[HN Gopher] Pixel Art: Common Mistakes (2020)
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Pixel Art: Common Mistakes (2020)
Author : memorable
Score : 270 points
Date : 2022-06-04 07:28 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (derekyu.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (derekyu.com)
| Kiro wrote:
| Not trying to be a contrarian but I honestly like the first image
| best. I like the "pillow shading". It's bright and fun.
| MattRix wrote:
| For those unaware, Derek Yu is the creator of Spelunky. Here's
| one of his best posts, it's about how to actually finish making a
| game: https://makegames.tumblr.com/post/1136623767/finishing-a-
| gam...
| burntoutfire wrote:
| That post is also full of pre-indieapocalypse charm. It assumes
| that a decent, finished game will get its author the
| recognition
| omginternets wrote:
| What's the indieapocalypse?
|
| I googled it but all the results are commentary pieces that
| assume you already know what it is.
| erik wrote:
| There was a window, from about 2007 to 2013, where
| basically any decently well made indie game that came to
| market would be financially successful. But the trick was,
| to get your game to market you had to establish a
| relationship with Microsoft, Valve, or whoever controlled
| the platform you were targeting.
|
| Around 10 years ago the platforms started to open up and it
| got a lot easier to get a game into the marketplace. Seeing
| the success of the previous wave of Indie games and lower
| barriers to entry, people started to make a lot more indie
| games. Competition got more intense and finding financial
| success became less certain.
|
| The worry of the "Indiepocalypse" is that as this trend
| continues, it will become harder and harder to make indie
| game development a viable, sustainable business. Which
| isn't suggesting that people will stop making indie games,
| it's suggesting that they will mostly be made at a loss and
| it won't be a viable business for the vast majority of
| developers.
|
| The degree to which this worry has come to pass over the
| years is debatable.
| omginternets wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation. I payed a bit of attention to
| the indie gaming scene years ago (must have been circa
| 2012 ... has it been 10 years already?!), so it's always
| nice to hear stories from that little corner of the
| internet. :)
| esotericsean wrote:
| That is still true today. This is going to sound a bit harsh
| but the market really is flooded with bad to mediocre games
| and people who think they've created a masterpiece. If you
| take a look at /r/gamedev it's full of people sharing their
| games and asking why they weren't successful. It's easy to
| see by looking at any of those games exactly why. They don't
| look good. Games that are actually good do get the
| recognition they deserve. I struggle to find evidence proving
| this wrong.
| MattRix wrote:
| This is just not true. There are tons of good games that
| don't get anywhere near the attention and sales that they
| would have during the early 2010s. In fact the only way
| this is true is if your definition of "good game" is
| "commercially successful game".
|
| Easy examples to point out are things like Tumbleseed:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/457890/TumbleSeed/ or
| Mushroom 11:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/243160/Mushroom_11/
|
| And those are both 5 years old and things have only gotten
| harder since then!
| Termitiono wrote:
| Tumbleweed is known I think but the genre is not very big
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Idk how much attention and sales you're talking about,
| but Mushroom 11 seemed to be successful. I actually heard
| of it before because it got featured on the App Store,
| and on the Steam page IGN gave it a 9/10.
| archagon wrote:
| As a reminder, the original Game Maker Spelunky was a genre-
| defining smash hit in the indie scene. So Derek had nothing
| to worry about on that front.
| the_af wrote:
| Derek Yu is also the author of the fabulous Eternal Daughter,
| one of the few platformers I ever finished.
| wooque wrote:
| This was not improvement
| eska wrote:
| Nice simple tutorial!
|
| But I think the definition of pixel art is too constrained, e.g.
| there are great pixel art styles with a larger palette and thin
| limbs.
| geraldbauer wrote:
| Paul_S wrote:
| Bad pixel art is a pet peeve of mine. This is really advanced
| advice compared the problem most games have:
|
| - pixels of different sizes
|
| - rotating (!) pixels
|
| - scaling pixels
|
| - smooth gradients with millions of colours
|
| - dynamic lighting overlayed on top
|
| ... I could go on :(
| codeflo wrote:
| I think the points you mention are easily noticed by people who
| lived in that era as anachronisms. At least that's true for me.
| And yet, Minecraft does all of those things and more, and I
| liked its style. I think it really depends on how well it's
| done.
