Pixel Art...
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- 67nj
as soon as next week i'm going to get (hopefully) a new contract for a series of posters and banners for a sportwear company... in the meetings we had so far they showed me as refs lots of pixel arts illustrations... now i'm concerned a bit about it because of the time consuming it might take for me and i was wondering if someone here had already been commissioned with something similar and could give me some good advice... thanx NTers!
ciao ciao
- mach5des0
Pixel art is very time consuming. No way around it. My advice is not to ask for more time up front, but if the work is going slow you just ask for more time from the client. Simple.
- rasko40
well clearly it's not that simple is it, as time = money.
- 67nj0
thanks...
i was thinking of using illustrator 3d rendering fx for all the buildings and backgrounds, and all the simple shapes than retouch everithing in ps, that could be much faster... right?
- rasko40
i'm not sure about this 3d rendering you speak of, but pixel art does not have perspective, its isometric. I'm probably stating the obvious here.
I thinki the best bet is to create photoshop brushed of the various lines and corners, repeating shapes etc.
- 67nj0
i'm referrring to a illCS 3d function that adds only an xyz angle and extrusion although i think i can probably use it only if i want to reproduce very easy shapes like streets, large one color buildings or stuff like that... thanks anyway though, i'll post my first attempt... oops if i get the job!
ciao rasko!
- rasko40
good luck!
- Jnr_Madison0
I was really into pixel art for a while, it takes ages if you don't have any reusable elements from your own collection and getting the hang of pulling it off well is time consuming too.
Good luck.
- Jnr_Madison0
...in fact as few years ago I started building a pixel world for my portfolio (hey, it was hip at the time, ok) and I eneded up taking so long I outgrew my love for it.
- 67nj0
i hope i can get away from this...safe and sound...
- Gucci0
not that you hadn't thought of this,, but...
draw your flat illustration and use a PS filter on it? Depending on how much you're getting paid and how large the illustration needs to be, it might just work well enough - especially if you autotrace it back into Illy.
not sure... it's late and i'm babbling.
'night
- 67nj0
nice links... thanks!
- Baskerville0
Make sure the client know that it will take a long time and try and get the most specific list of what they want.
Then just start drawing pixel by pixel. Check out eBoy etc for ideas on shading, people etc.
The great thing about photoshop is that because you're drawing pixel by pixel (you should work at 72dpi, zoomed in to 1600%) you can then scale the image up afterwards to the correct resolution/size using the image size window (set to 'nearest neighbour')
- 67nj0
thanks, very interesting point about resolution that i didn't consider at all...
- Baskerville0
because all pixels are perfect squares ie only straight, perpendicular lines. When you res them up using nearest neighbour, there is no loss of quality. Everything stays sharp!
- 67nj0
Thanks! i'm going to check that ps option as soon as i can get home... cant wait actually... ah ah!!
grazie!!
- daubet0
Resizing should be done using the Image Size dialogue with 'Resample Image' unchecked.
This leaves the pixel size of the image unchanged but the dpi will change according to the required image dimensions.
Eg. A 300x300 pixel image with dpi of 300dpi will print at 1x1 inches. Change the image dimensions to 3x3 inches (with Resample Image unchecked) and the dpi will change to 100dpi, with the pixel dimensions remaing the same, 300x300px.
Look at the 'Understanding image size and resolution' section in the PS help files.
- Baskerville0
daubetm you mis-understand.
Ordinarily with a photo-based image if you want to change the resolution you are correct you should leave that box unchecked as you don't want photoshop to 'invent' pixels that aren't there (this would make your image more fuzzy). But when you're drawing single pixels you can't work at 300pdi since you'd be drawing millions of pixels.The nature of pixel art is to look low res, thus you have to create the images at low res (72 dpi). Then when the image is complete it will only be tiny and not large enough for print resolution (300dpi). Normally you can't increase the resolution artificially but because the pixel are is made up of little squares you can increase the resolution (using 'nearest neighbour) without compromising the sharpness of the image.