[WIP]Cocoon

[yuminig]

I'm a newbie in pixeling. hope you guide me with your comments.
for dead and hit I'm still working on it.

[Crush]

You still have a long way to go. So please let me give you a few pointers:

1. Dithering is a good trick to hint texture without actually creating any. But please don't do chessboard dithering. It looks very cheap. Place pixels randomly instead.
2. Exactly horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines are evil. Avoid them at all cost.
3. Colors with 100% saturation and 0% saturations should never be used because they look cheap. Unless of course you want it to use the dynamic recolorisation system.
4. Where is your light direction?

When you have any questions about these points or need any other advise to improve your work feel free to ask.

[yuminig]

You still have a long way to go. So please let me give you a few pointers:

1. Dithering is a good trick to hint texture without actually creating any. But please don't do chessboard dithering. It looks very cheap. Place pixels randomly instead.
2. Exactly horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines are evil. Avoid them at all cost.
3. Colors with 100% saturation and 0% saturations should never be used because they look cheap. Unless of course you want it to use the dynamic recolorisation system.
4. Where is your light direction?

When you have any questions about these points or need any other advise to improve your work feel free to ask.

1. understood
2. what do you mean by that can you pls specify
3. I see. but what recommend technique should I use?
4. It's not noticeable huh? I still have long way to go.

[Crush]

Regarding the line comment:
The "legs" of your sprite are constructed from straight 45° angles. While this is very easy to draw for a beginner pixel artist it looks very amateurish. Try to use different angles or use curves.

A quick introduction to color selection:
When you need a color you should compose it using the hue/saturation/volume color picker. The saturation slider should never be 0% (pure black/gray/white - very boring) or 100% (obnoxious). When you need a shading color for a color you created that way, take it, lower the volume and increase the saturation. When you need a highlight color, increase the volume and lower the saturation.

[yuminig]

I hope you don't mind I took out the root first then change the dithering.
this kind of dithering is like cellulite. how is it? is it alright?

the volume is also consider as brightness right?

no light source yet I just want to make sure about the color first.

[Crush]

Hue/Saturation/Volume and Hue/Saturation/Lightness (some programs actually misname it Brightness instead of Lightness) are actually slightly different color systems. When your graphic program uses HSL instead of HSV you should just modify the lightness to create shade- and highlight colors.

Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV

Regarding the new image you posted: The texture could look really interesting after you added shading.

[yuminig]

thanks crush.

is the shading right? I'm lousy when it comes to light source and perspective. I hope its look alright to you

if there is no problem I'll start doing the root

[Crush]

No, not really. This is how I would have done it:

cocoonnoroot.png (3.38 KiB) Viewed 3294 times

In this case I pictured the "cells" as lumps like the structure of a brain and shaded them accordingly. Not sure if that was your vision, though.

Regarding getting a grip of light direction: I can just give you the same advice I give to everyone: Practice by pixeling a sphere and shading it with 3 shades of color. It will be a enlightening experience for you. Here is a reference image:

[yuminig]

thanks for the tutorial crush here's mine but not as good as yours.
I'm kind of scare of adding root. cause the root has its own shadow to cast to

[Rotonen]

Don't worry, the only way to get there is practice.

With shadows, it can get tricky with the perspective.

[yuminig]

thanks rotonen. I'll keep practicing.

anyway here's the update

pulsating light - finish
pulsating size - still working on it

now to make it pump like a heart.
resizing it can be tricky. not only size but you also have to consider changing the shading to match the new size.

[yuminig]

okay finish pulsating size animation. now wrapping it with roots.

if I remember correctly no angly and more curvy like crush suggests.

[yuminig]

Could you try softening the edges with semi-transparent black? (There's a term for this... what is it? What is it!?)

I see what you mean. as the cocoon grows smaller the outline seems to be much bigger. maybe I can brighten the outline as it grows smaller. what do you think spamMaster or was I wrong?

[yuminig]

I see. thanks for the tip SpamMaster. I'll see what I can do. Guess I'll have to research about transparency.

[yuminig]

I use the eraser tools to smoothen the edges.

Anyway I have a questions. How do you compile these seperate images of png? horizontally