| bluescrn wrote:
| I'd agree with most of those, but I'll disagree on dynamic
| lighting. It's quite possible to do that tastefully without
| sacrificing the integrity of the underlying pixels.
|
| 'Enter the Gungeon' is one example of that. The lighting adds
| atmosphere, doesn't harm the pixel art, and it's not
| distractingly over-the-top.
| fleabitdev wrote:
| I share your preferences, but it's a rock and a hard place.
| Performing any of the tasks you listed by hand is extremely
| labour-intensive. Doing without those features is a harsh
| creative limitation - in my experience, the result isn't "this
| game feels retro", but instead "this game feels oddly flat,
| repetitive and static", which is much less forgivable.
|
| I've worked on a game which aimed for authentically retro pixel
| art, but in hindsight I think it was a silly misallocation of
| resources. There's a reason it's so uncommon nowadays. If I
| were to try again, I'd at least include high-resolution 2D
| transforms in the engine, and possibly dynamic lighting too.
|
| I briefly explored the possibility of developing a style-
| preserving realtime rotation algorithm for sprites, but it's a
| hard problem.
| moth-fuzz wrote:
| how exactly is it a hard problem? You don't have to rotate
| the sprite by sining and cosining pixels by hand, you can
| just render to the same resolution as your sprites and it'll
| look fine.
|
| The problem is that most indie games render at 2x or 3x or
| more natively.
| fleabitdev wrote:
| Nearest-neighbour, low-resolution rotation produces
| unpleasant results when the sprite contains fine details
| with a thickness of one or two pixels, e.g. outlines:
| https://imgur.com/a/UiAZ49z
|
| Artistic preferences are subjective, but I expect most
| players would find that rotated sprite unappealing. This is
| especially true when the rotation is animated - the
| aliasing causes a distracting, staticky, random-noise
| effect which gives the impression that the sprite's fine
| details are chaotically changing. It's almost the aesthetic
| opposite of what most pixel artists are aiming for.
| flobosg wrote:
| > Nearest-neighbour, low-resolution rotation produces
| unpleasant results...
|
| That's the reason why some games use versions of the
| rotated sprites that have been tweaked by hand. See also
| tools like RotSprite
| (http://info.sonicretro.org/RotSprite).
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Why are any of these things "bad"? Back in the day pixel art
| was constrained by technical limitations, but now you can use
| the same style but with less technical constraints, and include
| these sort of things. It's not "true" pixel art from 1990, but
| that doesn't make it "bad".
| stelonix wrote:
| Some people on twitter take offense when opinions such as
| parent's are said, but I believe he has a point. I'm talking
| specifically about the amount of colors and also the use of
| tiles instead of a discrete art.
|
| There's something to limited color space that those people do
| not seem to understand, be it the ones saying such critique,
| or the ones getting mad at it. We see color quantization in
| any realistic painting after the renaissance. Limiting the
| color space actually makes the pixel art look more realistic,
| because then every shade or shadow fits the overall drawings.
| Once you go Stardew Valley, sure it's pixel art, but just
| like a Picasso is great, it's not a Caravaggio, it's not
| "realistic" when it comes to how lighting reflects off
| surfaces.
|
| Then there's the use of tiles/repeating background parts or
| having a full canvas where every pixel is unique. Although
| it's nice to look at, there's just too much information for
| the brain to process. That kind of art is nice, but in a game
| it's distracting. I personally call that kind of art pixel
| paintings and separate it from classic pixel art with tiles
| and limited colors.
|
| It might be all just rose tinted glasses of nostalgia, but I
| firmly believe there's some science to what I just described.
| Look at any Caravaggio painting but especially portraits to
| see how limited the color space really is, how sometimes he
| uses shades of a color to give the impression of a very
| distant (color-space-wise) second color. It's really about
| that.
| barrysteve wrote:
| The techniques he mentioned don't serve the higher principle.
|
| Adding lights from a lighting engine over the top of sprites
| with baked shading, might make a pretty image but it is not
| pushing pixel art forwards. Scaling and rotating can produce
| poor quality sprites.
|
| P.s. Ashford is the best.
| greymalik wrote:
| Who's Ashford?
| brazzy wrote:
| Reference to the username "Beltalowda", a character in
| "The Expanse" book and TV series.
| ceph_ wrote:
| For the same reason people like the hiss and pops of a
| record, film grain, or even VHS tracking artifacts.
