OF THE ORIGINAL ART.

**Suicune's Fire** · 02-01-2017, 08:16 AM

Wooowww, so awesome. My favourites are the first totodile and the omanyte! *v* Just stunning, Speed. xD Do you ever lose patience with these? Or do you love it all the way through?

**Pokemon Trainer Sarah** · 02-01-2017, 08:25 AM

Woah! I dunno how you do this, they are so little but so perfect! *_* I love the Omanyte so much! The water looks great! And the colours on the first Totodile are beautiful! I always loved that card! The second Toto is really cute too! I love all your backgrounds!

**Chibi Altaria** · 02-01-2017, 10:09 AM

Woooooah...I wish I could do pixel art nearly half as well as you. *O* That Totodile one, second from the bottom, would have to be my favourite. I absolutely adore the colours and style! And that Treecko one isn't bad, either!

If you're ever interested, I'd love a tutorial on these! :D

**SassySnivy** · 02-01-2017, 07:23 PM

Originally Posted by Suicune's Fire

Wooowww, so awesome. My favourites are the first totodile and the omanyte! *v* Just stunning, Speed. xD Do you ever lose patience with these? Or do you love it all the way through?

When I start to lose patience I keep going. xD It happens a lot. It happened with that colorful Totodile one because of all the colors. But whenever I got done blocking in the colors and I went back and looked at how it looked, I was like "oh, okay, this looks better than I thought it would :O "

Originally Posted by Pokemon Trainer Sarah

Woah! I dunno how you do this, they are so little but so perfect! *_* I love the Omanyte so much! The water looks great! And the colours on the first Totodile are beautiful! I always loved that card! The second Toto is really cute too! I love all your backgrounds!

Evidently, Xanthe was here. I love that gif. CHICKENS BE SO CUTE.

imho water is the most fun to work with :D Tbh backgrounds turn out better than I originally think they will. I just **** around and block in shapes and colors, add some dithering and then ta-dah. It's nice how well things work like that when you just use the right side of your brain and forget what everything is supposed to be and just focus on colors. :o

Originally Posted by Lunar Latias

Woooooah...I wish I could do pixel art nearly half as well as you. *O* That Totodile one, second from the bottom, would have to be my favourite. I absolutely adore the colours and style! And that Treecko one isn't bad, either!

If you're ever interested, I'd love a tutorial on these! :D

I do have some process videos! Might do another one or might do a tutorial. Tutorial would be tricky because the specifics all depend on the art you're working with, but they all do follow a basic set of steps.

Actually, looking back I do have a list of things to keep in mind:

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by Speed-X

Thanks, Gigi! I figured that having a challenge like this would be a little too difficult. x] There are a lot of things I have to keep in mind while making these. But I'm glad that WAR refueled your interest in pixel art!

Just general rules of thumb I follow since I feel like sharing. xD

Keep it under 8 colors. Sometimes you need to just get really creative with this. Remember how during WAR I said not to over-dither? Obviously, you don't want to dither to the point that you can't tell what's what, but you still want to do considerably more dithering that you usually would with pixels.
Make the image to-scale so that the Pokemon will look larger on the pixel-over. A lot of the times, even if the Pokemon IS the main focus, it will still look too small when downsized. Gradually cut off either side of the original artwork, then (if you're in paint), resize the image. Go to the pixels tab, make sure that you have "maintain aspect ratio" checked. Type in 64 in the top box (horizontal.) If the bottom box doesn't automatically fill in as "48," then keep touching it up until it does so. Sometimes if there really isn't much of a background and the Pokemon really IS the main, center-focus of the artwork, I'll keep cutting off the sides and then cut off some of the top/bottom sides of the original art until the aspect ratio is correct when I go to resize it. This way the Pokemon is large enough to be translated well into pixel art. This is a little different if the Pokemon isn't the main focus of the art, though, and you sometimes just have to use discretion here.
I usually make a separate layer for the 64 x 48 px image, lower the opacity (just enough that I can both see what I'm doing AND what the original art has done), then make a layer over it and trace. I like to get the line art, maybe even the base colors of the Pokemon down first. Then I worry about blocking in the background. I usually start with the darker shapes and move to lighter ones. Once that's all done, I go back and refine it. Finally, I give the Pokemon shading and make sure all the colors are in check. if not, sometimes I have to do some pretty interesting things to BOTH keep the color count down AND make sure that the final result looks nice. It needs to be relatively minimalistic but not too minimalistic.
Imitate the original artist's style to the best of your ability. An example here is Sugimori's old watercolor-esque style of art. It uses harsh highlights and doesn't usually have much shading. However, sometimes you do want to add a little shading in large spaces so that that space that just consists of one solid color doesn't look too...eh, empty.
Don't forget the white border around the Pokemon. This varies depending on the style and background. For example, this Houndour by Starturds does better without the borders around Houndour since it would take away from the effect of the background. This Onix also doesn't utilize the white borders, again because of how the background interferes with the Pokemon. It just would look really odd. This Golem, however, benefits from the white border because of how
Only don't use it if you feel like it would take too much away from the result and/or if it just...doesn't look right. Most of the lineless art styles translate fine without the borders.
Never use pure black or pure white. Since you have that white border around your Pokemon most of the time, feel free to use the black color in the background where necessary...or even the white!
Be conservative with your colors, but don't be TOO conservative. If you can afford to add a color, and not adding it would take away from the finished product, then just add the color and see if there's anywhere else you can add it to give it some more life. I went and used the tan and the pale orange that was used on this Spearow on the background, as well. Just helps make the palette more unified.
Unification is a little more important than color conservation. If the palette isn't at all unified, keep messing with it. Here's another cool example of reusing colors: Starturds' Murkrow. If you look, you might notice that he's used some of the tan and yellow colors in Murkrow's feathers. Adds a little bit of color to it.
Make sure that, in general, the Pokemon is relatively easy to distinguish from the background.

Oh, they take about 30 minutes or so, give or take (usually give) several minutes. I've also started a Google Sheets file to keep track of progress and I might even start a project at some point. I guess I'll have to see! Nonetheless it's good to have everything organized. I didn't include some of my sprites because I personally feel like they could be redone (namely Neo Discovery Houndoom). I also didn't include ALL of Starturds original ones he made for the same reasons: some need reworking on just redoing altogether.

Since I'm doing these in order, next-up is Misty's Poliwhirl.

Also, I have some progress videos of these up on Youtube if you wanna check 'em out! Miltank and Floatzel

I'm definitely wanting to work on a proper tutorial now / another few process videos tho :D