Uzebox Forums

...Is Hard!

I shake my fist at it in defiance I guarantee you guys I'll deliver an above average playing experience, even though it might burn your eyeballs. And when I say 'guarantee' I mean perhaps

Game development is an unforgiving mistress.

Yes, I agree.

I'll suggest a resource which I found very useful: https://opengameart.org/

You can find tons of pixel art that is free to use there. Now that I'm not using 8x8 sprites, brute force trial and error with each pixel is no longer a viable option.

Artcfox wrote: ↑Sun Apr 22, 2018 9:20 pm Yes, I agree.

I'll suggest a resource which I found very useful: https://opengameart.org/

You can find tons of pixel art that is free to use there. Now that I'm not using 8x8 sprites, brute force trial and error with each pixel is no longer a viable option.

Thank you!

L4rry wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 5:45 am Thank you!

No problem!

I had good luck searching for 16x16 or other similar search terms to narrow the results down, since there is tons of stuff posted (not a bad problem to have!)

I know the struggle! I came from an artistic background, I draw, paint, animate and I also worked with 3D art as well. So I went into pixel art thinking "Oh I got this!" and was humbled right back on my place. Pixel art is hard. It's so sensitive! one pixel misplaced and the whole thing looks off. The discretization of color palette also creates challenges. Every color needs a reason to be there otherwise it adds noise to the art.

I don't have a lot of learning references to share. Nothing you can't find with simple googling on your own anyway. But I do recommend Aseprite as the software to do your pixelings. It's free and meant for pixel art. I could not get Uzebox palette into aseprite though. Let me know if you have better luck.

diegzumillo wrote: ↑Sat May 12, 2018 6:05 pmBut I do recommend Aseprite as the software to do your pixelings. It's free and meant for pixel art.

Seems nice, and it isn't even really expensive if you bought it. I use Gimp by the way, but I see how this software could fit better for the purpose all around, possibly except for nonrectangular pixels (such as Mode 74, the pixeling for Flight of a Dragon).

diegzumillo wrote: ↑Sat May 12, 2018 6:05 pmPixel art is hard. It's so sensitive! one pixel misplaced and the whole thing looks off. The discretization of color palette also creates challenges. Every color needs a reason to be there otherwise it adds noise to the art.

Sure it needs thought, it is an entirely different medium to ordinary digital art. If interested, I have some info for Flight of a Dragon's development on my site, including how the running animation was made (what you will see on the site isn't even the final version which got into the game). It may seem odd, but even though I have a tablet which I use for digital art, I never used it for pixel art. The mouse for me fits a lot better for careful pixel plotting.

For differently shaped pixels, there's this other editor called Hexels https://www.marmoset.co/hexels/ that could be useful. I tried it a while ago but didn't insist on it. As far as I know its selling point is that you can make 'pixel' art with any shape of pixel, like hexagons, triangles or, I would imagine, pixels of different ratio.