| Yesterday's technical limitations become today's aesthetic.
|
| But the real answer is they aren't inherently bad. People
| don't actually need it to conform to the past limitations.
| More that they want it to feel authentic to the nostalgic
| memory they have in their head.
|
| For example, games like Shovel Knight go for an 8bit style,
| but they're not limited to an 8 bit color space, NES sprite
| limitations, etc.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| I'm not sure about Shovel Knight because I've never played
| it, but Mina the Hollower (also by Yacht Club) actually
| does conform to the those limitations. It's based on the
| art style of Zelda: Link's Awakening, and does so quite
| accurately.
|
| https://www.yachtclubgames.com/games/mina-the-hollower
| monkpit wrote:
| Check out La Mulana.. the original version of the game
| conforms to the limitations of the MSX, but remakes do
| not. There's plenty of room to do things either way!
|
| A post from the author about the remade art: https://la-
| mulana.com/en/blog/graphic_full_remake.html
|
| Compared to the art from the screenshots on Wikipedia:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La-Mulana
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I get all that; I really enjoy the sound of some
| "imperfections" of old blues and jazz records, but I also
| don't consider any modern records which doesn't replicate
| those "imperfections" to be bad.
| a_e_k wrote:
| Shovel Knight used the 54-color NES palette, with 4
| additional "cheater" colors:
|
| https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/breaking-the-nes-for-
| sh...
| [deleted]
| Narishma wrote:
| It's been a while since I played Shovel Knight, but I don't
| remember it having any of the issues OP talks about.
| skybrian wrote:
| The article explicitly says it's okay to disagree. Agreement
| or disagreement on art style isn't really the point. If you
| see pixel art differently and can decide for yourself which
| effects you want to use then you've learned something.
| MattRix wrote:
| There are two main categories of pixel art in games.
|
| In one category it's about retro authenticity and these games
| are defined by the fact that their final buffer is the same low
| resolution as their art. They also often feature limited
| palettes, especially ones that were actually used on retro
| consoles.
|
| There's also a second category of pixel art, where the style is
| more modern. The art is still low res, but the final screen
| buffer is high res. This is where you're more likely to see
| stuff like smooth rotating sprites and lighting effects.
|
| You may have a preference for one style or the other, but
| neither style is bad or "wrong". Most people who use the modern
| style are doing it on purpose. There are fantastic looking
| games in both categories.
| versteegen wrote:
| "Modern style" pixel art doesn't always mean higher
| resolution. You could use low resolutions but high bitdepth
| or lighting or transforms or shaders or ...
|
| (Although I would consider a low-res limited-palette game
| which uses transparency, lighting, rotation, scaling and
| other transforms as retro since that was already possible
| decades ago.)
|
| I (and many others) think mismatched pixel sizes look bad,
| but that there's nothing inherently wrong with those other
| things.
| moth-fuzz wrote:
| Having pixel art and then each "pixel" being 4 or 16 pixels,
| obvious when scaled or rotated, I think is bad artistic form
| regardless of whether it's a vintage styled or modern styled
| game. It breaks the flow and suspension of disbelief that
| comes with pixel art. The brain can't interpolate anymore.
| Besides, it's not hard to render to a buffer and scale it up
| nearest-neighbor, and it always looks better IMO
| derefr wrote:
| When I picture good uses of pixel art in modern (not retro-
| aesthetic) games, I picture it not as a pixel "camera" -- a
| low-res CCD capturing a grid of samples of an originally-
| high-fidelity world; but rather as the world itself being
| made up of a bunch of vector squares -- like the 2D
| equivalent of a Minecraft voxel world. The camera is a
| regular high-resolution camera, looking at a weird blocky
| world.
|
| In such a world, rotating a pixel sprite by 45 degrees
| should just look like there being multiple invisible
| "grids" to the world, each rendered at infinite resolution
| and downsampled to your display, where the sprite isn't
| rotating per se, but rather the pixel grid "layer" the
| sprite is on (i.e. the hi-res texture the sprite layer is
| being rendered onto for compositing) is itself rotating.
|
| Of course, if you're going to use things like
| rotation/scaling, sub-pixel particle effects, 3D, etc. then
| you then either have to embrace it in your game setting's
| art design everywhere so particular uses of it don't stick
| out; or you have to acknowledge that any uses of it are
| basically "non-Euclidean geometry" from the viewpoint of
| in-setting observers, and thus slide your game's mood
| toward something approaching either science-fantasy (e.g.
| Fez) or horror (has anyone done a Flatland Cthulhu game
| yet?)
|
| Also note that "multiple distinct pixel grids" isn't even
| unprecedented in retro games, either; there were plenty of
| consoles where you got one resolution for your tile map and
| a different (usually higher) resolution for your sprites;
| where sprites could sit on top of tiles in non-aligned
| positions. A few consoles and arcade cabinets even combined
| pixels with vectors!
| [deleted]
| fleabitdev wrote:
| Can you recommend any games in the first category?
|
| I surveyed the indie-game landscape a couple of years back,
| specifically looking for games in your first category, but
| struggled to find any recent examples. 2D transforms, alpha-
| blending and lighting effects seem to be the standard now.
| erik wrote:
| Celeste uses high resolution dialogue text, but its
| gameplay is strict about the pixel grid.
|
| Loop Hero is strict about its pixel art and uses a fixed
| 16-colour palette that is reminiscent of the Commodore 64.
|
| Baba Is You has visuals that you could basically render on
| a ZX Spectrum.
|
| And in addition to doing pixel art well, these are all
| pretty great games.
| lozenge wrote:
| Cave Story, Shovel Knight?
| MattRix wrote:
| There are a bunch of retro inspired games (ex Shovel
| Knight) that do the retro inspired thing. More interesting
| is a game like Celeste, where it has a 3D level select but
| during the actual gameplay, the characters move in integers
| and the screen buffer is still fixed at a low resolution.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| Shovel Knight actually has a high-resolution render
| buffer and "subpixel" movement, but nobody seems to
| notice because the rules are _mostly_ held in-place.
| derjames wrote:
| Empire Strikes Back remake for c64
| https://megastyle.itch.io/esb-by-megastyle
| billfruit wrote:
| Can you suggest some games of the second category? Enter the
| Gungeon?
| HellDunkel wrote:
| These are artistic choices, not proof of bad art. Take a look
| at ,,Hell is other Demons" eg - it breaks a few of those rules
| and does a phenomenal job at pixel art.
| ido wrote:
| A lot of these are stylistic choices (or could be at least)
| rather than mistakes.
| d_tr wrote:
| And / or saving time and money because the artists need to
| draw less pixels by hand.
| TeaDude wrote:
| Scaling and rotating sprites definitely used to be overused but
| I don't think they're that bad considering they were featured
| in many classic consoles (GBA, DS, Sega Saturn, PS1 etc.) and
| too many arcade boards to count
|
| I dislike lighting though (unless it's implemented tastefully)
| and I think normal maps look absolutely disgusting in any
| situation.
|
| E: Also, overuse of shaders is discouraged. Especially non-
| pixel effects like blurring.
| kris-s wrote:
| I don't know if I would agree that the final scene is more
| readable - especially the treasure chest. I can't deny it looks
| much nicer though! I spent a lot of time tweaking the sprites in
| my game for readability. I touch on it here [1] but maybe I
| should do a full tutorial with intermediate steps.
|
| https://smoldungeon.com/design
| binz120 wrote:
| I liked the before better. The latter looks over saturated in my
| opinion.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Love before, don't like after.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Inspiration:
|
| https://reddit.com/r/pixelart
| seangransee wrote:
| Also for examples of varying quality:
|
| https://everyonedraw.com
| jehlakj wrote:
| I've always fancied japanese style pixel art. I still remember
| playing megaman x and it hasn't aged a bit. Or even simpler ones
| like super mario world or the last few pixel based pokemon games.
|
| I remember looking for tutorials for this style, but ended up
| copying sprites and trying to understand why they such and such
| decisions. Interestingly enough, I find it harder to recreate
| pokemon style sprites because they're so abstract and yet a
| single pixel can make or break it. I know this is a bit off
| topic, but would love to know if there are any resources for
| this.
| civilized wrote:
| Each step made it worse. By the end it was a monstrosity.
| the_af wrote:
| This is of course subjective, but I think the intermediate step
| with flat shading is the one I like the most. The initial naive
| shading looks pretty bad to me, while the final redesign is way
| too complex.
| planetsprite wrote:
| I actually prefer the first one
| amelius wrote:
| Before: mouse looks like a mouse; boy looks like a boy
|
| After: mouse looks like a dog; boy looks like a monkey
| AprilArcus wrote:
| Step 3: Draw the rest of the owl
| Frotag wrote:
| Not sure if it still counts as pixel art, but I've always
| preferred Maplestory's art style [0] over the art used by
| rougelikes like Dead Cells [1].
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/k2rf45EXWTc?t=26
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/pU6GHVvHCRk
| MattRix wrote:
| Of course this is entirely subjective, but do you think you
| prefer it because Maplestory's art is better, or because you
| like the game so much due to playing it during a formative time
| in your life (ex. high school)? Perhaps it even helped define
| your aesthetic sense in the first place.
| Frotag wrote:
| Yeah, sinking thousands of hours into that game has probably
| brainwashed me in one way or another.
|
| I'd like to say the art is less noisy than the more common
| low-rez styles (narrower color palettes, less shading, easier
| to separate the background from the platforms / play area).
| But looking at screenshots now, I can't say it looks good.
| But it's charming and unique enough that I'd pick it over
| most other styles if I was making a game.
|
| For comparison...
|
| - Maplestory - https://mmos.com/wp-
| content/gallery/maplestory-3/MapleStory-...
|
| - Dead Cells -
| https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/916116-dead-
| cells-w...
|
| - Hades - https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2020/11/13/hades_0
| 9-dec-201...
|
| - Stardew Valley -
| https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/screen/full/4/9/9/556499.jpg
|
| - Mother 3 -
| https://lparchive.org/Mother-3/Update%2023/10-7.png
| aoeusnth1 wrote:
| For me, Hades is the clear aesthetic winner among those.
| tpxl wrote:
| I don't think MS has pixel art. Chibis with a relatively low
| res sprites indicative of the era (Released 2003-2007).
|
| I do like the style though, and if I made a sidescroller,
| that's one of the art styles I'd like to have.
| Avshalom wrote:
| Kind of a "draw the rest of the fucking owl" step there at the
| end.
| moth-fuzz wrote:
| and to think I almost made this comment if I hadn't continued
| scrolling!
|
| Also the form of the sprites changed significantly, it was a
| massive shift in artistic personality and aesthetic direction
| that the tutorial just called it "not using straight lines". I
| think they could have made their point while not swapping in a
| different set of tastes entirely.
| butwhywhyoh wrote:
| Absolutely. Came here to say exactly the same thing. The first
| couple of steps were clear and informative. The last step was
| almost a joke.
| k__ wrote:
| Exactly my thought!
|
| _" part of what I enjoy about art is admiring craftsmanship -
| the skill and knowledge of the artist at work."_
|
| I'm a devrel person my art is writing tutorials and guides. And
| this one is a very naive approach at it.
| [deleted]
| geraldbauer wrote:
| FYI: For getting started with profile picture (avatar) pixel art,
| see the pixelart family of scripts / gems ->
| https://github.com/pixelartexchange/pixelart - Home of the Goblin
| (Pixel) Monster starter kit and more. Is ugly the new beau /
| belle?
| Ygg2 wrote:
| I like the second version. The final version looks like some kind
| of monkey/Sun-Wukong.
| kzrdude wrote:
| The final one somehow looks lower resolution, more crude, but
| also has a style that's a lot more reminiscent of older low
| pixel count games.
| nerdponx wrote:
| The final version reminds me of something that would have
| looked great on Gameboy Advance!
| MattRix wrote:
| He says specifically that the final one is his own style and it
| might not appeal to some readers as much as the second one.
| xigoi wrote:
| I like the version in step 1 the most. The contrast is a great
| improvement, then the 3D effect made it kinda weird and the
| restyling completely ruined the cuteness and simplicity of the
| characters.
| derefr wrote:
| The tutorial might be better called "pixel art for animation"
| or "pixel art for games." There's a practicality to the
| restyling: it vastly improves the ability of the character's
| parts to be animated, without things looking strange. (E.g.
| without the thin little arms on the human suddenly being
| thicker when taken away from the body.)
|
| You might call the initial work "impressionist" -- it has
| proportions that might be emotionally evocative, but that
| _impression_ only works in that static framing, and can't
| really be pulled out into a coherent aesthetic model. (I.e. you
| can't just take the scene, mentally rotate it about the Z axis
| 30 degrees, and know what it should look like.)
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(page generated 2022-06-04 23:01 UTC)